Just a week after Deutsche Telekom said it no longer needed a co-investor to support expansion of its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network, UK incumbent BT said it had ended talks about forming a joint venture for its wholesale infrastructure arm, Openreach. Both telcos cited falling build costs and faster than expected uptake of fiber services, making the benefits of a funding partner less clear. However, BT is in a very competitive market now. In 2020, more than half of new fiber build-out in the UK was done by alternative operators such as CityFibre, which recently extended its partnership with Vodafone to support the latter’s bid to be a fiber leader. And as Vodafone moves to challenge BT/EE as a fully converged…