Opening Up the Local Loop to Competition

The biggest impediment to improving the roll out of Fast Broadband is that each of the two players guard their local loop like the crown jewels and do their best to keep the competition out. To date Virgin has managed to keep the doors to competition firmly closed whilst BT has had the door gently prised open to limited competition
The real answer would be to have both local loop owned by a single company as the underground plant is the key to getting better broadband coverage given that this is unlikely the next best option is to have BT & Virgin move the ownership of the underground plant to separate wholly owned subsidiary companies. These two companies will not supply end uses so any conflict of interest has gone & BT & Virgin cannot favour their own customers because they are just shareholders of the companies. So both BT and Virgin would just be customers of these companies in the same manner as any other ISP or Telco. These two new local companies then don�t care who uses their local loop it�s a case of the more that use it the more money they make

Are you aware that Openreach does not supply to the end user already, and simply deal with the communications providers?

With BT and Virgin being the two biggest companies this 'new' company would still simply serve their needs, i.e. biggest provider of revenue would have biggest say.

Openreach is already in the situation where the more loop it has out there the more it gets paid, alas the costs of upgrading to fibre or in VM's case rolling out more Docsis is not cheap. The money to do this comes from shareholders, how much can they invest?

Yes but there is no real seperation between BT & BT Openreach. BT Openreach is just an internall business unit of BT which gives pllenty of scope to organise things to favour their own internal busineess units having a seperate company largely removes that conflict. It is very limited as to how BT could then influencve it as it has its own board and own set of accounts & p&l

Please can I have half of your garden? I know you have paid for it, but as you are not using it for growing profitable crops, I would like to take it over and use it to cultivate my own crop of cannabis plants.

Define real seperation?

To create the total seperation people want would probably cause untold upheaval

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Yes but there is no real seperation between BT & BT Openreach. BT Openreach is just an internall business unit of BT which gives pllenty of scope to organise things to favour their own internal busineess units having a seperate company largely removes that conflict. It is very limited as to how BT could then influencve it as it has its own board and own set of accounts & p&l

Utter tosh.

If for one minuite, the other teleco's, isp's, ofcom, thought that there was a problem, then ofcom would be down on BT like a ton of bricks.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Yes but there is no real seperation between BT & BT Openreach. BT Openreach is just an internall business unit of BT which gives pllenty of scope to organise things to favour their own internal busineess units having a seperate company largely removes that conflict. It is very limited as to how BT could then influencve it as it has its own board and own set of accounts & p&l

No, it would still have considerable influence because BT Wholesale would still be the biggest customer.

The only way to achieve what the OP wants would be to make the access network companies completely separate entitiies and not subsids of the parents.

Virgin Media does not have SMP so there is little Ofcom could do there - except argue that they do have SMP I suppose!

Futhermore, even separating Openreach out such that it is not even a subsid of BT would not, in my view, really work as it would still be a dominant operator and is already showing worrying signs (via FTTC) of a desire to become more vertically integrated.

The only way to achieve what the OP wants would be to make the access network companies completely separate entitiies and not subsids of the parents.

As IgnitionNet says, that wouldn't make much difference.

The de-merged Openreach would still be a de facto monopoly, as if VM had any aspirations to significant expansion they would have started long ago, and it would still, in fact probably even more so than now, quite legitimately give huge weight to the wishes and desires of its largest two customers, BT Wholesale and TalkTalk.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

The biggest impediment to improving the roll out of Fast Broadband is that each of the two players guard their local loop like the crown jewels and do their best to keep the competition out.

"Their" being the key word here.

Its Virgin and BT's property, no-one else's.

There's a multitude of issues with your proposal.

1) How can you force any private company to sell what they own?
2) Who would buy the combined BT and Virgin infrastructure, the government?
3) Who could afford to buy the combined BT and Virgin infrastructure?
4) Should this even be possible, who would still be the biggest customers of this company. BT and Virgin..... (re your influence issue)

Its like saying... the biggest impediment to improving the mail and parcel distribution service in the UK is to make the Royal Mail sell all of their post boxes and distribution depots to another company and let UPS/TNT/<insert courier here> all use them

Why? Its Royal Mail property, who has any right to make them sell it? Same with Virgin & BT

If Openreach is a seperate subsiderry company the BT Holding Company has no direct control on the subsiderry company and cannot influence it's business strategy

All ISP's & Telco's would be on the same footing including BT would be on the same footing ie they would be customers of BT Openreach. Clearly the larger the company the better the deal they may be able to make with BT openreach

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

If Openreach is a seperate subsiderry company the BT Holding Company has no direct control on the subsiderry company and cannot influence it's business strategy

All ISP's & Telco's would be on the same footing including BT would be on the same footing ie they would be customers of BT Openreach. Clearly the larger the company the better the deal they may be able to make with BT openreach

What you are talking about doesn't happen. Ofcom forbid it, BTW is treat the same as any other ISP by OR.

Chinese walls exist between OR and the rest of BT to please Ofcom

http://www.btplc.com/Thegroup/Industryanalysts/Indus...

Edited by deleted (Sat 09-Apr-11 11:05:25)

In reply to a post by MadMan:

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Utter tosh.

If for one minuite, the other teleco's, isp's, ofcom, thought that there was a problem, then ofcom would be down on BT like a ton of bricks.

You are not serious surely!

In reply to a post by MHC:

Please can I have half of your garden? I know you have paid for it, but as you are not using it for growing profitable crops, I would like to take it over and use it to cultivate my own crop of cannabis plants.

Yeah man! Lol!

Very serious, huge fines can be imposed

On paper, Ofcom can also impose huge fines for selling kit that doesn't meet the CE/EMC regulations.

In both cases, Ofcom choose to ignore the blatantly obvious, because it would embarrass their paymasters and/or put the Ofcom staff salary continuation plans at risk.

On how many occasions have Ofcom imposed a meaningful penalty ?

On how many occasions has there been a breach of the rules that should have resulted in a fine?

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

On paper, Ofcom can also impose huge fines for selling kit that doesn't meet the CE/EMC regulations.

In both cases, Ofcom choose to ignore the blatantly obvious, because it would embarrass their paymasters and/or put the Ofcom staff salary continuation plans at risk.

On how many occasions have Ofcom imposed a meaningful penalty ?

First of all OFCOM have to prove something. The usual BT approach is to be obstructive. We have this with the opening up of the BT ducting they set an unrealistically high price for third parties to use it. BT does not blatantly break the rules but gently stretches them. By the time the wheels of OFCOM get moving and action is take BT will already have the commercial advantage.
If BT Openreach were a separate company BT itself would become a customer of BT so would have to charge BT the same rate for using the ducts as third parties.
At presnt BT are not directly charged for using the ducts it is just lost in the general costs and there is no way of telling how much BT are being charged at present for using the ducts

so you want the duct network to be owned by a separate entity then??? you really have very little clue as to how things work re bt / openreach. The situation we have now is the best it is going get unless we renationalise the network and force out all competition so that the government can make a return on its investments.

The only thing holding back investment is demand and money. Competition is rife between various wholesalers / llu / bt etc and transmition methods (wireless / cable / SLU fttc) etc. We dont need more competition.

There seems to be a lot of break up BT mantra for the sake of doing it. What is it we want to do? force bt to open all duct and poles for free? - putting aside all other considerations where would that leave the market? either extremely fragmented with various local monopolies or a huge foreign national telco infrastructure bleeding yet more money and jobs out of the country....


Seems some people want to have 1gig download speed over gold plated fibre for 50P a month and believe it nasty bt who are stopping us from having it?

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

If BT Openreach were a separate company BT itself would become a customer of BT so would have to charge BT the same rate for using the ducts as third parties.

That is where you go wrong.

Despite several people telling you several times, you seem unaware that pretty well every large company gives favourable prices to its biggest customer.

You introduce another concept there as well. I bet you didn't even realise.

You suggest that the ducting ownership should be completely separate from the ownership of the cables within it. As opposed to the current Openreach ownership of both but with the probability of imminent duct sharing.

BT Openreach under any ownership and with any title will for the foreseeable future favour BT Wholesale and/or BT (Retail).

But as a de facto monopoly that screws every customer, as there is nowhere else to go.

So a regulatory body would be needed, to set the parameters within which the new network infrastructure company would operate.

Ooooohhh, we could call it OfNet. Or even OfCom.

What we areseeing with the ducting is the classic BT delaying tactic. OFCOM say that us under EU rules they have SMP they have to open up their ducting to compettion. BT comes up with a price. The ISP's do the calculation and say that BT are charing three times as much to use it as it should be. Eventually when agreement cannot be reached OFCOM will launch another ivestigation and set a fair price.
At the moment no one know what the internal costs that BT uses they may not even know themselves as they may not extract that as a seperate costs

If Openreach is a seperate company even if it is owned by BT that cost becomes transaparent as every onne will be charged that cost even BT so it is a level playing field at the moment it is not.

The competiters have costed how much it costs BT for the ducting and on their costs model it is about a third of what BT want to charge.

BT will now gain about an 18 month commercial adevantage untill OFCOM resolve the issue

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

If BT Openreach were a separate company BT itself would become a customer of BT so would have to charge BT the same rate for using the ducts as third parties.
At presnt BT are not directly charged for using the ducts it is just lost in the general costs and there is no way of telling how much BT are being charged at present for using the ducts

That's because the same bit of the business that owns the ducts, Openreach, owns their contents. BT Wholesale, like everyone else, rents the use of the copper within the ducts.

If you're going to bemoan the current regulations at least have some clue what they actually are.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

If Openreach is a seperate subsiderry company the BT Holding Company has no direct control on the subsiderry company and cannot influence it's business strategy

All ISP's & Telco's would be on the same footing including BT would be on the same footing ie they would be customers of BT Openreach. Clearly the larger the company the better the deal they may be able to make with BT openreach

The influences would remain exactly as they are now. BT Openreach have a mission to produce products which satisfy as many of their customers as possible. Their biggest customer is, by some way, BT Wholesale.

Short of having them operate differently from everyone else by having some kind of active prejudice against their largest customer there is no reason, at all, to think that a full separation of BT would change this, which is in no small part one of the many reasons why it hasn't been posited seriously.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Are you aware that Openreach does not supply to the end user already, and simply deal with the communications providers?

With BT and Virgin being the two biggest companies this 'new' company would still simply serve their needs, i.e. biggest provider of revenue would have biggest say.

Openreach is already in the situation where the more loop it has out there the more it gets paid, alas the costs of upgrading to fibre or in VM's case rolling out more Docsis is not cheap. The money to do this comes from shareholders, how much can they invest?

sorry if I come across as rude but did you read his post? the fundamental issue been that ultimately openreach and BTr are the same company owned by the same shareholders.

The problem I see with a wholesale variant of VM is that the congestion chokepoint's are where the local loop terminates at the UBR, so wholsale customers would likely be vulnerable to that and not be too happy about it.

BT shouldn't HAVE to open up at all its their infrastructure. All I see is other moaning ISP's (mainly Virgin which has no room to talk) about pricing. If they don't like it... don't use it

Its already cheaper than others in Europe

You wouldn't need to use VM's cable network, just its ducting. Why would you use a inferior DOCSIS network when you could put in your our FTTH

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

First of all OFCOM have to prove something. The usual BT approach is to be obstructive. We have this with the opening up of the BT ducting they set an unrealistically high price for third parties to use it.

They are not breaching any OFCOM rules with this ducting "issue" though. As they are being forced to open up they are trying to ensure they get the correct amount of money for doing so.

Imagine buying your council house from the government all those years ago, only to be now told by the government you have to rent it out as well as use it yourself, and not only that if the government don't like the price you sent and if other possible tenants complain about the price they'll tell you to lower it?

Its their own property they bought it outright. VM wouldn't be happy about opening up either, but if there's going to be any opening up VM should too, its not about SMP this is about coverage, BT have the most coverage but VM also cover 50% of the country so they certainly should open up and also set their own pricing accordingly.

THey are though over pricing it by about three times. The ISP's have done the somes and the costs should be about 1/3rd of what BT are wanting to charge. So although OFCOM have said that thy have to give access to their ducts BT have priced it so high that no one can use it as they would not be able to compete

This if agreement on prices cannot be reached and they are poles apart at present will end up going back to OFCOM with yet more delays before BT realy open up there ducts to competition.

