New Zealand has ordered the country's dominant phone company Telecom, to split into three operating units. Like British Telecom in the UK, this is functional or operational separation, not structural separation.
Structural separation is what happened to the Bell System in 1983-84. It resulted in separate companies who went their own ways. Note that they regulated monopolies never did compete and eventually remerged, but the less regulated entity (AT&T) did pursue a truly separate path for at least two decades and we did get real competition in long distance services as a result.
When BT (voluntarily) split their operations, there was quite a bit of discussion which confused structural and functional separation even among people who know better, or should know better. Unlike the BT split, New Zealand's Telecom has fought the split, so it will be doubly interesting to see if it actually works out.
In both of the current cases, separation leaves the access group responsible for the physical ducts, the raw fiber or copper, and the electronics necessary to make it work. I worry about the latter. There doesn't appear to be an option for anyone else to get access to the ducts to put in their own fiber, for example a co-op or condominium or a municipality. Instead, the separation relies on the now-separated access business as the sole entity to upgrade the access network.
Perhaps I've misunderstood, but I wonder what the 10-15 year impact of this approach will be – better and better DSL when we really wanted fiber?
Time will tell.
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