[emdowling]

One nitpick: Royal Mail and Post Office are two separate companies with independent boards. Royal Mail is the network and carrier, while the Post Office is the primary entry point into that network (they also offer access to a bunch of other services not related to the Royal Mail). Doesn't make your point any less valid, but wanted to call out the distinction.

[BillinghamJ]

As a sub-nitpick, I would definitely say Royal Mail itself is certainly the primary entry point into the network too. But Post Office is super helpful in providing supporting services for many government-related things like passport photos, certification, applying for things etc

[lloydatkinson]

Sounds like the kind of bullshit BT and OpenReach pull too. Claim to be two unrelated companies and yet one owns parts of the other and the same boards run both - all so they can pass customer problems between the two I definitely.

[gambiting]

I'm honestly surprised anyone complains about that split - it was introduced specifically so that BT wouldn't control the entire telecom infrastructure in this country, and OpenReach was formed to provide equal access to all operators - BT being only one of them. This is an extremely good solution to what used to be a massive inequality problem previously. So no, BT and Openreach aren't split for some bullshit reason, they were ordered by the court to split in order to protect consumer rights and increase competition, goals which were overwhelmingly achieved due to that split.

And yes, the negative side is that every time something goes wrong, BT really can't fix it any faster, it's all down to OpenReach to maintain the network. But on the other hand, it always goes through OpenReach, whether you are with TalkTalk, BT or Sky, so the entity responsible for maintaing the network isn't the entity selling you broadband for home.

[zinok]

It would be an extremely good solution if it worked as intended. In fact Openreach were not fully independent from BT for most of their existence, and they operated the network in a way which was extremely favorable to BT for a long time.

Thus, the two companies extracted an exorbitant rent for the formerly public goods they controlled. The fact that some of this rent went to inefficiencies of running two separate companies on an illusionary arm's length basis does not really improve matters.

[emdowling]

This sounds like a similar situation to Telstra in Australia, which was forced to split into two entities - one a wholesale network provider that was open to all operators, the other a consumer operator that (supposedly) operates under the same rules as everyone else.

[DanBC]

They have different boards.

https://www.openreach.com/about-us/our-leadership-and-govern...

https://www.bt.com/about/bt/our-company/group-governance/boa...

  Openreach
  Mike McTighe Chairman
  Clive Selley CEO
  Matt Davies Chief Finance Officer
  Edward Astle Non-executive Board member
  Liz Benison Non-executive Board member
  Andrew Barron Non-executive Board member
  Jon Furmston Secretary to the board
  Simon Lowth BT Group nominee

  BT
  Jan du Plessis Chairman
  Philip Jansen Chief Executive
  Simon Lowth Group Chief Financial Officer
  Adel Al-Saleh Non-independent, non-executive director
  Sir Ian Cheshire Independent non-executive director
  Iain Conn Senior independent director and independent non-executive director
  Isabel Hudson Independent non-executive director
  Mike Inglis Independent non-executive director
  Matthew Key Independent non-executive director
  Allison Kirkby Independent non-executive director 
  Leena Nair Independent non-executive director 
  Sara Weller Independent non-executive director 
  Rachel Canham Company Secretary & General Counsel, Governance

[Silhouette]

One nitpick: Royal Mail and Post Office are two separate companies with independent boards.

Though as a nitpick of your nitpick, they weren't truly independent until the relevant provisions of the Postal Services Act 2011 came into effect on 1 April 2012. What we know today as the "Post Office" and "Royal Mail" had a long history before that.

[emdowling]

TIL. Thanks! I've only lived in the UK for 6 years so don't know much about the history before that. Appreciate it!