The exact costs can be open to discussion but the ISP's are correct in saying they are in the region three times higher then they should be.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

The exact costs can be open to discussion but the ISP's are correct in saying they are in the region three times higher then they should be.

I'm no BT lover, but whence this touching faith in the ISPs?

It's as much in their interests to show the costs as low as possible as it is in BT's to show them higher.

Exactly... they've done their sums.... based on what? Only Virgin could come up with something reasonably close, but they still won't have the full story. What experience do Sky & TT have, they have no ducting or poles to base anything on

And its not to be done at cost Bob you do realise that, its at profit they have to make something out of it

I just find it amazing that these other ISP's with nothing to loose are even trying to barter with the price that is already lower that Europe, if Ofcom are ok with the prices but other ISP's deem them too expensive they don't have to use them. Simple

Edited by deleted (Sun 10-Apr-11 12:51:28)

If Virgin have done the sums and consider the duct sharing prices to be 200% overpriced they presumably will want to open up their ducts pretty sharpish to get some of the action.

Wrong weather for the low flying pigs

It is not dificult to cost. It is quite easy to come up with a cost per Km of putting ducting into the ground. you then adjust that price to take into account the average age of the BT line plant and then add on the BT profit margin

There are informal discussions going on with repect to setting up a new local loop company should BT continue to prove to be obstructive. The major UK ISP's and Virgin media have been considering this as an option. The Virgin Media loop would form the core of this new network. Each of the major UK ISP's would be shareholders in the new company. A combined local loop company would have far greater financial support to enble the rollout it also makes it far easier to get government & EU funding as the network is neutral and favours no one supplier

I too can�t see the authority OFCOM, With regards to BT as whole, there is at best conflict of interest!

1) How can you force any private company to sell what they own?

A Government could force this, if it felt that the progress of the country was more important than the impoverishment of one private company.

The alternative would seem to be for the taxpayer to pay out to duplicate all the ducting and build it all over again a second time.

2) Who would buy the combined BT and Virgin infrastructure, the government?

The taxpayer. Appalling value to buy it back again since the last mile is even more ancient now than it was then since it hasn't had any investment since then, however, but we can't go backwards and reverse the disastrous decision to privatise it which has held broadband back for so long, as we don't have a time machine.

3) Who could afford to buy the combined BT and Virgin infrastructure?

The taxpayer. Not the same for BTO and VM; VM isn't a monpoly in half the country and exists in a marketplace.

4) Should this even be possible, who would still be the biggest customers of this company. BT and Virgin..... (re your influence issue)

The size of the customer has no relevance. That's the point. One of the BDUK objectives is said to be "to level the playng field". That can't happen until BT OR is taken away from BT.

In terms of who then succeeds, the quality might matter then, though. Would give the best players the chance to shine on an equal footing regardless of their size.

The local loop does not automatically have to be sold. BT could jusst spin of Openreach as a wholly owned subsiderry. This give total seperation between BT & Openreeach. Openreach is a company inn it's own write with it's own board & own p&L and bound by UK company law. With this set up BT becomes a customer of Openreach in the same manner as any other ISP or teleco. There is total tranparancy and every one has basically the same costs

With say the ducting there is a cost per Km for the ducting. This cost would be the same for everyone regardless of size. On top of the Km cost will be Openreaches
profit margin. Now this aspect will vary dependent on the size of the customers order as is normal in business. So for larger customers Openreach would takr a smaller marging to get the volume

You know "we" are all in massive debt right? No time to be buying anything new like this. It just won't happen, not even if we had the cash. Have you any examples of where a government have forced this in the past?

But why would BT want to do that?

If it can be summarised in a sentence like that why did Ofcom give them months to come up with costs/processes?

Exactly. And so back around in a circle we go for another 10 years of backward broadband seeing us slip further and further behind other countries.

In an ideal world it would probably be nice.

You have a separate company or co-operative funded by the government and ISPs which builds and maintains the network (hopefully to a superb level) and then the ISPs can compete to offer the services over it.

But this isn't really an ideal world.

In what respect? BT are already rolling out FTTC/FTTP now, they are putting in more fibre than any other country in the world out of their own pockets.

Why don't Virgin just cover the other 50% of the country, no reliance on BT then.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

In what respect? BT are already rolling out FTTC/FTTP now, they are putting in more fibre than any other country in the world out of their own pockets.

Why don't Virgin just cover the other 50% of the country, no reliance on BT then.

Virgin Media were rolling out FTTC over a decade ago.

The reason they don't cover the other 50% of the country is because the [long term] ROI isn't attractive from a private company point of view especially when the other player in their areas has the advantage of owning suitable ducting already to put the fibre down, but chooses not to until under threat.

Which is the fundamental issue underlying this entire thread.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

There are informal discussions going on with repect to setting up a new local loop company should BT continue to prove to be obstructive. The major UK ISP's and Virgin media have been considering this as an option. The Virgin Media loop would form the core of this new network. Each of the major UK ISP's would be shareholders in the new company. A combined local loop company would have far greater financial support to enble the rollout it also makes it far easier to get government & EU funding as the network is neutral and favours no one supplier

Tall stories.

I'm out

And BT were prevented by Oftel all those years ago from putting fibre in the ground to give Mercury a chance to expand.

So the other 50% of the country isn't attractive to Virgin? What about the current 50% weren't BT there with their ducts then?

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

There are informal discussions going on with repect to setting up a new local loop company should BT continue to prove to be obstructive. The major UK ISP's and Virgin media have been considering this as an option. The Virgin Media loop would form the core of this new network. Each of the major UK ISP's would be shareholders in the new company. A combined local loop company would have far greater financial support to enble the rollout it also makes it far easier to get government & EU funding as the network is neutral and favours no one supplier

Two of the UK's bigger ISPs, Sky and TalkTalk, are doing an FTTP trial in North West London, Virgin Media have done their own trials with new poles.

I have heard nothing to suggest that Virgin Media along with Talk Talk, Sky, etc, are in co-operation to build a network and based on past experience this seems quite unlikely.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

And BT were prevented by Oftel all those years ago from putting fibre in the ground to give Mercury a chance to expand.

That's what happens when you privatise something that doesn't meet the rules normally required to make a privatisation work: the existence of a market.

You end up applying a series of sticking plasters through regulation which, in the end, helps nobody. This continues to this day. A few Conservative ministers did quite well out of the privatisation though IIRC.

BT is hardly what you would call a proper "privatised company" since it has a Crown guarantee on its pensions. If it were to fail, we all pay.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

So the other 50% of the country isn't attractive to Virgin? What about the current 50% weren't BT there with their ducts then?

The cable network was built for TV services, something which BT's network couldn't offer and thanks to the lack of investment over the years, cannot compete with - this is going to be one of the blocks in getting people to migrate away from VM cable to BT's FTTC service - slower top speeds for those who want them, and a complete lack of a comparable TV service. The only area in which BT have the edge at the moment that I can see is upload speeds and not by any huge margin which forms a key selling point.

It just so happens that "cable" was a FTTC service which now happens to be able to support superfast broadband speeds. Whether that's down to luck or forward planning I don't know.

While we are on the subject of upload speed, there has been nothing stopping Virgin from (and now) offering much greater uploads speeds, better than anything BT do at the moment.

In fact there has been nothing stopping them from offering 100Mbps download for many many many years, so.... don't just look at BT when it comes to lack of broadband progression when all Virgin needed to do was open the taps up and put better CPE on the end

And if they had done that 10yrs ago that might have pushed BT to pull its finger out....

Edited by deleted (Sun 10-Apr-11 19:47:20)

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

While we are on the subject of upload speed, there has been nothing stopping Virgin from (and now) offering much greater uploads speeds, better than anything BT do at the moment.

In fact there has been nothing stopping them from offering 100Mbps download for many many many years, so.... don't just look at BT when it comes to lack of broadband progression when all Virgin needed to do was open the taps up and put better CPE on the end

And if they had done that 10yrs ago that might have pushed BT to pull its finger out....

Upload speeds on domestic broadband connections have never been as much of a selling point as download speeds and this remains so. BT is ahead of the game here, but I'm not convinced the demand is there yet. As you say, though, Virgin could respond reasonably quickly.

BT's "definition" of broadband is an ADSL capable line, that is to say, 135kbps downstream. VM's "definition" is 10Mbps. I can't see how BT is in the same league, or what Virgin Media have "held back on".

Innovation is generally created by private companies who have to attract customers and who have something to lose, not by privatised monopolies who have nothing to lose while the line rental keeps rolling in.

What I'm saying is, Virgin could have started offering these recent speeds many many years ago, if they had BT would have been forced to react to stay in the game. Even now the take up of 50Mb is low.

As for innovation that's a bit of a cheap dig, BT have and still are very innovative. They invented Blown Fibre...... after all.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

What I'm saying is, Virgin could have started offering these recent speeds many many years ago, if they had BT would have been forced to react to stay in the game. Even now the take up of 50Mb is low.

As for innovation that's a bit of a cheap dig, BT have and still are very innovative. They invented Blown Fibre...... after all.

BT could have started moving towards a fibre based last mile a very long time ago.

It was privatised 27 years ago. It is now investing 2.5bn upgrading its last mile network. Divide 2.5bn by 27 and it's not a particularly big sum.

Where we agree, I think, is that the expansion of the VM network and the impending LTE/4G services are the reason for BT's FTTC programme.

Except that for all the reasons already covered in this thread, the former is slow to non-existent, and the latter is still some time away and will not provide very many people with "superfast broadband". At least, not at the same time.

The other and perhaps main reason for BT's sudden decision to actually invest in its last mile network is what I alluded to above - on the front page there's a news item suggesting that the number of fixed landlines is in decline.

Yesl... the traditional phone business is dead so it has to diversify, it has been doing this for many years already but in terms of the UK it does now need to be able to offer greater speeds and bundle services on top of that to make money.

The ISP's and Virgin are seriously looking at a new network although at this stage it is more a feasability study.. Regulation is not working and BT are still hindering rollout. It is not an ideal time to invest though with the current banking crisis. Virgin in particular understand the need to expand their network the big issue is finance and gettting an acceptable ROI They are increasingly coming around to the view that to get an acceptable ROI this network will need to be open. I think they would need reassurance from the regulator that BT would not have access to it for a period of years to allow this network to get established and recover the capital investment.

The other aspects to consider is that fised line voice is in decline and all the growth is in data and TV in particular Virgin is capable of offering HS data lines at a modest cost something BT cannot easilly do.

Virgin can see that the time to market is becoming quite critical aand if the prefered option of using the BT ducting cannot be achieved soon then they will very seriously lok at the plan B ie this new local loop

Edited by deleted (Sun 10-Apr-11 20:39:35)

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

I think they would need reassurance from the regulator that BT would not have access to it for a period of years to allow this network to get established and recover the capital investment.

Yet Virgin want full access to BT's ducts? Come on man lets get real here!

So your saying that Virgin is in talks to plan to open up their existing 50% to everyone else but BT and also work with these "others" to create new plant in the remaining 50% but also block out BT?

All of the while this group of others has access to everything of BT's?

It's at this point Bob is asked to provide hard info to backup his posting and the silence will be deafening....

So come on Bob lets have the links to this fantastic info you have................

I had the feeling when this thread was started that a number of contributors would be far more concerned about a possible threat to BT than discussing how the country's broadband infrastrutcture could be improved.

Perhaps it would be of help in this thread especially for people to state their connections with BT and whether or not they own shares in the business.

--

No connection with BT
Partner started working for Virgin Media supply chain management last year

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

In reply to a post by MHC:

Please can I have half of your garden? I know you have paid for it, but as you are not using it for growing profitable crops, I would like to take it over and use it to cultivate my own crop of cannabis plants.

Yeah man! Lol!

Can you explain your reply?

You seem to want a company to surrender its assets - but cannot see the analogy to surrendering YOUR property because someone else wants to use it in a different way.

Leave the local loop with BT and if other want to install their own then let them with EXACTLY the same conditions and oblkigations. BT should not be forced to allow others to use their network at below cost.

Registering might be a start?

I'm all for improving BB across the UK but by businesses that want to actually build it, not come in a poach off others. Everyone charging more for BB in the first place might get some proper investment going

In reply to a post by MHC:

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

In reply to a post by MHC:

Please can I have half of your garden? I know you have paid for it, but as you are not using it for growing profitable crops, I would like to take it over and use it to cultivate my own crop of cannabis plants.

