Mass deployment of broadband happened two decades after Thatcher left power and it's not even clear that the technologies of the 80s would have been of much help for modern broadband.
I think three things are blocking the deployment of optic fiber in the UK:
1. Monopolies. Even with DSL, the UK was years behind France, which broke the monopoly of France Telecom before the UK, and let competition offer 1Mbit plus broadband (I think the early FT and BT packages were limited to 500kbit or 1mbit for commercial reasons).
2. Planning restrictions. As much of a problem for housing than for wiring homes with optic fibre.
3. Brits love tiny houses over apartment blocks which makes it very expensive to deploy even in urban area.
Happy to hear of better reasons from someone closer to the matter.
Not convinced monopolies are the problem. Broadband infrastructure strikes me as a natural monopoly[1], and I think this is the point the BT guy is making in the article.
Exactly, and to expand on this: Apart from major backhaul routes and a little bit of privately owner fiber in a few cities, the main telecoms infrastructure provider in the UK is BT openreach a subsidiary of BT which is a privately owned but heavily state regulated monopoly. Every penny of revenue and every decision they take is audited by the government at great expense. Strategic decisions with regards to infrastructure provision are laboriously negotiated with packages of funding supplied by national and regional government. It is a ridiculously bureaucratic and inefficient way of organising things. It's setup like this for ideological reasons because the Conservative party are heavily against any form of state ownership, even when it would be the simplest and most cost effective way of organising something which market forces naturally push strongly towards monopoly ownership.
Also, in relation to another comment below, we are purely talking about ownership and maintenance of the wires under the streets, no one wants to go back to forcing everyone to have the same colour Soviet style state issued phones of the early 80's. I'm also not saying that the cables are installed by government, you still let the contracts for this to the private sector. Just don't let the private sector drive strategic decisions about infrastructure investments which pay off indirectly by increasing the competitiveness of the economy overall.
As I like to bring up in these discussions, the old Ma Bell wasn't so wonderful. Until the government forced them to do otherwise, you couldn't even own any of the equipment within your own house. Yes, they provided very reliable and high quality telephone service--we've generally gone backwards in that regard--but at high cost, with few options, and at a slow rate of change.
There are (probably) natural monopolies. But the term can also just be used to limit competition.
At least in the US, I think monopolies are part of the problem. Every once in a while, you see a story about how a big telecom lobbied to prevent a small local broadband ISP promising gigabit internet from taking off.
Source? In most places, the opposite problem exists. Cities can't get private companies to build gigabit even after actively trying. http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-fiber-internet-ca.... That's why municipal fiber is the current battleground--private companies don't want to build those networks.
This isn't about deployment of broadband (though it's certainly related), it's about rollout of fibre, which can be used for other services (such as TV) as well.
This sort of stuff really aggravates me. In a similar anecdote, half of my town is unable to get Virgin media, purely because when it came to laying cables under a major A road, the council kicked up a fuss, so Virgin just walked away.
There are two ways to do that. Cutting the road and then patching the asphalt is cheaper so that's what companies want to do. It's impossible to do that without leaving a bump, however, so it's an externality imposed on all drivers for the useful life of the highway. When it makes commercial sense to do so, companies can be required to drill horizontally under the road. When they came through my neighborhood with some fiber optic lines last year, that's what they did. When (the company claims) that doesn't make commercial sense, regulators have a choice whether to allow the asphalt cut or not. In most cases I wouldn't fault regulators who protect the road.
Mass deployment of broadband happened two decades after Thatcher left power and it's not even clear that the technologies of the 80s would have been of much help for modern broadband.
I think three things are blocking the deployment of optic fiber in the UK:
1. Monopolies. Even with DSL, the UK was years behind France, which broke the monopoly of France Telecom before the UK, and let competition offer 1Mbit plus broadband (I think the early FT and BT packages were limited to 500kbit or 1mbit for commercial reasons).
2. Planning restrictions. As much of a problem for housing than for wiring homes with optic fibre.
3. Brits love tiny houses over apartment blocks which makes it very expensive to deploy even in urban area.
Happy to hear of better reasons from someone closer to the matter.
[edit] corrected shameful spelling mistakes