 radio programmes. This suits all parties reasonably well. The BBC gets a wider audience and another distribution channel that they don't need to pay for. A bigger audience helps make the case for a continuation of public service funding but also helps create income opportunities for BBC enterprise. BT Vision get to sell more higher-value subscriptions. So what does all this have to do with telegraph poles? 14.6 Broadband Delivery Economics and Delivery Innovation The economics of broadband delivery are dependent on delivery innovation, which in turn is dependent on research and development. BTs research and development spending has at least in part been sustained by the profits made from a monopoly and then duopoly position in which the incumbent (BT) retained legacy advantage. This advantage was then translated into a gain to the treasury through the privatisation process, though most of this money was then absorbed into higher priority spending including defence. A similar fate befell the income from the UK spectral auctions. The grand plans to transform the fixed-line infrastructure by 2010 have slipped five years to 2015 and the government's exhortation that BT should deliver broadband to rural areas has minimal collateral given that the company's first duty is now to its shareholders who have no direct reason to want to undertake a loss-making venture. The only way the government could provide incentives to BT to bridge this 'digital divide' would be to trade a relaxation of competition policy against an extended broadband universal service obligation. And that is where telegraph poles may come into play as key enablers. Installing fibre optic on telegraph poles requires specific changes to existing planning laws and will then require significant investment that BT is unlikely to want to make if forced to facility share with other third parties. To reuse the well-worn motivated donkey aphorism, regulatory and competition policy is therefore the carrot and the stick in a new world of liberalised telecommunic