Yeah man! Lol!

Can you explain your reply?

You seem to want a company to surrender its assets - but cannot see the analogy to surrendering YOUR property because someone else wants to use it in a different way.

Leave the local loop with BT and if other want to install their own then let them with EXACTLY the same conditions and oblkigations. BT should not be forced to allow others to use their network at below cost.

It seems slightly unfair to compare business assets to personal assets. Indeed BT has human investors and employees, but ultimately this is not comparable to turfing someone out of their house or taking their private possessions, as an inanimate PLC versus an individual.

However, I still agree with the fundamental point that any capitalist company will not willingly surrender their prize assets; and presumably if they did so willingly the directors would be in breach of their obligations to shareholders!

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

Registering might be a start?

At the risk of going OT: I used to post on here regularly, but stopped because

1. I came to feel that this forum is generally for xDSL users, perhaps because of its heritage (ThinkADSL) for whom it does a truly excellent job, but xDSL isn't something I have any interest in since it has never been any use (available) to me in the past except once (long lines, poor quality lines, useless speeds - all but one perfectly normal buillt up urban areas, not in the middle of nowhere)

2. Witnessing the farcical and patchy rollout of FTTC in the two towns nearest me persuaded me that BT will continue to be as irrelevant to my broadband needs for the next decade as it has been for the last (I'm about to sign a contract for an office 15 miles away which is the nearest office I can locate with access to part fibre-broadband, hence my interest in this thread - I really shouldn't need to do that in 2011)

3. This I can relate to having run a number of online clubs in the past - the audience is probably towards the younger age range which leads to "disciples" of various ISPs "bitching" and a general level of rudeness on here which you wouldn't get in public nor do you get on other forums.

This thread interested me enough to post. Back on topic:

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

I'm all for improving BB across the UK but by businesses that want to actually build it, not come in a poach off others.

I can see plenty of xDSL ISPs who are happy to sit in the space behind BT's network and who have no interest in doing infrastructure, not that they could afford it, but you also have the "negative predatory competition" aspect discussed previously so when a provider does finally provide a solution to an area previously described as not commercially viable by BT, suddenly, it becomes commercially viable.

I can also see some major ISPs happy to hide behind BT's network so they don't have to offer up much bandwidth per customer.

Overall, however, I agree. Whether "Bob" is right or not in his assertion about those meetings, it would be great if they were taking place, we might get somewhere.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

Everyone charging more for BB in the first place might get some proper investment going

How would we force BT OR to channel additional income; what degree of control can we exert? Or, would you propose additional charges for broadband which go into a pot for a new network to be built, for instance; how do you think we can progress?

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

You wouldn't need to use VM's cable network, just its ducting. Why would you use a inferior DOCSIS network when you could put in your our FTTH

who's going to just rent ducting and put in their own cables tho? no one seems interested in that. Which I am not surprised given how over competitive the retail market is. I think a bigger problem now is fixing the reasons that make investment limited and that is the cheap broadband problem.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

In what respect? BT are already rolling out FTTC/FTTP now, they are putting in more fibre than any other country in the world out of their own pockets.

Why don't Virgin just cover the other 50% of the country, no reliance on BT then.

figures to back this claim up? We have one of the worst FTTx coverage in the developed world. Especially FTTP.

VM's FTTC coverage is signficantly larger than BT's. It also covers more city areas rather than going after farmers and the like.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

While we are on the subject of upload speed, there has been nothing stopping Virgin from (and now) offering much greater uploads speeds, better than anything BT do at the moment.

In fact there has been nothing stopping them from offering 100Mbps download for many many many years, so.... don't just look at BT when it comes to lack of broadband progression when all Virgin needed to do was open the taps up and put better CPE on the end

And if they had done that 10yrs ago that might have pushed BT to pull its finger out....

Do you look into what you typing before you type?

Do you really think all VM had to do was push out new config files and new modem's to end users to upgrade speeds and thats it job done?

Bit of research into docsis tech will also give you the answer on upload speeds.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

While we are on the subject of upload speed, there has been nothing stopping Virgin from (and now) offering much greater uploads speeds, better than anything BT do at the moment.

In fact there has been nothing stopping them from offering 100Mbps download for many many many years, so.... don't just look at BT when it comes to lack of broadband progression when all Virgin needed to do was open the taps up and put better CPE on the end

And if they had done that 10yrs ago that might have pushed BT to pull its finger out....

Upload speeds on domestic broadband connections have never been as much of a selling point as download speeds and this remains so. BT is ahead of the game here, but I'm not convinced the demand is there yet. As you say, though, Virgin could respond reasonably quickly.

BT's "definition" of broadband is an ADSL capable line, that is to say, 135kbps downstream. VM's "definition" is 10Mbps. I can't see how BT is in the same league, or what Virgin Media have "held back on".

Innovation is generally created by private companies who have to attract customers and who have something to lose, not by privatised monopolies who have nothing to lose while the line rental keeps rolling in.

great point.

to magnify it.

someone with a fault on adsl will likely not have it treated as a low speed fault if nfaster than 400kbit/sec.
same on cable will likely have a much higher threshold, VM can be extremely slow at fixing faults but they will at least treat it as a fault. They are also miles apart in terms of local loop faults, VM can send techs out within 72 hours free of charge, no silly threats of £100+ fees if router even looks wrong, openreach had to start threatening customers so they can claim faults are down.

I know exactly what DOCSIS is and the flavours it comes in, I'm saying in they could have done what they have done now a long time ago. The cabling was already in place.

Who would want to use Virgin's own networks especially when its congested in that area (out on the street) in many areas.

Of course ISP's want to put in their own cables why do you think there's such a fuss from Virgin/Talk Talk about BT's duct rental pricing?

In reply to a post by MHC:

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

In reply to a post by MHC:

Please can I have half of your garden? I know you have paid for it, but as you are not using it for growing profitable crops, I would like to take it over and use it to cultivate my own crop of cannabis plants.

Yeah man! Lol!

Can you explain your reply?

You seem to want a company to surrender its assets - but cannot see the analogy to surrendering YOUR property because someone else wants to use it in a different way.

Leave the local loop with BT and if other want to install their own then let them with EXACTLY the same conditions and oblkigations. BT should not be forced to allow others to use their network at below cost.

I don't believe you are stupid, so you have either quoted mistakenly or are just trying to get your fair share of the confrontational attitude that appears to be running through this thread?

Much of the problem with the CAble network lies with the poor decisions made many years ago when the UK was split into a large number of small franchise areas. To compount it no real technical specification was laid down so almost every Cable franchise used a different system . These small franchise never made any money and slowly they merged into larger franchise but where still stuck with the different systems and of cause had different call centres & accounts systems etc. Slowly these issues were tackled but was a slow and expensive business. Eventually in the later days the UK Cable network was pretty much al owned by NTL but it was still loosing money..Eventually the network was sold to Virgin Media who continued the consolidation of the network as well as upgrading to higher speeds. They have now turned the loss into a profit but still have a high level of debt.

Virgin understand that it is critical to the business to expand their network particularly as HS Broadbad will become a key product in a few years. Their preferred option is to use the BT ducting wherever possible because it is not realy sensible now to have two parallel networks but if need be that is a road they will go down.

If you look at the economics of doing that it is pretty expensive when the dominant operator is already in the marketplace. If we say Virgin currently serves 20% of homes where its cable passes thats quite expensive to do.

If though they form a consortium then you have the combined sales & marketing forces of all these companies and their existing customer base to sell to which makes the sums more attractive. What the consortium would be doing would be repackaging reselling the Virgin Media product. This sort of set up means that the Virgin Media Network would be able to get EU & government funding which is almost impossible with the current clossed network

The business case is still being developed to ensure the ROI would be sufficient. They would also like to see if the regulator could prevent preditory behaviour by BT

ie the new consortium identify an area where there is demand but BT do not want to know so they roll out into that area only to find BT suddenly decide they will provided FTTH in that area.

What they want is exclusive access to that area for a period of time to allow them to reccover their investment maybe say 3 years

In terms of pricing what I was getting at was, we are turning a corner now in terms of speeds, a corner Virgin turned a while back but there is no increase in pricing, you can get FTTC products for virtually the same if not exactly the same price as regular ADSL.

That can't be good for investment

The network wasn't sold to Virgin Media and ntl did not own virtually all of it there was the small matter of Telewest.

Virgin's penetration in their passed areas is over 40%.

The major contributor to profitability was debt for equity swaps by ntl and Telewest erasing large proportions of their debt and the interest payments that were crippling them.

Neither VM nor anyone else will ever get exclusive rights to deploy NGA to an area that would be completely illegal.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

In terms of pricing what I was getting at was, we are turning a corner now in terms of speeds, a corner Virgin turned a while back but there is no increase in pricing, you can get FTTC products for virtually the same if not exactly the same price as regular ADSL.

That can't be good for investment

Exactly. As you say, the piggy backers hide behind BT and then virtually give the product away.

I cannot stand BT due to the appalling service I have received from them over the past few years, but you cannot expect them to invest for everybody elses gain.

We in Milton Keynes are stuck in a similar situation. The cable system is analogue and needs upgrading. The impass is who pays for it?

The simplistic over view is that Virgin lease the cable network from BT. They won't upgrade it until BT confirm the lease will be renewed in the future. In the meantime BT are rolling out FTTx services which undermines the ROI for a new cable system.

You can see both sides of the argument perfectly.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

I know exactly what DOCSIS is and the flavours it comes in, I'm saying in they could have done what they have done now a long time ago. The cabling was already in place.

DOCSIS didn't go over a shared ~50Mbit pipe downstream and 27Mbit upstream until 2008. VM had several issues to cope with including fibre not being deep enough into the network and a lack of optical and RF capacity upstream. In the case of my local area and some others they actually have to swap out amplifiers and nodes within cabinets to allow for the 5Mbps upstream on 50Mbps let alone higher.

Upstream bonding which would allow for considerably higher bandwidths has only even more recently been released by Virgin's hardware vendors.

Yep.... such is this cut throat industry.

BT have rightly or wrongly already priced FTTC very very low to compete with existing Virgin and LLU products.

Whether other ISP's rebrand BT's FTTC or put in their own cabling/kit they will struggle to compete in terms of pricing, not because of some elevated duct sharing pricing because of the low prices being charged to the customer by all ISP's

Why have BT priced it so low? Because the rest of the market does and they want to get people on their new product. Its a vicious circle really

It matters not the exact sequance of consolidation that occured. It did consolidate & it has all pretty much ended up with Virgin Media.

What we do no is that the market has really failed in the UK with Broadband. Goverment attempts to get the market to work have failed. We have had almost no expansion of the Virgin network and BT have focussed on rollout to London & the South East. Varoius Government subsidised Broadband programes have been started hey are all very piecemeal and use different technolgies but all have had very limited sucess if any and have made almost no difference to availability

We are not talking about small very rural communties which will alway pose challanges but major towns and cities which BT is not rolling out to.

Whilst superficially BT can give the impression that availability of Broadband is good much of what is available is very much at the bottom end in the 3Mb to 6Mb range.

If BT is not willing to provide in acceptable timescales then the market has failed
The issue i if an incumbent operate with close to a monopoly is already there it makes competion very difficult. A competitor can invest heavilly to provide HS Broadband in an area only for BT to then move in which it can do quite quickly. THis can mean that the competors ROI is shot to pieces and it becomes a loss

If Virgin is in conjunction with a consortium to move into area BT ignores it will need some protection for a few years to enable it to get a return on its investment. This is allowed under EU rules

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

I know exactly what DOCSIS is and the flavours it comes in, I'm saying in they could have done what they have done now a long time ago. The cabling was already in place.

obviously you havent, docsis3 wasnt available a long time ago and thats needed at the very least probably for both 50mbit and 100mbit products and 30mbit would likely have run poorly on docsis1.

higher upload speeds need docsis2 and even for that to be rolled out work was required to improve the SNR in various areas.

of course even without all this taken into account do you think the amount of modems sharing each channel is the same as it was in the days when speeds were 0.5mbit.

Time warp time - circular discussions that resurface every few years are so much fun...

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

Who would want to use Virgin's own networks especially when its congested in that area (out on the street) in many areas.

