Anna Gross

Nearly 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles) of metal-encased fiber crisscrosses the world’s oceans, speeding internet traffic seamlessly around the globe. The supply and installation of these cables have been dominated by companies from France, the US and Japan. The Chinese government started successfully penetrating the global market, but consecutive US administrations have since managed to freeze China out of large swathes of it.

Some people in the telecommunications industry like to compare the copper or fiber lines transmitting data under our feet to railways. They are both natural monopolies, they argue: duplication is wasteful, the high costs of construction deter new entrants, and economies of scale are essential for survival. But laying fiber costs much less than laying a railway track. The very fact that over 100 alternative network providers — or “altnets” — have popped up, backed by billions in private capital, suggests the financial incentives are there to multiply the infrastructure.

BT’s chief executive said the telecommunications group had turned its broadband network into an “unstoppable machine” that will ultimately “end in tears” for many of its fiber competitors. “There is only going to be one national network,” Philip Jansen said. “Why do you need to have multiple providers?” The former monopoly said that its networking division Openreach had laid fibre to 9.6 million premises, with 29 percent of people in those areas opting to move over to its fibre offering.

The UK government has warned mobile and broadband providers that it is not “right” for them to raise prices by more than 14 percent from April 2023, as customers contend with the surge in living costs. Much of the fixed broadband and mobile and phone market has in recent years implemented price increases in April of each year for new customers and those already in contract. Telecommunications groups tend to base rises on the previous year’s annualized rate of inflation, plus about 3.9 percent.

British communications regulator Ofcom said it had started the process to scrap legislation compelling BT, the former state-owned monopoly, to provide dedicated landlines for the devices at affordable prices.

BT networking division Openreach is looking to reduce its broadband prices to attract new customers and lock in big wholesale clients like Vodafone, TalkTalk, and Sky as rivals lay full-fiber cables across the UK. The incumbent network operator, part of BT Group, has met some of its biggest corporate customers to suggest a number of changes to its pricing structure that would make its offer more attractive and help them move customers from copper to full fiber. Openreach makes money by wholesaling its broadband to internet service providers, including its parent group BT.

The UK has nearly 5 million houses with more than three choices of ultrafast fibre-optic broadband, while 10 million homes do not have a single option, according to analysis that points to the inequality in internet infrastructure across Britain. While some parts of the country are benefiting from high internet speeds, others have been left behind, according to research conducted by data group Point Topic with the Financial Times. The government has pledged to bridge the digital divide and level up the economy by extending fast broadband to all homes.

Britain’s ability to roll out superfast broadband across the country is being slowed by the “tortuous” process of recruiting workers from the EU following Brexit, the head of BT’s networking business has warned. Clive Selley, chief executive of BT’s Openreach, the division leading the rollout of fibre optic networks to homes, said countries such as Portugal and Spain have plenty of people with the necessary skills to accelerate the delivery of superfast broadband. “They want the work, we want the skills and the Home Office have a process that is tortuous,” Selley said in an interview.

The European Union should make big tech and video streaming companies pay at least some of the estimated €28 billion they cost European telecom groups for their outsized use of network infrastructure, according to a new industry report. A small number of video, social media and tech companies — including Facebook owner Meta, Netflix and Amazon — account for more than 55 percent of all traffic on mobile and broadband networks, according to research commissioned by the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association and conducted by the consultancy firm Axon.