BSkyB ( Sky Broadband ) has surprised many industry observers by becoming the first major UK telecoms operator to help BT trial its controversial new Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product, which allows rival ISPs direct access to the operators national network of telegraph poles and cable ducts.

The 3-month long trial will allow Sky, and another smaller operator (Call Flow), to build their own superfast 100Mbps+ capable Fibre-to-the-Home ( FTTH ) style fibre optic broadband network; but without needing to build their own poles or dig their own trenches to lay the cables.


In theory this method should be cheaper, yet a group of senior executives from several major ISPs - including Virgin Media , TalkTalk , Geo , Vtesse Networks ( Vtesse Broadband ) and Fujitsu - recently threatened to boycott the drive to boost the country's superfast broadband infrastructure unless the government put pressure on BT to bring their prices down (here).


It's known that Sky Broadband (Sky) also expressed related concerns in a separate letter to BT. The situation drew an angry response from BT, which accused the ISPs of being "keener to spend more time talking about this process than actually working on it."

In response several of the related providers - including Fujitsu , Virgin Media , TalkTalk and Cisco - surprised the market once more by announcing their intention to build a new superfast fibre optic broadband network that could reach 5 Million homes in rural areas and act as an alternative to BT (here). However, this is all conditional upon BT being able to deliver favourable PIA pricing.

Meanwhile it's worth pointing out that TalkTalk and Sky Broadband already have a shared research and development project to deploy a small-scale FTTH network to 3,600 homes in North West London (here). Today's announcement will, in one way or another, compliment that study. Some have suggested that Sky might have unofficially agreed to act as the guinea pig for the larger group of operators, which have now entrenched their positions unless BT's prices are lowered.

Whatever the reason, precious little detail about Sky or Call Flow's plans currently exists. It will be a "small scale" trial but we do not know where or when the new work will begin. BT claims that additional ISPs are expected to join the trial before its commercial launch this summer 2011, which remains to be seen but is still entirely possible.