Of course ISP's want to put in their own cables why do you think there's such a fuss from Virgin/Talk Talk about BT's duct rental pricing?

they making a fuss but I still dont think the cables will go in. At least not in many areas.

I bet Virgin would tho?

I see this as Virgin trying to get others on board in making a fuss so they are not the sole voice.

I see Virgin rolling out quite a bit, Sky doing some, TalkTalk doing very little if any

Who's talking about 3?

1 could do 40 down 10 up from the start?

Virgin understand the need to expand their coverage, They are fast reaching saturation point with their existing network and cannot get much more revenue growth from it.

By setting up a consortium they get ecoomies of scale together with a big existing customer base that they could migrate as well as opportunities to upsell

The negatives being the costs and of spliting the margin between Virgin & the ISP's and the potential for preditory behaviour from BT.

what really killing 3rd parties roilling out is BT's behaviour as well.

When someone starts a project in an area with no BT FTTC, BT suddenly find the area viable and then this puts of those companies.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

Who's talking about 3?

1 could do 40 down 10 up from the start?

what on a 4.5mbit upstream channel? hardly. even on qam16 the upstream channel is still only 9mbit.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

I bet Virgin would tho?

I see this as Virgin trying to get others on board in making a fuss so they are not the sole voice.

I see Virgin rolling out quite a bit, Sky doing some, TalkTalk doing very little if any

sky is the only one with the financial capability out of the 3. But there is not enough for them to gain from it as they use broadband to stop TV churn.

Any such deal I expect would be VM donating existing network with sky stumping up cash for work.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 11-Apr-11 10:57:18)

Which is why I would suggest that if the consortium roll out to an area BT shows no interest in they should get a period of excusivity to prevent just such BT action. To cable an are needs a great deal of capital investment. If BT as the incumbent UK operate then decide to move in as soon as they face competition with they existing customer base it tends to kill the business case.

If the consortium could have a period of exclusivity of two to three years to cover the investment cost then it becomes viable. Clearly there would need to be some regulation of pricing etc. All to often with community based Broadband BT move in which tend to kill off any chance of success

Personally I dont favour these small Broadband setups they are nver going to be really viable being to small and local to have ecomoies of scale and marketing of them tends to be poor and pricing high.

funny that BT may claim an area has low takeup etc. yet they do have enough customers to protect when the competition move in

Bob,

These areas of no interest. do we know that these areas are actually viable in terms of ROI? What I'm saying is, is it really ducting that is holding up rolling out into these areas or is it just the fact that there is a small wide spread user base which is why no-one has gone their before?

In these no-go areas is there an LLU presence?

What concerns me, and a growing number of others, is that we will still be having the same discussions in another few years.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

Yep.... such is this cut throat industry.

BT have rightly or wrongly already priced FTTC very very low to compete with existing Virgin and LLU products.

Whether other ISP's rebrand BT's FTTC or put in their own cabling/kit they will struggle to compete in terms of pricing, not because of some elevated duct sharing pricing because of the low prices being charged to the customer by all ISP's

Why have BT priced it so low? Because the rest of the market does and they want to get people on their new product. Its a vicious circle really

Have BT decided to roll out FTTC because they're a modern telecommunications company embarrassed by their obsolete telephone network?

Well, no. That's not how BT works, is it. Sounds like a criticism of BT. But if you were them, you'd do the same.

Imagine: you want some market share back from VM customers who deserted years ago. So for that reason, and the economic viability reasons, you're going to go after VM cabled areas. Not exclusively, it has to be said.

But what you're asking is for someone to ditch VM telephone and broadband, but keep the TV service and pay more for it since you no longer have a bundle.

Then you want the customer to pay anything up to £150 for someone to spend perhaps three minutes in the exchange reactivating the knackered old phone line.

On top of that you then want to charge ever increasing amounts for the rental of that line, with call charges so high you might as well use a mobile.

Then, the customer can have the Infinity service installed (or other supplier) for some more money with no speed promises whatsoever, but which will definitely not compete with VM's 50meg or 100meg product. It will probably compete with the 20meg product for most people.

So to get the customer to do all of that there has to be an incentive, and it's price. That's all that's left to play on.

BT needs money to roll this out. But here's where the past catches up with them, since they're, what, 15 years behind Virgin Media, having milked the old phone network as a cash cow for years. Again not a direct criticism of BT. That's what a monopoly does. We (or rather the Government of the day) set up a structure which actively stifles innovation.

And so here we are now.

Infinity strikes me as a strike at LLU, which overnight is basically obsolete except for a few handfuls of people with short good quality lines where LLU can compete for downstream speeds. Of course BT's FTTC is Wholesale only at the moment. It would be, wouldn't it.

Gets the line rental back with BT too. The ads are hilarious - believe the most recent one is:

Infinity
Super-fast fibre optic broadband
Only from BT

It's true if that's one sentence. Playing the regulator again I see.

It is not necessarily super-fast, and super-fast fibre optic broadband is pretty old hat to cable customers.

BT is doing what BT does. "We" created this structure, not BT.

So, how else then, apart from taking OR away from BT or building the whole lot over again, do we progress?

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

The cable network was built for TV services, something which BT's network couldn't offer and thanks to the lack of investment over the years, cannot compete with

And VM can't compete with Sky when it comes to TV. If TV is the problem then Sky is the big killer. It's only VoD that causes Sky problems. As it turns out not that many people seem to want VoD anyway (unless you count things like iPlayer). But proper VoD would in any case make VM's network creak due to the shared cable.

The problem really...is that no-one needs what is being talked about and for sure damn few want to pay for it. There are a lot of people on sub 5Mb/s ADSL connections but really only those on less than 2MB/s have real problems. Until/unless there's real world demand (ie;not just content stealing fretard geeks in bedrooms) the situation will continue as it is doing.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

Who would want to use Virgin's own networks especially when its congested in that area (out on the street) in many areas.

One example. Parents cable is congested. They live about 3km from the exchange, so ADSL available at circa 256kbps. So nobody has ADSL. Look at a speed map and it all looks pretty respectable - lots of red VM dots with fair speeds.

They get (or were getting) 7Mbps out of the 10Mbps they "should get". I spoke to VM. They gave me a date for upgrades, as it's a known issue they are dealing with.

Meanwhile, ADSL is still available at 256kbps.

I don't place that much store in the upgrades actually being done by the date (witness the cable forum on here with something similar in Leicester, was it) but the difference in approach is startling.

However, how do we know that the FTTC cabinets aren't going to become the same type of congestion points in the next couple of years - it's only an "up to" service after all.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Infinity strikes me as a strike at LLU, which overnight is basically obsolete except for a few handfuls of people with short good quality lines where LLU can compete for downstream speeds. Of course BT's FTTC is Wholesale only at the moment. It would be, wouldn't it.

Not sure what you mean by the above?

Infinity is a strike at LLU for sure and Virgin I guess (in terms of price and coverage (eventually))

Not sure what you mean about a few handfuls with short good quality lines though?

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

What concerns me, and a growing number of others, is that we will still be having the same discussions in another few years.

That used to worry me as well but to be honest I'm not bothered any longer. I think the current situation is progressing at an 'adequate' rate. No-one has ever managed to persuade me that we need FTTP. Oh sure it'd be nice to have but I don't see that it's essential or worth bankrupting the country or our biggest telecoms companies over.

What we need is infill work to remove the slow- and no- spots. Improvement in backhaul and interconnect provision so that people get full speed all the time. I'm not suggesting actual 1:1 contention but it ought to be possible to get something that feels like it to the end user.

Someone with a line length of less than 1km might be able to get an ADSL2+ service which performs at about 20Mbps which compares reasonably well with Infinity/FTTC.

But how many people have line lengths of < 1km?

Some will stay on LLU because as Andrue alludes to, the connection gets used mostly between the hours of say 1pm and 3am when the user is awake, more or less exclusively for P2P downloading at home and an unthrottled FTTC service which does that is expensive by comparison.

These are the sort of customers VM actively attracts and which do their best to congest the local nodes.

In reply to a post by dustofnations:

However, I still agree with the fundamental point that any capitalist company will not willingly surrender their prize assets; and presumably if they did so willingly the directors would be in breach of their obligations to shareholders!

And if they were forced to by court action then every other private company operating in the country would leave. On the plus side we'd then have such a broken and useless economy that no-one would care about lousy internet access

Edited by Andrue (Mon 11-Apr-11 15:19:14)

And where are these countries with 50Meg available to more than 50% of the population?
Whether its 50meg from docsis 3 or fttp does it matter to the person using the link? Generally no.

BTW with the new independent local loop firm, how are all these local loops linked up? Are people talking of new local loop, and a new IP backbone too?

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

What concerns me, and a growing number of others, is that we will still be having the same discussions in another few years.

That used to worry me as well but to be honest I'm not bothered any longer. I think the current situation is progressing at an 'adequate' rate. No-one has ever managed to persuade me that we need FTTP. Oh sure it'd be nice to have but I don't see that it's essential or worth bankrupting the country or our biggest telecoms companies over.

What we need is infill work to remove the slow- and no- spots. Improvement in backhaul and interconnect provision so that people get full speed all the time. I'm not suggesting actual 1:1 contention but it ought to be possible to get something that feels like it to the end user.

That "infill work" would presumably be:

FTTP, or
FTTC (with some new cabinets needed perhaps - need to be close to compete with VM or they will be a waste of time and money), or
Another new exchange in parents town nearer to where they are, or
BET-style repeaters along the old phone lines

From a long term perspective, only the first option really makes sense, agreed, not that we "need" it now. But the structure we have does not encourage anyone to play for the long term.

FTTC is different architecture, if congestion exists on the last mile its a case of adding more backhaul. But I expect the phrase "up to" to exist in the future as there's always a possibility of a bottleneck somewhere within the network

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

And where are these countries with 50Meg available to more than 50% of the population?

The 50Mbps and 100Mbps services strike me as being available more to draw attention to the superior network capabilities than because they thought hordes of people would either need or want it. But it leaves them well-placed for the medium term.

That was achieved by needing to attract customers, and having something to lose.

The latter has only just started to apply to BT with 4G/LTE in the offing and people starting to stream TV and finding that their 1Mbps ADSL link won't cut it.

But it's no use building infrastructure on a "need now" basis. By then, it's too late.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

BTW with the new independent local loop firm, how are all these local loops linked up? Are people talking of new local loop, and a new IP backbone too?

Probably, yes. The duplication is a monumental waste of money, but I'd welcome any suggestions as to how we get past the seemingly intractable issues that we have.

Does FTTP long term make sense?

In ages past villages have been abandoned when a local business collapsed, the rising cost of travel to work has the capacity to create an upheaval over time, of people moving closer to where they work, meaning that expensive work to put fibre in the ground may not be a good idea.

At some £6k per property or so for fttp in not-spot areas the need for faster than say BET technology has to be pretty compeling if you take a 30 year view even. The TV argument is mute, as in most rural areas satellite is a reasonable option for TV signals.

Also with fibre in the long term the network kit has little in the way of long term lifespan, so replacing this every 10 years or so is not cheap. The fibre will last longer unless broken, but what about the stuff sending the light down the fibre, and converting it to something useful.

Got ya know yes... those are the customers that are hard to turn to FTTC, for now anyway.

Higher upload speeds now and Higher download speeds in the future may tempt them.

LLU ADSL2+ can't go any further its peaked

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Does FTTP long term make sense?

In ages past villages have been abandoned when a local business collapsed, the rising cost of travel to work has the capacity to create an upheaval over time, of people moving closer to where they work, meaning that expensive work to put fibre in the ground may not be a good idea.

At some £6k per property or so for fttp in not-spot areas the need for faster than say BET technology has to be pretty compeling if you take a 30 year view even. The TV argument is mute, as in most rural areas satellite is a reasonable option for TV signals.

Also with fibre in the long term the network kit has little in the way of long term lifespan, so replacing this every 10 years or so is not cheap. The fibre will last longer unless broken, but what about the stuff sending the light down the fibre, and converting it to something useful.

I live in a rural area. I accept that I'm likely to get fairly dire broadband here. We have a line length of 3680m which is capable of a 1750kbps profile (poor quality line). Better than our neighbour's which manages 1Mbps. But that has little to do with it being rural and it's way better than we could get in Welwyn Garden City.

