Do “open access” and “facilities competition” mix?

There is an article on TMCnet that articulates the problem with importing foreign open access regulatory models without consideration of the North American reality of facilities based competition.

A success of the regulatory framework in Canada and the United States has been the presence of multiple communications channels in most homes and businesses.

In most countries where open access rules apply, the competitive landscape is quite different.

That has huge financial implications for any firms contemplating building ubiquitous high-speed access facilities. In countries where, for legal, regulatory or other reasons there is not ubiquitous cable broadband already in place, a service provider might seriously entertain building an open access network, relatively safe in the knowledge that virtually all contestants will be wholesale customers.

As our report showed [Figure B.1.3 on page 81], few other countries have such ubiquitous cable broadband and telco broadband infrastructure, operated by competing companies (in some countries, the incumbent telco is also the cable company). In Canada and the US, the broadband market is already fragmented with an almost even split on each of the cable and telephone infrastructure. Further, satellite and wireless (fixed and mobile) take another portion of the total market off the table.

So where the open access broadband model, in a different country, might reasonably be expected to achieve nearly 100 percent or more of the addressable market, the potential return is cut in half where the achievable share is no more than 50 percent.

The article challenges readers to build their own spreadsheets to run the numbers.

Among themes that come to mind for future exploration:

• Is open access too focussed on an enforced fiber-to-the-premise investment strategy to be compatible with technological neutrality?
• Is nationalization of infrastructure required?
• Would both cable and telco infrastructure have to be acquired for competitive neutrality?

Others?