KCOM completes feasibility study on sharing broadband

An awful lot of the coverage of public complaints about new telecoms poles would not be happening if infrastructure sharing was working in the areas of the UK where KCOM is the incumbent e.g. Hull, Beverly and some other areas in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

KCOM on Thursday published the details of where it is in terms of creating an easy to use Passive Infrastructure Sharing (PIA) system. 

Our summary of the current situation is that it received a request from Connexin to access KCOM ducts and poles in January 2024 and a feasibility study on doing so has now been completed and this has been shared with Connexin. Meetings about the commercial arrangements if the plan looks like it would work are due to start in April.

KCOM is saying that this request from Connexin is the only one they have received to date that falls with the scope of what Ofcom expects to be PIA.

We’ve not had a spy sitting in the offices of the several alt-nets in the KCOM area, but if this feasibility study is the extent of the KCOM PIA work to date, then no surprise as there has probably been informal questions to KCOM staff and alt-nets have realised that there is nothing they can actually use and move ahead with their plans and all too often this will involve deploying poles.

The question for Ofcom now is that Openreach in theory has had PIA available since 2011 so why has KCOM taken so long to get to the stage it is at. In the early years Openreach PIA was unwieldy to use and there would be many complaints about Openreach stalling, after several iterations of the processes from around 2018 onwards the Openreach system has largely been working smoothly.

PIA is a lot more than agreeing to work with operators, as they need access to mapping systems detailing what is available and detail about what is known about the state of ducts and poles in an area. 

This situation with PIA is more worrying as KCOM are actively consuming Openreach PIA with its network expansion outside its old footprint, and therefore will know exactly what those wanting to use its network would need. Also, KCOM was well ahead of Openreach in building its full-fibre network in Hull, but there has never been an attractive wholesale option, which could seen less disruption in the area. With even Virgin Media O2 moving to become a wholesale operators the lack of good wholesale options by KCOM looks even more 20th rather than 21st century.