Comment : No Need For Tories To Break Up BT Monopoly

On Sunday, Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Culture Secretary, said that a Tory government will coerce BT into allowing its fiercest competitors to use its extensive network infrastructure.

The Register understands that Mr Hunt, and subsequently the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, will be targeting Openreach, and not BT proper.

Although Openreach is a division of BT Group, it is legally obliged to follow certain rules following the Enterprise Act of 2002 that was introduced after the Ofcom's Strategic Review of Telecommunications.

The purpose of Openreach is to ensure that all "rival operators have equality of access to BT's own local network". The solution has proved to be a major success with around 400 or so service providers being served.

Openreach will use the £1.5 billion committed by BT to roll out Fibre access across the country reaching up to 40 percent of homes in Britain by 2012.

This is not a government-initiative but a private one. BT's fibre-broadband services will deliver download speeds of up to 100mbps and upload speeds of 10mbps.