The rural thing is a bit of a red herring. Most of the so called "final third", by population, will live in built up areas over 3km from the exchange. Yes BT, there really are towns with people living that far from your exchanges. Plenty of them.

For rurals, however, I agree. FTTP for really small villages doesn't make sense from any commercial perspective unless the villagers are happy to chip in to the cost through setup fees or higher subscriptions.

FTTC might work in a very small, highly clustered village, but our village isn't clustered. It *is* a real logistical problem.

Having begun a local campaign, I'm amazed at the initial response here which is that there *is* a fair amount of demand. Even the telephone service doesn't work well round here, apparently - dropped calls, failed connects, crackles when it rains, etc. and people *will* support a private solution. When it comes to people putting their money where their mouth is - a key point made by several posters - well, we'll have to see on that.

With ever increasing petrol costs and the potential for peak oil at some point in our lifetimes, yes, the village could become an empty shell in the end. Very small remote areas are a special case.

However the part of Welwyn Garden City I lived in still can't get any broadband service today (I won't use VM's definition of 10Mbps, let's use 4Mbps. Even 2Mbps. Still can't get it). The market has failed, mostly because there isn't, actually, a market.

It might well be reasonable that people living in tiny hamlets 20 miles from the nearest town can't get broadband. They probably don't have easy access to a supermarket for the same reason. I am not arguing that we should have, or even seek, access for 100% of the population.

It cannot be reasonable, in 2011, that hundreds, maybe a thousand or more people in Welwyn Garden City or any similarly sized town with only one exchange can't get a broadband service.

What I can conclude from this thread is that we've been daft to leave it to the private sector where no market exists. This does not bode well for the future of some towns, let alone villages.

The same seemingly intractable problems continue. That bit of Welwyn Garden City might get a FTTC service, and if the cabinets are near enough they might even jump to "superfast broadband" in one go. But that's just one town. There is still no comprehensive plan for any action at all nor any compulsion to supply what is becoming a basic utility to a built up area.

Should we be able to compel a private company to invest in specific areas? No, not really.

Should we have solved this problem a long time ago? I think so.

3.6km cable should be around 42 to 50dB attenuation, and if closer to 60dB, then you have more cable than people have told you.

If the attenuation is bad due to joints, generally it will vary a lot when wet/very dry. Attenuation should normally be pretty static.

I would accept your comments about poor lines, if there was not so many people with wiring issues that are holding their speeds back and an hour or two can squeeze more out of lines.

How many homes in Welwyn Garden City cannot get broadband at all?
broadband map does not show any big issue, unless the one not spot in Essendon counts.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

3.6km cable should be around 42 to 50dB attenuation, and if closer to 60dB, then you have more cable than people have told you.

If the attenuation is bad due to joints, generally it will vary a lot when wet/very dry. Attenuation should normally be pretty static.

2.5km from exchange, can follow the route. 3680m is from BT's database. I'm surprised it's that long actually. It doesn't go "round the houses". We can get 3G @ 3Mbps, so we got rid of the landline 3 years ago.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

I would accept your comments about poor lines, if there was not so many people with wiring issues that are holding their speeds back and an hour or two can squeeze more out of lines.

That old chestnut again. I'm sure it's true in some cases, but just open up a broadband map of pretty well anywhere and 2Mbps to 6Mbps is the norm in town, with some truly shocking figures towards the outskirts.

We have no "internal wiring". The service wouldn't even activate in Welwyn Garden City, so it wasn't that. Same in Blackpool...

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

How many homes in Welwyn Garden City cannot get broadband at all?
broadband map does not show any big issue, unless the one not spot in Essendon counts.

For one example, put in AL7 2QF.

Marvel at the broadband speeds available at just over 3km from the exchange. Pan left a bit and you can see where the cable network ends (called the "Panshanger" area) and the xDSL broadband wilderness begins.

At least most of Welwyn Garden City is cabled, were it not for that, I suspect the voices coming from there would be a bit louder. But that doesn't help the people who literally have no broadband solution available.

So where are the people who cannot get the service?

No one has bothered to register their anger at not being able to get a service at that postcode, or in any of the fields to the east before you reach the next exchange.

Two locations and no DSL signal at all, or did the providers not even try and activate it?

LLU backhaul will allow TalkTalk et al to offer a better FTTC experience than other providers

A MSAN providers voice, xDSL and fibre connectivity options, only those LLU providers who did not use a modern MSAN are in trouble.

Sure, I'm saying ADSL2+ though, it has no-where to go LLU providers can't stick with 2+ forever

The main reason for lack of interest in VOD is that current Broadband speeds do not really support it properly. Yes it can be done but the result is not good

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Does FTTP long term make sense?

In ages past villages have been abandoned when a local business collapsed, the rising cost of travel to work has the capacity to create an upheaval over time, of people moving closer to where they work, meaning that expensive work to put fibre in the ground may not be a good idea.

At some £6k per property or so for fttp in not-spot areas the need for faster than say BET technology has to be pretty compeling if you take a 30 year view even. The TV argument is mute, as in most rural areas satellite is a reasonable option for TV signals.

Also with fibre in the long term the network kit has little in the way of long term lifespan, so replacing this every 10 years or so is not cheap. The fibre will last longer unless broken, but what about the stuff sending the light down the fibre, and converting it to something useful.

I live in a rural area. I accept that I'm likely to get fairly dire broadband here. We have a line length of 3680m which is capable of a 1750kbps profile (poor quality line). Better than our neighbour's which manages 1Mbps. But that has little to do with it being rural and it's way better than we could get in Welwyn Garden City.

The rural thing is a bit of a red herring. Most of the so called "final third", by population, will live in built up areas over 3km from the exchange. Yes BT, there really are towns with people living that far from your exchanges. Plenty of them.

For rurals, however, I agree. FTTP for really small villages doesn't make sense from any commercial perspective unless the villagers are happy to chip in to the cost through setup fees or higher subscriptions.

FTTC might work in a very small, highly clustered village, but our village isn't clustered. It *is* a real logistical problem.

Having begun a local campaign, I'm amazed at the initial response here which is that there *is* a fair amount of demand. Even the telephone service doesn't work well round here, apparently - dropped calls, failed connects, crackles when it rains, etc. and people *will* support a private solution. When it comes to people putting their money where their mouth is - a key point made by several posters - well, we'll have to see on that.

With ever increasing petrol costs and the potential for peak oil at some point in our lifetimes, yes, the village could become an empty shell in the end. Very small remote areas are a special case.

However the part of Welwyn Garden City I lived in still can't get any broadband service today (I won't use VM's definition of 10Mbps, let's use 4Mbps. Even 2Mbps. Still can't get it). The market has failed, mostly because there isn't, actually, a market.

It might well be reasonable that people living in tiny hamlets 20 miles from the nearest town can't get broadband. They probably don't have easy access to a supermarket for the same reason. I am not arguing that we should have, or even seek, access for 100% of the population.

It cannot be reasonable, in 2011, that hundreds, maybe a thousand or more people in Welwyn Garden City or any similarly sized town with only one exchange can't get a broadband service.

What I can conclude from this thread is that we've been daft to leave it to the private sector where no market exists. This does not bode well for the future of some towns, let alone villages.

The same seemingly intractable problems continue. That bit of Welwyn Garden City might get a FTTC service, and if the cabinets are near enough they might even jump to "superfast broadband" in one go. But that's just one town. There is still no comprehensive plan for any action at all nor any compulsion to supply what is becoming a basic utility to a built up area.

Should we be able to compel a private company to invest in specific areas? No, not really.

Should we have solved this problem a long time ago? I think so.

BT like to give the impression that its isrural areeas which paint the picture of a small hamlet with half a dozen houses miles from anywhere

The reality is that many large towns and cities are not full enabled and at best can get about 3Mb ADSL on a good day. AS you say places around Welwyn and many other similar non rural locations are abandoned by BT

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

So where are the people who cannot get the service?

No one has bothered to register their anger at not being able to get a service at that postcode, or in any of the fields to the east before you reach the next exchange.

Two locations and no DSL signal at all, or did the providers not even try and activate it?

Without gettiing stuck on a discussion about WGC and Blackpool - those were examples - yes, at WGC two different providers tried to activate it, and on both occasions the result was "Sorry, you can't have a broadband service".

Some of the houses can just about hang onto a half to one meg connection there it seems.

There is nothing to the east of it until you get to Hertford.

I'd venture that nobody there needs 100Mbps downstream. However, something would be nice. Perhaps an extreme example, perhaps not that untypical with such long and/or bad lines. It's all hit and miss. Most of Milton Keynes appears to be another example.

ADSL was only ever supposed to be a stopgap, not any long term broadband solution. While it is perhaps impressive that a phone line can do 20meg if it's very, very short and sufficient gauge, the average is only, what, 6 meg, we surely should have progressed beyond this years ago, not be discussing it now.

The discussion, to me, is not "Do we need to move beyond ADSL" but "why, for heavens sake, is it sill the only option available to half the country in this decade" and this thread supplies all the reasons why. What it doesn't supply is a solution and beyond the state building it all over again with fibre, I can't see that there is one.

BT goes in for what I would call trailing edge Broadband. The rest of the world is leaving us behind

I dont really blame BT. With no competition why bother with anything other then the cheapest fix and at lowest cost. The customers cannot go anywhere else as there is no competition so they still keep their market share regardlees of whether the service is adequate or not

Edited by deleted (Mon 11-Apr-11 18:59:08)

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

BT goes in for what I would call trailing edge Broadband.

Probably not unrelated to the Great British Public being only prepared to accept trailing edge pricing.

Telecomms is no different to anything else- you get what you pay for.

Yup

Plus you'll find most other countries get additional funding

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

The main reason for lack of interest in VOD is that current Broadband speeds do not really support it properly. Yes it can be done but the result is not good

I think that's only part of the reason. You don't actually need a very fast connection for TV. The UK average of 5Mb/s is more than the peak rate used on Freeview:

http://dtt.me.uk/

Note the average:13Mb/s for four channels. That's an average of just over 3Mb/s. Perfectly fine for SD TV as long as the ISP has the capacity.

A lot of people just prefer to watch stuff live. Either that or they just tune into a favourite channel and watch whatever comes on. You can see it with PVRs - most of them are used like VCRs - occasional use if the owners are busy doing something else. From the discussions I've seen most people just don't like the freedom and choice that comes from time shifting everything. There was also an article on TheRegister a couple of months back about a survey that suggested the same thing.

Now personally I time shift everything and I love it. I wish there was a real VoD service - not just catch-up like iPlayer but a proper service where anything and everything is available forever 24/7. It does seem though that I'm in a minority there. It really doesn't bode well for VoD. Not enough interest and even those who are interested wouldn't pay for it.

Edited by Andrue (Mon 11-Apr-11 19:30:14)

Just as this thread started to get repetitive, Beekie saves the day!

Not enough interest and even those who are interested wouldn't pay for it.

I, like you, am interested and prepared to pay for it. But I have been paying BT 26 odd quid for 18 months and got a completely useless service of just over 1 meg.

Yes a lot of people pay less, but BT can't deliver to those who are prepared to pay. More competition can only reduce their share. It seems to me it is more of a case of won't, not can't.

Woe is me, my £10 a month is not buying me cutting edge broadband - what a surprise.
Harsh words, but perhaps a grain of truth.

So we have Welwyn Garden City and Milton Keynes as two terrible broadband not-spots, strange when parts of MK are getting FTTP so someone is doing something about it, WGC has VM cable in place, and WiMAX was/is coming to parts of MK at one time.

ADSL when it started at 0.5 and 2Meg in the UK, back in 2000 was limited to 42dB attenuation lines at just 400 exchanges at launch time. Fully rate adaptive was not for some years, and the record line length is some 10km for ADSL working over it.

Where have other countries rolling out FTTC/Docsis/FTTP networks started roll-outs - densely populated areas.

TalkTalk is moving on it seems, fibre boost, am sure others will follow once take-up of FTTC means they see customers choosing the faster services.

When LLU can do the average speeds for just a tenner month though, who is going to almost double the cost of their broadband, to save a few minutes on downloads.

Only people I can see doing this are:

1. Geeks
2. Homes with multiple people using broadband
3. Those using video rental services e.g. PS3/Xbox - 8GB movies take a while at 5Mbps
4. People working from home, but don't want to buy a decent business service.

