FTTH and cable open access require more common sense

Two major announcements this week - and both (BT's 'super-fast broadband' and OPTA's open access to cable decision) are quite hollow, to a degree.

Benoit rightly quotes Karl Bode on BT's "Fiber to the press release".

And the OPTA (the Dutch NRA) decision on open access to cable doesn't look like it will lead to very much either. Not only is it limited to services-based competition, analogue TV and anybody-but-KPN, there is more.
A pair of distingusihed readers points me to the tiny detail of getting the rights to all cable channels. Should a channel, for some reason, object, then the new entrant (the service provider) will have to provide each customer with a filter (at his home) to block that channel. This is an arduous task, both from a financial and a technical point of view. And the thing is: the channel owner may not have such lofty motives - like being owned by the cable operator.
There is also an issue around an information channel from the operator, which is hard to filter out as well.

Let's hope that Ofcom and OPTA will show more common sense when regulation (of both FTTH and cable open access) takes shape.