> Here is BT saying "yes we'll do it"
But what are they saying they will do? Or rather, who are "BT"? Both commentators and politicians sem to fail to differentiate between BT and OpenReach, a distinction now made clarer by Ofcom. If it is BT the parent group of OpenReach, making an "offer", then it is right to be cautious about monopoly extension, if that means people can only use BT via the OpenReach infrastructure. But if the offer is from OpenReach, then the way to go can only be regulation of a de facto monopoly, along with a service obligation.
Regarding other (the "English counterparts" in the above post) "subsidising rural services, that is a pretty blinkered view. Apart from misunderstanding issues of common good, one could say that rural people subsidise more urban counterparts when the urbanites come to the rural areas demanding urban-style access, which believe me, they do.
Disclaimer: We live in an area that suffers from poor infrastructure, one of those affected by the way this pans out. BT's offer of 99% may sound good, but that 1% equates to a hang of lot of households left out in the cold. The country, Scotland, England, Wales or UK, whichever way you want to look at it, needs decent infrastructure, which it currently does not have. "The market" has failed to provide except in some, mostly urban, areas; trusting market forces to resolve this is both reckless and doomed to fail again.
By the way, I cant find a definition of this mythical "10Mb/s" requirement. We can get about a 7.5Mb/s connection, but because the rest of the infrastructure is ancient radio links and dry string (this is Scotland - string is designed to work when wet...) we are lucky if our throughput hits 4Mb/s. On some Monday mornings, presumably after some reset, we get better speeds, which implies that the issue in many cases, such as ours, is that BT/OpenReach simply are not bothering to improve old 20CN networks.
They can't be trusted. Regulate them to compliance.