News Ofcom announces BT Openreach split plan

I'm not very business savvy but is the only reason for 'legal separation' versus a full separation a money thing?
I feel really dumb for not knowing what the overall implications of 'legal separation' are.

 

I don't see any guarantee that this will yield any improvements for Broadband customers. BT will still be by far Openreach's biggest customer and, presumably, able to negotiate more favourable rates for the use of Openreach infrastructure and services. Also quality of service and reliability will only improve if Openreach change the they way do things. I hope service and pricing do improve but, I'm not going to hold my breath.

 

its a control thing Corky, at the moment budgets and services are managed by BT Group, and they are able to control what openreach does to favour their own business.

under ofcoms plan, openreach will have its own board and be able to control it's own budgets, and should charge everyone fairly similar charges, including BT, although BT will still be the owner.

 

On the other hand, by seperating Openreach's accounts it will become clear how much BT may be 'subsidising' the operation of Openreach through their commercial offerings. If Openreach now needs to survive just on its wholesale operations, it may result in pricing increasing just to maintain the same service level.