Playing devils advocate, why should they be forced ?? They're a privatised, share-holding business ............. they should be allowed to make decisions based simply around good fiscal sense, as a duty to their investors.
What about a duty to their customers? For without customers they wouldn't have a business would they. We as customers get pretty much no say, we're just told it's a legacy system, which it is, the old copper and aluminium cables are donkeys years old and failing, they are not often replaced just patched up - I've had local engineers tell me this, they recommend replacing and they are told to patch. If I sent a removals truck which kept breaking down whilst moving your belongings how happy would you be? Surely if BT want to carry on using metallic lines then they should be replaced with decent copper as and when required, prior to crumbling away thus causing a deteriorating service, that is less than optimal.
How's about the company that you work for Ron, begin transporting goods out of your own pockets once you reach a certain profit margin ?? In fact, their should be a USO ensuring you do. 
But BT wouldn't be doing it for nothing no one said anything about free broadband, I expect lots of companies have some sections which make losses, supermarkets have loss leaders for example, I'm sure that a reasonable USO is not going to cripple BT Groups profits overall.
One of our customers runs a car transporter business, he mainly has big 9/10 car trucks, but also has a little 2 car truck, this truck actually runs at a loss. Using your logic he should get rid of it, problem is many of his customers occasionally don't have a full load to move, but have just the odd car to move or they are in a location the big trucks can't reach, if he didn't have the small truck to get the job done quickly they'd be frustrated and will potentially look elsewhere, so he'd potentially lose all their work. Basically he runs it for customer sanctification. With BT = Captive market = most of us can't look elsewhere.
In our workshop I occasionally help out customers with mechanical problems for no charge, or a small charge (much less than if we did the job), in fact we even rent them workshop space so they can work on their own vehicles. Obviously we make very little money out of this, but it helps out the smaller guy, creates good will, and when a job is too big for them, or out of their comfort zone we get the work. Now one of these customers has on occasion recovered vehicles for us free of charge, or lent us a vehicle, the other helps out in other ways, it's good old give and take, the personal touch you might say. Sometimes I'll get someone ring up just after advice, which I give freely, they will one day remember I was helpful and if they need a job doing book it in with us. I think that every business should make a reasonable profit, but if they are making vast profits (I thinking Apple) then they a clearly ripping someone off along the way, and that's not how I work.
Now where's BT's personal touch? Surely they could spread the love a bit with those billions of pounds of profit by offering a better service to all, after all it is us the customer who pays the bills?