On number 4, fuel costs are getting to the point, that metro ethernet might be cheaper than commuting for some people, and give the ultra high speeds and reliability needed.

1. Geeks - will many of these live alone, constituting single occupancy?

2. Multiple users in the same home - multiple occupancy?

3. People downloading video, PS3 etc - see 1 & 2 above?

4. People working from home who won't pay for a decent connection - small businesses couldn't supply you small business prices if they were to pay for leased lines.

I wouldn't call that "only". Pensioners aside, that covers just about every domestic consumer in the UK!

The difficulty is that faster speeds will drive faster applications. But until those applications become widely adopted by the end user, where is the need for the greater speeds? Somebody has to take the bull by the horns eventually.

I wouldn't expect BT to roll out to every hamlet in the country. But if I wanted to open a health club in every small town in the UK, would it be the taxpayers job to put half the money in, on account of everyone generally needing to do more exercise?

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

Pensioners aside

Pensioners like FTTC because if they're stuck at copper speeds they can't be sure they'll have time to finish the download

Lol! They've made the top 5 then!

Complete rubbish. I guess you work for BT or sub contract for them. Most people pay far more then £10 for a poor service the average is over £20 a month

Plenty of people will pay a reasonable amount for fast Broadband the problem is not that they will not pay but that it is not available.

BT have never been able to sell or market their services.

People will happilly spend a small fortune on mobile phones and on apps & Broadband for mobiles because these people no how to market & sell & upsell.

The claim that people will not pay more then £10 a month is plainly daft and demonstratably so. Price would not be an issue for most people unless it went over £40. The vast majority would be prepared to pay between £25 & £40 a month. Sure if people can get Brodband at £10 a month they will but most pay far more. There are not even many ISP's offering anything uusable at £10 a month

The average paid per month for Broadband is over £20 which shows how daft the £10 claim is

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

Just as this thread started to get repetitive, Beekie saves the day!

Lol - it's nice to see someone happy with their lot in life, ain't it?

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

Just as this thread started to get repetitive, Beekie saves the day!

Lol - it's nice to see someone happy with their lot in life, ain't it?

Ain't it just? I never wanted a career in the first place - I was a lot happier with the Crayons!!

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

BT goes in for what I would call trailing edge Broadband.

Probably not unrelated to the Great British Public being only prepared to accept trailing edge pricing.

Telecomms is no different to anything else- you get what you pay for.

Quite.

http://www22.verizon.com/Residential/FiOSInternet/Ov...
http://www.optimum.com/online/pricing.jsp

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

The claim that people will not pay more then £10 a month is plainly daft and demonstratably so.

Go on, then, demonstrate it

Personally I don't think a specific figure can be proved either way but what is obvious is that price is the most common factor in most discussions when people are choosing ISP. Performance is often mentioned but usually it's just a generic moan about ISPs. It's uncommon to see anyone except experienced and knowledgeable users linking the two.

Pretty much all the best performing ISPs are the expensive ones and most of them have a small market share. Be/O2 can give people on their exchanges (75% of the population I think) what acts like an uncontended connection. 85% of sync speed 24/7. They can do that for less than £20pcm. Yet Be/O2 are a minority ISP.

Personally I'd say most people won't go above £20pcm and a lot think that £10pcm is too much. Very few home users would be prepared to go above £20pcm.

Edited by Andrue (Mon 11-Apr-11 22:03:46)

BT have never been able to sell or market their services.

People will happilly spend a small fortune on mobile phones and on apps & Broadband for mobiles because these people no how to market & sell & upsell.

On the contrary, I think they did the marketing bit perfectly. It's the delivery where they fell down.

Most of the people who pay more are people like me who fell for the marketing and got stuck on useless connections. In 7 days time I'm moving onwards and upwards to FTTC with Aquiss. That's right, paying more again but knowing this time that the connection will justify the cost for my requirements. Not to mention their attitude toward customers that would probably make Ghandi a happy man.

The challenge will be persuading those who don't need high speeds at the moment, that they will soon and stopping them from reverting back to a cheaper connection that probably won't perform any worse anyway.

And in this economic climate that is no mean feat.

Edited by mrnelster (Mon 11-Apr-11 22:29:47)

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

BT goes in for what I would call trailing edge Broadband.

Probably not unrelated to the Great British Public being only prepared to accept trailing edge pricing.

Telecomms is no different to anything else- you get what you pay for.

Slightly different for many users. They have to pay for what they can get. It's not as if they can import it, or change their supplier in many cases (market 1).

True enough, but I was thinking more from the "national" point of view rather than the individual user (who does have some choice even on a Market 1, but it's largely in the area of congestion, customer service etc).

But if the Great British Public wants decent broadband then the Great British Public is going to have to pay for it, one way or another.

I'm prepared to pay £3 for every Meg of throughput if everyone else is.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Woe is me, my £10 a month is not buying me cutting edge broadband - what a surprise.
Harsh words, but perhaps a grain of truth.

Not harsh words at all. We completely agree. However it's not £10 a month; take here for instance. Zen Internet = setup fee £133, monthly about £30 for 10GB/mo. Yes, I am lumping the line rental, setup and the broadband together. I have no desire for a telephone service. Ironically, with a 1750kbps profile, there's little point paying for a quality ISP which is a factor worth considering.

Where is my option to pay, say, £150 a month? Well, there isn't one, since there is only one infrastructure provider. Ah, but this is a rural area, you might thnk, so that's fair enough. Except the identical situation is true in parts of WGC which is what makes me raise it as just one example.

I seem to rcecall a thread about a couple being quoted £16k to install a line because they foolishly put a business in the middle of nowhere without checking the basics. Now, surely, in our, cough, competitive market place, they can reject that quote and shop around, can't they? Well, no.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

So we have Welwyn Garden City and Milton Keynes as two terrible broadband not-spots, strange when parts of MK are getting FTTP so someone is doing something about it, WGC has VM cable in place, and WiMAX was/is coming to parts of MK at one time.

That FTTP trial seems to have been gong on since before I was born. The commercial issues in Milton Keynes are like a little microcosm of the wider UK. BT don't need to hurry, since people have no alternative, and they have nothing to lose. In fact, given that FTTC makes little more money than ADSL, BT would be mad to rush. it's not in their interests to do so. Repeat for the whole of the UK. The only dynamic that's changing is that people are dumping landlines and 4G/LTE is on the way.

I've often thought that there's a fair amount of denial about true ADSL speeds. I'd believed it was BT's contention that something like 93% of lines can do 2meg. Leaving aside how pathetic 2meg is, I cannot imagine that figure is anywhere near accurate. I'll bet our line wasn't included in the list of "can't get 2 meg" since it's 3.6km long.

You have "lab figures" for attenuation at various line lengths, but that presumes a specific gauge of copper. Then you have the BT network.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

ADSL when it started at 0.5 and 2Meg in the UK, back in 2000 was limited to 42dB attenuation lines at just 400 exchanges at launch time. Fully rate adaptive was not for some years, and the record line length is some 10km for ADSL working over it.

ADSL availability isn't the issue. Broadband availability is the issue.

Is it fair to chastise BT for that? No, not really. BT is doing what any monopoly would do. I no more expect to be able to get a broadband service from British Gas, EDF Energy or Arriva buses than I do from BT. If BT wants to remain stuck in "telephone company" land, that's fine. But the current setup is doing nobody any good except some shareholders.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

The claim that people will not pay more then £10 a month is plainly daft and demonstratably so.

Go on, then, demonstrate it

Personally I don't think a specific figure can be proved either way but what is obvious is that price is the most common factor in most discussions when people are choosing ISP. Performance is often mentioned but usually it's just a generic moan about ISPs. It's uncommon to see anyone except experienced and knowledgeable users linking the two.

Pretty much all the best performing ISPs are the expensive ones and most of them have a small market share. Be/O2 can give people on their exchanges (75% of the population I think) what acts like an uncontended connection. 85% of sync speed 24/7. They can do that for less than £20pcm. Yet Be/O2 are a minority ISP.

Personally I'd say most people won't go above £20pcm and a lot think that £10pcm is too much. Very few home users would be prepared to go above £20pcm.

I think that's probably true. Unfortunately, business users who *would* pay more get left with no options. We cannot seriously accept that it's reasonable for a startup or SME to have to pay thousands of pounds for installation and hundreds of pounds a month for broadband (leased line).

This article does suggest that people might pay more, but then, it's a survey on a broadband website which is not necessarily representative of the wider public you're describing in your post.

I think there's a difference between people being willing to pay a tiny additional tax to fund a pot than simply see increased line rental vanish into the ether, like the road tax funds which are not ringfenced.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2011/04/11/uk-inter...

I do think that the public's lack of knowledge comes into this, and indeed this is what advertising plays on. You and I know that "up to 24Mbps" is going to probably mean somewhere between 1.5Mbps and maybe 7Mbps. Practically nobody will get above 21Mbps.

I suspect the public think that ADSL2+ "Up to 24Mbps" means they'll get something up to 24Mbps depending on some unknown factor like contention, but that service is faster than VM's "Up to 20Mbps" whereas the latter will almost always outperform the former from a max speed perspective.

It's all in the marketing, designed to obfuscate and to keep people uneducated.

I think you are overplaying local wiring issues.

eg. if I look at the tbb map feature which shows coloured dots based on speedtests and estimated speeds. My entire area is mainly red dots with the odd yellow or green dot, which is more likely?
(a) 99% of people have bad wiring and the 1% green setup properly.
(b) the area simply is a victim of a long poor local loop and the odd green dot somehow have better routed lines.

There is also certianly many city/town areas that have long/poor lines. I agree with the previous poster the rural thing has been overhyped somewhat, they do have poor lines but so do city areas.

not sure where this thoery comes from there is a lack of interest, iplayer and 4od have certianly had interest and they are both VOD platforms. People have also welcomed sky's new on demand service even to the point people have joined skybb just to use it. Yes its not 10s of millions of people but its taking off. It wil of course accelerate should infrastructure improve as currently its hard to supply a decent VOD service with the current state of broadband affairs.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Woe is me, my £10 a month is not buying me cutting edge broadband - what a surprise.
Harsh words, but perhaps a grain of truth.

So we have Welwyn Garden City and Milton Keynes as two terrible broadband not-spots, strange when parts of MK are getting FTTP so someone is doing something about it, WGC has VM cable in place, and WiMAX was/is coming to parts of MK at one time.

ADSL when it started at 0.5 and 2Meg in the UK, back in 2000 was limited to 42dB attenuation lines at just 400 exchanges at launch time. Fully rate adaptive was not for some years, and the record line length is some 10km for ADSL working over it.

Where have other countries rolling out FTTC/Docsis/FTTP networks started roll-outs - densely populated areas.

blame ofcom for that and even sites like this at various points of time pushing for lower prices. consumers will naturally go for cheaper deals, but make no mistake, if the cheap deals ceased to exist tommorow they would 'not' cancel, they would moan and groan but they would pay the bigger price, proven with gas/electric/petrol/sky amongst other things. No one is pointing a gun to BT infinity saying you must charge adsl prices for your fttc service even tho your competitors charge significantly more, no one is telling plusnet to sell non LLU adsl for under £10 a month, these are decisions they make themselves.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

TalkTalk is moving on it seems, fibre boost, am sure others will follow once take-up of FTTC means they see customers choosing the faster services.

When LLU can do the average speeds for just a tenner month though, who is going to almost double the cost of their broadband, to save a few minutes on downloads.

Only people I can see doing this are:

1. Geeks
2. Homes with multiple people using broadband
3. Those using video rental services e.g. PS3/Xbox - 8GB movies take a while at 5Mbps
4. People working from home, but don't want to buy a decent business service.

On number 4, fuel costs are getting to the point, that metro ethernet might be cheaper than commuting for some people, and give the ultra high speeds and reliability needed.

The problem is so easily fixed tho.

stop selling high speed broadband for low prices. Whats so hard about it?

sell a 0.5mbit service for £10 (not less), 8mbit should be no less than £20-25 and double digit speeds keep above the £30 mark. Isp's need to stop been scared of churn, if someone threatens to leave let them, remove retentions departments.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 12-Apr-11 03:16:30)

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Complete rubbish. I guess you work for BT or sub contract for them. Most people pay far more then £10 for a poor service the average is over £20 a month

Plenty of people will pay a reasonable amount for fast Broadband the problem is not that they will not pay but that it is not available.

