Merging of BT brands?

Someone elsewhere posted a link to this BT page

We�re bringing together our BT, EE and Plusnet brands to create the UK�s largest provider of fixed-voice, broadband and mobile services. It�ll take effect from 1 April 2018.

Not heard anything previously, have I missed something? Any comments or inside knowledge?

Intriguing. You would have thought they would be telling their customers if something significant is going to change in less than 2 months time.

Maybe BT are getting in their April fools day joke early this year?

Nothing new.

It was announced last July (https://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperformance/Quarterly...):

Our new Consumer business will operate our three distinct brands; BT, EE and Plusnet; to leverage our position as the largest and only fully converged player in the market, spanning fixed and mobile networks, consumer products and services as well as content.

Edited by deleted (Tue 06-Feb-18 12:31:34)

Though this post suggests they're continuing as three separate brands

https://community.plus.net/t5/Plusnet-Feedback/BT-Me...

https://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperformance/Quarterly...

Yeap had just popped back to say nothing new.

Thanks folks for your replies. So it doesn't appear to have any direct effect on the "brands". (Yet?) The statement I quoted I read to suggest a merging of the brands rather a reorganising of the upper echelons of management.

It seems that the brands remain.

Interesting that Andy Baker retains the title of "CEO Plusnet", under the new structure Marc Allera is the overall boss so Andy Baker will be more of a Managing Director than a CEO.

In reply to a post by bluetroll:

Someone elsewhere posted a link to this BT page

We�re bringing together our BT, EE and Plusnet brands to create the UK�s largest provider of fixed-voice, broadband and mobile services. It�ll take effect from 1 April 2018.

Not heard anything previously, have I missed something? Any comments or inside knowledge?

That link took me to the BT Corporate page, which is aimed at investors and the Stock Exchange. It merely identifies the various business divisions within BT Group plc. The BT, EE and PlusNet brands will come under the umbrella of the company's Consumer division, in the same way that Openreach is another, entirely separate division.

One or more directors will probably have overall responsibility for the management of the Consumer division and will drive policy decisions within that division. But that does not mean BT, EE and PlusNet (which are separate business) will merge or operate differently after 1 April 2018.

Using different brandings is a typical marketing strategy. BT seem to be standalone whereas PN run services for companies such as John Lewis. JL oc course use this piggybacking to expand their business. Not sure that this would work if everything was merged into BT. Not sure either how the customer would react too as for all its criticism there are a lot worse CS departments than PN!

There has been an interesting development with Vodafone recently. Their cheap and cheerful brand TalkMobile has now been merged fully into the parent company with higher prices for TM customers. I just see an increase in "churn" but that seems to be the way it all works nowadays.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

It seems that the brands remain.

Interesting that Andy Baker retains the title of "CEO Plusnet", under the new structure Marc Allera is the overall boss so Andy Baker will be more of a Managing Director than a CEO.

If they changed anything they would lose customers, certainly if they put the price of Plusnet up to the extortionate BT prices.

I said before I would never go back to Bt itself and while i know BT owns plusnet it is still not the same as BT old service. If it ever got to be like that I would be gone. i do have over 12 months left on my contract, but I assume if they made such a drastic change I could get out early.

plusnet at the moment is offing me an ok service, now the connection problem is sorted out, I presume it have been as i have not had any downtime for a couple of months and the price of my mobile phone service from plusnet is good compared to others.

This will means a price rise - if not my contract is with plusnet so if BT do this then I can leave as my contract wont be with the new company.

I am sure that is right

Did you read the links people posted, no signs that this will mean a price rise, other than the usual traditional annual price rises.

On your contract thing, if (and this is not what is happening) PlusNet was to pass on your contract to BT so long as service delivery and pricing remain same you have no option to leave, this story has been played out many times as providers have bulk sold customers when wanting to leave different segments of the market.

But that's okay so I am sure it will happen soon.

I'd guarantee there will be price rises "soon" - but not necessarily as a direct result of this.

Any idea whether this merge will now make Plusnet subject to the Ofcom margin squeeze test applied to BT's consumer products? In which case a price rise will not just be likely, but obligated.

You'd have to ask Ofcom that question

I Don't know if it just me or the means anything but speedtest.net and WhatsmyIp now show:

ISP: British Telecommunications PLC even though I with Plusnet

That may just be your current IP address was registered to them. There is a lot of intermingling now IPv4 addresses have run out.

How often do you re-sync? Check next time .

I have a Static IP address, the same one for 4 years.

Which does suggest they have merged the ownership of IP Addresses then, as you implied. I wonder what EE customers are seeing.

Same for me. Fixed IP but shown as owned by BT. My location is shown as Burmarsh which couldn't be much more wrong. I'm currently connected to a Colindale gateway if that is what is being detected, but I thought that is somewhere in London.

Geo IP in the UK is useless in the main

Have you actually done a whois on your IP address, rather than what others are trying to figure out based on the AS number.

In short a lot hinges on what fields are used to ID connections, AS6871 has an as-name of PlusNet but an org-name of British Telecommunications PLC

A whois does actually show it belongs to Plusnet.

In reply to a post by longedge:

Same for me. Fixed IP but shown as owned by BT

Same here, used to say Plusnet.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Geo IP in the UK is useless in the main

If you use https://www.iplocation.net you can see several Geo IP companies and their guesswork.

In my case with my static IP Plusnet FTTC / VDSL connection I get these responses:

IP2Location = British Telecommunications PLC
ipinfo.io = British Telecommunications PLC
EurekaAPI = PlusNet Technologies Ltd
DB-IP = Plusnet Technologies Ltd
MaxMind = Not Available

Proving MrSaffron's statement - its all guesswork.

A WHOIS from RIPE on my static IP reports:
descr: Dial-up and ADSL pool
descr: PlusNet Technologies Ltd

IP blocks move between organisations all the time, and when its a big corporate like BT PLC then it can take ages to update WHOIS.

This has got me thinking.. I'm sure that a year or two ago I was able to have a change made that resulted in a reverse lookup of my IP address returning just the IP address whereas it now returns my domain name. Is my memory playing tricks on me?

Your memory isn't playing tricks as I remember a few complaints around that time for the same reason.

You can raise a ticket to change the RDNS here by clicking on the configure static IP link.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Geo IP in the UK is useless in the main

Although, do you remember some years ago Andrew when I posted about a company called Maxmind (think that was the name) that had a pretty accurate GeoIP lookup for the UK.
Last time i looked I couldn't see the free GeoIP look up feature on their website. In comparison to the competition even back then for UK GeoIP lookup they seemed to be streets ahead on accuracy.

If you harvest enough databases and correlate the information we all leak about our location you can probably be very good.

the information we all leak about our location

So right, Mr Saffron. My IP geolocation is normally 200 to 500 miles out, and I like it that way. I turn off all Google spying options as the 'reminders' pester me every few days, and I keep my email addy to personal contacts. However, one of my Gmail disposable accounts demanded authentication via text to mobile phone. I'd thought of this too and keep an old Nokia with £1 throwaway SIM for such odd jobs. The text came in, gmail opened swiftly, within a few minutes my location changed to my post town a few miles away, and later that day I received an ad from a company in that town. I have to hand it to Google, but it's scary.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If you harvest enough databases and correlate the information we all leak about our location you can probably be very good.

Absolutely and I was amazed back then of Maxmind's accuracy compared to the general competition.

Edited by Vorlon (Sun 11-Mar-18 22:43:41)

GDPR and the need for people to confirm remaining on mailing lists may actually help some firms track people.

Since you are giving them an update on your browser, IP etc in addition to saying yes I want to still receive email.