>and the company which owns most of the last mile across the country is forced to share it fairly with all ISPs.
This would make for some interesting market dynamics. Does this mean that dominant last-mile owners try as hard as possible to own as equal a share a possible to minimize triggering a "majority must-share" threshold?
Re:Net Neutrality Is Just a Symptom
by vertex-four on Thursday November 13, 2014 @09:13PM
(#8605481)
Basically, the company which owns most of the last mile isn't actually an ISP itself - it simply owns the wires, and sells access to them to ISPs. They have to sell at the same cost to all ISPs. The telecoms regulator would block any plans for it to become an ISP itself. There's no weirdness about actually requiring that ISPs have an equal share of the retail market.
They do have a sibling company which is an ISP, but the telecoms regulator ensures that there's no preferential treatment going on.
Not in the UK. Anybody can lay their own last mile. It's simply that it'd be expensive to do so, and the company which owns most of the last mile across the country is forced to share it fairly with all ISPs.
Virgin are one company which lays their own last mile, there's another cable company which operates in Scotland which does as well, and there's a few rural community ISPs which lay their own last mile.