BT have never been able to sell or market their services.

People will happilly spend a small fortune on mobile phones and on apps & Broadband for mobiles because these people no how to market & sell & upsell.

very true points actually, I even commented myself that BT have 'undersold' infinity.

As I said before also, people spend lots on sky tv, lots on mobiles, lots on booze etc. The money is there but the market is broken by an obsession to get high takeup.

How mrsaffron can argue people refuse to pay when its not proven, BT have simply not offered such a service, eg. I could pay aaisp £35 a month for a dodgy 5mbit adsl service, or I could pay plusnet £10 a month for a dodgy 5mbit adsl service, however I cant pay say £50 a month for a good adsl service because the option simply isnt there.

Consumers take whats been offered, simply stop offering it.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

TalkTalk is moving on it seems, fibre boost, am sure others will follow once take-up of FTTC means they see customers choosing the faster services.

When LLU can do the average speeds for just a tenner month though, who is going to almost double the cost of their broadband, to save a few minutes on downloads.

Only people I can see doing this are:

1. Geeks
2. Homes with multiple people using broadband
3. Those using video rental services e.g. PS3/Xbox - 8GB movies take a while at 5Mbps
4. People working from home, but don't want to buy a decent business service.

On number 4, fuel costs are getting to the point, that metro ethernet might be cheaper than commuting for some people, and give the ultra high speeds and reliability needed.

The problem is so easily fixed tho.

stop selling high speed broadband for low prices. Whats so hard about it?

sell a 0.5mbit sevrice for £10 (not less), 8mbit should be no less than £20-25 and double digit speeds keep above the £30 mark. Isp's need to stop been scared of churn, if someone threatens to leave let them, remove retentions departments.

Here's one idea: define what broadband and super-fast broadband is.

For hopefully the last time, lets use that WGC example. That area is a large sprawling 80s build development of maybe 400 homes.

Perhaps 300 of them can get ADSL. None of them can get broadband.

If we had a definition of what constitutes broadband - which I'd suggest is 4Mbps rising by 1Mbps per year - then you would have a "people power" aspect with perhaps a quarter of this country beginning to question why they have no access to broadband.

This avoids price controls which might encourage ISPs to refuse to supply, and focuses attention.

If super-fast broadband takes this to something like 30Mbps down and 3Mbps up then BT's FTTC rollout can be referred to as BT's FTTC rollout, not the rollout of superfast broadband, and Virgin Media have an incentive to get their upstream speeds improved.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

3. This I can relate to having run a number of online clubs in the past - the audience is probably towards the younger age range which leads to "disciples" of various ISPs "bitching" and a general level of rudeness on here which you wouldn't get in public nor do you get on other forums.

Reading through this thread in its entirety, I felt I should qualify the above since it doesn't read all that positively, does it.

It is *not* a "fault" of this forum. Personally, I think the moderators do an excellent job considering the role doesn't come with a salary. In fact that statement would be true even if it did which makes it the more remarkable.

Anyway, back to the topic.

Yep, the whole market is a mess, rock bottom prices so ISP's are fighting over pennies.

People want faster speeds, no caps or throttling all for what they pay now, I don't believe the posts above stating people will pay more, not many people. If its a choice between bumbling on with what they have now or paying an extra 20-30 a month they'll put up with whatever service they have now.

I just hope when BT release FTTP as a proper product it costs and arm & few legs to set the bar.

sell a 0.5mbit service for £10 (not less), 8mbit should be no less than £20-25 and double digit speeds keep above the £30 mark. Isp's need to stop been scared of churn, if someone threatens to leave let them, remove retentions departments.

They will if the pricing is structured like this.

Many people don't realise what they get. They think they are on 24Meg for 12 quid, so why would they be tempted to pay more? Structuring the prices as Chrysalis suggests and making plain to people what the requirements are for acceptable performance on VOD and catch up services etc., would very likely make people think about paying that "middle rate".

I think even the usa had a defiition of broadband which would put our adsl to shame, but nothing much happened here, I think we still stuck at anything above isdn speeds is defined as broadband.

ITs a good idea but in practice it would be weakely implemented we would probably get 200kbit defined as broadband and 10mbit defined as superfast broadband.

I would be happy to define 512kbit as broadband but superfast should be something like 50mbit minimum and the typical speed (not up to) should be at least that much. superfast I would also have a high upload speed stated such as 10mbit+.

FTTP is going in York right now and more places than you think:-

BT's Current FTTP-Rollout Plan (Name Order)
ASHFORD, MIDDLESEX - Surrey - Jun 2011
BENTON - Tyne & Wear - Mar 2012
BIRMINGHAM CENTRAL - West Midlands - Mar 2012
BLACKFRIARS - Greater Manchester - Dec 2011
BOSCOMBE - Dorset - Sep 2011
BROUGHTON - Lancashire - Sep 2011
CALDICOT - Gwent - Dec 2011
CHAFFORD - Essex - Sep 2011
CHESTER SOUTH - Cheshire - Mar 2011
CULLINGWORTH - West Yorkshire - Sep 2011
DINNINGTON - South Yorkshire - Dec 2011
DUNDEE PARK - Tayside - Sep 2011
EDINBURGH FOUNTAINBRIDGE - Lothian - Dec 2011
EDINBURGH NEWINGTON - Lothian - Sep 2011
EDINBURGH WAVERLEY - Lothian - Dec 2011
ERITH - Greater London - Mar 2012
ETWALL - Derbyshire - Sep 2011
EWELL - Surrey - Sep 2011
EXETER - Devon - Jun 2011
FOLESHILL - West Midlands - Mar 2012
FOREST HILL - Greater London - Jun 2011
GLASGOW LANGSIDE - Strathclyde - Mar 2012
HAMILTON - Strathclyde - Mar 2012
HAMPTON - Hampshire - Dec 2011
HARDWICKE - Gloucestershire - Dec 2011
HEADLESS CROSS - Hereford & Worcester - Dec 2011
HILLSIDE, HEREFORD & WORCESTER - Hereford & Worcester - Sep 2011
HOLMES CHAPEL - Cheshire - Sep 2011
HOLMFIRTH - West Yorkshire - Sep 2011
HOOTON - Cheshire - Mar 2012
IRLAM - Greater Manchester - Sep 2011
IVYBRIDGE - Devon - Sep 2011
KIRBY MUXLOE - Leicestershire - Dec 2011
LEYTONSTONE - Greater London - Mar 2011
LIVERPOOL CENTRAL - Merseyside - Dec 2011
LONGTON, LANCASHIRE - Lancashire - Sep 2011
MALONE - Northern Ireland - [Date Not Set]
MALTBY - South Yorkshire - Mar 2012
MANCHESTER CENTRAL - Greater Manchester - Sep 2011
MAYFAIR - Greater London - Mar 2012
MIDCALDER - Lothian - Dec 2011
MOUNTWOOD - Merseyside - Dec 2011
NESTON - Cheshire - Mar 2012
NEWCASTLE CENTRAL - Tyne & Wear - Mar 2012
PENCOED - Mid Glamorgan - Dec 2011
PLYMOUTH - Devon - Sep 2011
PONTELAND - Northumberland - Mar 2012
PORTLAND - Dorset - Mar 2012
PRUDHOE - Northumberland - Dec 2011
RADLETT - Hertfordshire - Mar 2012
RINGWAY - Greater Manchester - Dec 2011
ROYAL - Merseyside - Sep 2011
SOUTHAMPTON - Hampshire - Sep 2011
STREETLY - West Midlands - Dec 2011
TAUNTON - Somerset - Dec 2011
THAMES DITTON - Surrey - Sep 2011
TRAFFORD - Greater Manchester - Mar 2012
WESTHOUGHTON - Greater Manchester - Mar 2012
WOODHAM FERRERS - Essex - Sep 2011
YORK - North Yorkshire - Mar 2011

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

I know exactly what DOCSIS is and the flavours it comes in, I'm saying in they could have done what they have done now a long time ago. The cabling was already in place.

Sorry this is extremely naive. In fact, Docsis 3 wasn't fully available until at least 2009.. and even then, the patchwork quilt of cable networks Virgin inherited from the likes of ntl, Cwc, et al needed to be harmonised. That stage came before docsis 3 rollout otherwise you'd end up with slighly different legacy kit in each region/franchise area. Surely that isn;t what you suggested they should have done? Also, for info, DPON is the tech that VM are rolling out in new builds. Current extentions to the network in areas very close to the network are continuing with HFC for now. When VM decide to mass migrate network to DPON, you can be sure it'll only happen when they exhaust docsis - which according to the latest white papers, suggest will be quite a while. In fact it even gives FTTP a run for its money for now.. with its top speeds.

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

sell a 0.5mbit service for £10 (not less), 8mbit should be no less than £20-25 and double digit speeds keep above the £30 mark. Isp's need to stop been scared of churn, if someone threatens to leave let them, remove retentions departments.

They will if the pricing is structured like this.

Many people don't realise what they get. They think they are on 24Meg for 12 quid, so why would they be tempted to pay more? Structuring the prices as Chrysalis suggests and making plain to people what the requirements are for acceptable performance on VOD and catch up services etc., would very likely make people think about paying that "middle rate".

The single biggest killer for me was the day burst speed became worthless, a all in one adsl max product that had no regards to speed completely killed the market. We had a majority of userbase been light users so had little demand for high usage products but was still demand for speed, problem was speed had no premium price point anymore (on cable but not adsl).

With the local loop ironically I think things got worse when openreach was formed. It added overheads to BT's bottom line and created artifical barriers for things like fault resolution. This is where I am still worried about proposed solutions, if the way forward is to keep a wholesale supplier but as a independent owner then many problems that exist now may still continue,. one reason I think VM are light years ahead is the fact they own their local loop so there is no middle man. The customer deals with the local loop owner direct. I guess the idea of a shared ownership between sky/VM/talk talk this may still be the case if the customer is of one of those 3 isp's but would ofcom butt in and tell them to create a openreach mark II?

I see 2 possible solutions to the mess. Both radically different to each other.

We either.

1 - scrap all the stuff that creates artifical retail competition, so isp's like aaisp etc. probably will die off as they effectively piggy back of BT, isp's like sky and talk talk who also piggy back I am not sure how they would go but I guess they would be forced to invest in some sort of local loop or have the capability to make a commercial arrangement with BT of their own back without ofcom, this would likely of course be at much higher cost than they pay now tho and cause a needed upward shift in retail prices.
2 - have a new local loop created or the current openreach one taken from BT and owned by either the state or an independent company or even the trio idea in this thread, basically not BT. having a local loop competition may work, but this idea doesnt fill me with much confidence as BT do have local loop competition already in various areas and it hasnt made BT up their game too much.

alternatively we could keep things how they are and all the isps agree to raise their prices alongside each other but then that would be cartel practice.

Over playing - yes a little, but because so many people dont play it all.

I do consider the point topic estimates when commenting on an area, and look at the providers involved too e.g. Orange is a hard one to judge as a lot of people appear to be on old IPStream fixed speed rather than Max.

Also if you listened to any of the radio/tv stuff if given time I do make it clear that it is not just rural areas with the issues.

No choice are we sure?

Market 1 has option of satellite, those on edges of towns should chase mobile firms for more masts and 3G coverage, and in at least one example in this thread, perhaps get VM to push the edges of their network in the town a bit further.

Hands up who has seen the state of US cable TV? Picture quality is so poor that I can imagine people jumping on FiOS and the cable providers who've gone for a digital setup.

Another issue in the US is the choice of retail provider which is very limited, and helps to flatten firms, which might actually reduce their costs.

How can you argue that people will pay when that is not proven either?
If people will pay for faster broadband, why is the takeup of 50Meg from VM so poor?

If ADSL is so dodgy as some assert, I do wonder why it ever sold, particularly in areas that have 3G/cable services.

The reality is this, £50 bought you 0.5Meg unlimited in 2000, and that £50 plus inflation pretty much can get you unlimited at faster speeds in the majority of the UK now, i.e. the footprint is vastly larger. Is that progress?

As for the current government doing anything, BDUK is running at a budget of £60 per household it helps, and Ed Vaizey is talking about getting the market to handle things, but the problem is the market does not want to do this final third, without sufficient money to sweeten the deal. Digital Pump anyone?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

How can you argue that people will pay when that is not proven either?
If people will pay for faster broadband, why is the takeup of 50Meg from VM so poor?

If ADSL is so dodgy as some assert, I do wonder why it ever sold, particularly in areas that have 3G/cable services.

The reality is this, £50 bought you 0.5Meg unlimited in 2000, and that £50 plus inflation pretty much can get you unlimited at faster speeds in the majority of the UK now, i.e. the footprint is vastly larger. Is that progress?

As for the current government doing anything, BDUK is running at a budget of £60 per household it helps, and Ed Vaizey is talking about getting the market to handle things, but the problem is the market does not want to do this final third, without sufficient money to sweeten the deal. Digital Pump anyone?

because there is cheaper products than 50mbit, I am talking about if all the bottom tier prices go up.

depends how you see it as progress.

first of all it was £40 not £50 I was an early adsl adopter, in fact the first on my exchange. My exchange was also the first outside of london to be activated. Hope that gives you an idea how early. At the time pretty much every isp available was £40 month for 512kbit down and 256kbit up unlimited with £150 engineer install.

Of course back then we had no shaping so it would be full speed 24/7 on all protocols, latency 100% stable. I remember those good days, I had a fair few sync faults but back then all I had to do was ring up freeserve and within an hour a BT tech would have fixed at exchange, so fault resolution has most defenitly gone backwards, this happened even on a saturday when I was watching a world cup game. Before openreach existed of course

Now we have maybe a few isp's offering unlimited on BTw based services but the congestion is evident and some protocols are way below 0.5mbit during peak so are actually less than 11 years ago. Which isnt surprising because the ultimate important figure which is bandwidth allocated per customer is still the same as was 11 years ago, it hasnt changed.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 12-Apr-11 10:31:26)

Do we really need to define superfast?

Does the customer actually care whether broadband is called:-

Slow
Fast
Superfast
Ultrafast
Copper/Fibre Broadband
Coax/Fibre Broadband
Pure Fibre Broadband

I doubt the average joe cares, they are more bothered about the speed it will deliver and price

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

I doubt the average joe cares, they are more bothered about the speed it will deliver and price

In the opposite order

The £40 was Openworld and was actually sold at below wholesale price in the first year or so.
Demon did £35 a month for triallists, but £50 was not uncommon for non Openworld providers.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/i/26.html

The USB appeared in summer 2000, I was on the ethernet 3 box system in April 2000.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/i/81.html was not all unlimited back in 2000.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/i/193.html Offers were a bit different then, half price was £30 a month.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/03/28/uk_has_most_...

First LLU seems to be Jan 2001.

Add to that list:
- People who have {fairly,very} long copper distances to the exchange and get slow ADSL(2+) speeds, but have an FTTC-enabled cabinet nearby.

they get it before they've forgotten why they downloaded it in the first place.

BDUK have defined "superfast broadband" already.

In reply to a post by yarwell:

they get it before they've forgotten why they downloaded it in the first place.

Some truth in that

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

People want faster speeds, no caps or throttling all for what they pay now, I don't believe the posts above stating people will pay more, not many people. If its a choice between bumbling on with what they have now or paying an extra 20-30 a month they'll put up with whatever service they have now.

The only people I know who would be prepared to pay more are techies and geeks. Even then it depends on age. I'm part of a software development team and most of us are geeks. The youngest of us is 35 and all except me have started a family(*). The only one prepared to pay more is me - and my problem is that I struggle to see why I need more than my current 14Mb/s sync.

I simply don't believe that the vast majority of the UK population are clammering for higher speeds. For most people it's just another utility and the cheaper they can get it the better.

The only people who seem to be clammering for more speed are students and niche interest groups (such as subscribers to this site). Even then very few people are openly advocating price rises. The most you usually encounter is someone pointing out that paying more gets you a better service.

(*)I don't intend to either

There is a demand for HS Broadband and people will happilly pay up to £40 a month some people will go for a cheap product thats why they offer them but the cheap product will have retrictions such as very limited amount of downloads and you may have to pay for suport and support may not be that good. So Broadaband like any other business has a range of products to suit the market.

For some people to try to claim that because there is a £10 product that is all they will pay is daft

The big issue holding things back is not price but lack of availability. Currently the UK has only about 250,000 users with Brodband at 25Mbs or over.

We are not going to see service & games etc appear whilst there is no customer bae for it

Virgin is making good progress with improving the take up of HS Broadband unlike BT of those 250,000 a 144.000 are Virgin customers and Virgin has only recently been rooling out the 30MB & 100Mb service its previous offering being 20Mb which is not included in the above as it is below the minimum figure to qualify as HS Broadband

I did not say there was no rollout elsewhere but it is very heavily focussed on London & the South East with very limited rollout elsewhere

250,000 users out of how many where they have the choice?

VM 50Meg service is available to around 45% of UK households, so why such a low proportion?
Virgin should be doing better by virtue of launching 50Meg in December 2008 and having a wider coverage.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

I did not say there was no rollout elsewhere but it is very heavily focussed on London & the South East with very limited rollout elsewhere

Comparing that statement with GMAN98's list, remind me never to ask you for directions...

Well looking at that list it does not look focussed on the London and South East. Saying focused on Edinburgh might be more accurate

Seperating out Openreach would make a big difference inthat it becomes a seperate lgal enitity with its own board & P&L it makes it almost impossible for BT to then favour its own customersIn my view we need at least two companies offering a service.

Duplicating the local loop now that data & TV have pretty much converged is not really sensible. With opereach as a seperate company it should increase real competition. Third part companies would be able to compete against BT on a reasonably level playing field they would be able to lease duct capacity from BT on the sames basis as BT

I am not sure the above approach is best as it would probably be best to have both the BT & Virgin Network under common ownership

If that cannot happen and it may be difficult to achieve opening up the Virgin Netwok to other ISP's and Telcos may be the best way toget things moving

If Virgin extend their coverage on thir own they are probably looking at only getting one home in ten passes subscribing. If they open it up to other ISP's then it could be a lot better as these ISP's will already have a big customer base that could be migrated to the Virgin network. THere will also be the oportunity to upsell ie get them to take faster broadband & TV etc

I think Broadband take up is almost 60% now of which BT have about 20% but that is probably higher in non cabled areas. So we have 6 out of 10 homes taking Broadband which means potentially 6 out of 10 could be Virgin customers. If we say 30% are not with BT that potentialy means a potential from day 1 of one in three homes taking it plus the potential to win customers off of BT.

Not sure what the cost of rollout would be but potentially it looks to be viable. Broadband is al about volume to make it pay

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

The big issue holding things back is not price but lack of availability. Currently the UK has only about 250,000 users with Brodband at 25Mbs or over.

But can't you see the link between the two? Rock bottom prices = less profit = less money to put into investment, whether that's BT, Virgin, Sky or TalkTalk

The lack of real competion is the big problem. BT can offer the minimum Broadband and roll it out at the slowest rate the regulator will accept if it faces no competion as it will not loose customers as they have nowhere to go

I think this will come to a head soon. Virgin has managed to move the business into profit although it still has a lot of debt but that does mean it can look at expanding their coverage, THey have been pretty good at increasing their user base & upselling but there is only so far you casn go with that approach

The issue Virgin are currently wrestling with is how can they cost effectively extend their coverage

I doubt very much that Virgin will open up, I said months ago when FTTC started to roll-out that this would (eventually) start to cause problems for Virgin.

BT, TalkTalk, Sky <others> will be able to compete in the speeds stakes in Virgins own space which they've had to themselves for a long time, ok lets not get into the fact that Virgin has 50 and 100Mb offerings I'm talking about speeds the customer might actually want to use, 20, 30 40Mb. If you wanted that before you have to be in a Virgin area and go with Virgin, not anymore.

So Virgin start to complain about lack of BT duct access and then complain about prices, they have to expand because other ISP's are primed and ready to take their customers from them with their own flavours of FTTC or even FTTP.

No way will they want to open up themselves though, a two way street? Not likely.

Why would it be equal for all with a openreach PLC

They would offer the best discounts to their biggest customers, little ABC ISP in nod's ville wanting a mile of duct access will still pay large initial fees.

Also as the defacto loop company now the VM and BT loops are in the same firm, surely that is just a monopoly, abliet one that does not answer to the home owner and SME. So people would be even more divorced from the actual process, with another layer of obsfucation when fault finding.

Creation of a state owned or co-operative local loop firm is not going to happen under current government. A spin off of Openreach perhaps, but the issue of pensions would be the sticking point, and transfer of staff with years of acrued benefits.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

For some people to try to claim that because there is a £10 product that is all they will pay is daft

Who is claiming that? All anyone has claimed is that the higher price products don't sell very well.

The big issue holding things back is not price but lack of availability. Currently the UK has only about 250,000 users with Brodband at 25Mbs or over.

We are not going to see service & games etc appear whilst there is no customer bae for it

What 'services and games' are taking advantage of the higher speed connections in other countries? Do any of them justify a multi-billion pound investment?

Virgin is making good progress with improving the take up of HS Broadband

No it isn't. That's exactly what it's not doing. I suspect it's deliberate. The speed looks good in an advert and is a nice side benefit of overall network efficiency improvements but they'd have kittens if there was significant uptake.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Creation of a state owned or co-operative local loop firm is not going to happen under current government. A spin off of Openreach perhaps, but the issue of pensions would be the sticking point, and transfer of staff with years of acrued benefits.

Oh yes, esp that last one. I have had five different employers over the last twenty years but never by my actions so I have twenty years continuity of service. I currently get a better package than anyone outside of my office at my position. In my case my current employer is the biggest yet so they can just take it on the chin. But with Openreach we'd be talking about changing to a smaller employer and that could be tricky.

I should get a T-shirt 'I love TUPE'

Edited by Andrue (Tue 12-Apr-11 14:15:37)

Whether it is below cost or not very much depends on the cost model do you recover the development and rollout cost over the the first couple of years or amortize it over the life of the equipment

It is equal on the basis that all would pay the same basic cost price to access the ducting the difference would be in the profit marging Openreach would take , Openreach would probably want the full margin for small customers but would sacrifice somee of that marging for larger customers as it gets the volume and also costs are marginally lower

Sure.. I mean it hasn't even been release as a proper product yet

simple question I want to ask you.

if all sub £20 products dissapeared tommorow, how many do you think would drop broadband altogether vs keep it at the higher price.

I agree there is specific demand, however that demand is not high enough for isp's to do proper investment, the only way that it seems to become viable is for the base level subscribers to pay more.

Yep, more profit = more to go into investment, well... that's how it should work

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

I doubt very much that Virgin will open up, I said months ago when FTTC started to roll-out that this would (eventually) start to cause problems for Virgin.

BT, TalkTalk, Sky <others> will be able to compete in the speeds stakes in Virgins own space which they've had to themselves for a long time, ok lets not get into the fact that Virgin has 50 and 100Mb offerings I'm talking about speeds the customer might actually want to use, 20, 30 40Mb. If you wanted that before you have to be in a Virgin area and go with Virgin, not anymore.

So Virgin start to complain about lack of BT duct access and then complain about prices, they have to expand because other ISP's are primed and ready to take their customers from them with their own flavours of FTTC or even FTTP.

No way will they want to open up themselves though, a two way street? Not likely.

its been worse then that. lets not forget VM's 10mbit product beats up to 24mbit adsl products as the typical speed for VM 10mbit is over 9mbit whilst the typical speed for 24mbit adsl is under 6mbit. A big failure from people is to think FTTC is about doing 20mbit+ when the biggest advantage it brings is actually to people with poor lines. Getting them to break the double digit speed barrier.

Also there is still various VM areas not been touched by BT FTTC.

How much problems this will cause VM is anyone's guess but VM still have a few things up their sleeve such as their digital TV service and they are not far away from been able to do 200mbit plus have trialled even higher speeds then that. Also I think BT have a damaged rep, I know a fair few people on cable who wont go back to anything BT related for a few reasons, a common one is they got burned by the "up to" on adsl been on poor lines. Even tho FTTC will fix that for the most part, the feeling will still be stuck in their heads.

Its simple

BT Ignite as it was back in 2000 was wholesaling the product at a price higher than what Openworld was selling it in the retail chain.

Cue complaints from Freeserve etc