In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I also wonder whether Plusnet will start to divert BT's share, having aimed their packages at roughly £4 lower than BT, on what otherwise appears to be similar offerings (except to the people desperate for a FUP >= 120MB).

Does that actually matter at all, PlusNet *is* BT. People that don't want to pay BT's rates wouldn't want to pay any of the other FTTC offering ISP's rates either so they choose the cheaper deals on offer by PlusNet and, lo and behold, BT have their monthly subscriptions too.

Marketing, but suspect some extra capacity is coming online too.

How much the management kicks in depends on what happens, if the marketing works too well and attracts a million 1TB a month users, then we will see another review and a FUP with a figure appearing.

This is just a response to what Sky is doing.

I see people on all the popular broadband forums jumping ship from ADSL2+ to Fibre, and those that can't get FTTC now are chomping at the bit and want to know when it will arrive. I was bombarded with mail from BT after registering my interest for FTTC and I signed up for Infinity when it became available on my street (leaving an excellent "unlimited" ISP in the proccess).

The BT lure of FTTC for £25.60p per month is hard to resist so I would say the marketing has worked, whether BT can handle the inevitable demands on the network remains to be seen.

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-Mar-11 15:37:50)

In reply to a post by Squirrel:

Does that actually matter at all, PlusNet *is* BT. People that don't want to pay BT's rates wouldn't want to pay any of the other FTTC offering ISP's rates either so they choose the cheaper deals on offer by PlusNet and, lo and behold, BT have their monthly subscriptions too.

"Plusnet is BT" in name and ownership, and I guess some aspects of policy show through (I'm thinking of some of the legal stuff we've seen with ACS here).

Yes, "PlusNet is BT" as far as the money ultimately goes too. But to be fair, a large share of *all* non-LLU money also goes to BT Wholesale (for individual accounts, central pipes & bandwith across the internal IP network). Frankly, I'd rather my money ended up in the BT pot than the Murdoch pot, but that's a personal preference

However, Plusnet *isn't* BT Retail, so doesn't follow any of the same operational behaviour, doesn't have the same support people (or principles), and doesn't have the same forum (and the forum is one of the good things about Plusnet). In some of the stuff it does, it still behaves nearer the smaller boutique ISPs.

To some people, the support & service is the thing that matters, and will pay more for it - and the small ISPs serve these people well.

Some people go for price, and pick the likes of Sky, Tiscali and Talk-talk. Obviously not yet for fibre though...

For fibre, BT is currently picking up those people, as well as a lot of early-adopters, plus all the people who just go with the familiar.

Plusnet occupy a funny position. Obviously BT Group as a whole want them to position as a cheaper option than BT Retail, rather than as a boutique operation with higher costs. Yet they also want to sell themselves on the prospects of better local service.

So my wondering about whether Plusnet will start to divert BT's share is really a wonder about how much of the market is price-driven, service-driven, or familiarity-driven.

Are there many people who are anti-BT, and therefore anti-PN simply because of ownership?

BT exists to make money, period. They will not care whether it comes from Wholesale, Retail, PlusNet, Openreach or any other subsiduary. Mark my words though, once a subsiduary becomes unprofitable it will disappear in an instant.

BT clearly bought PlusNet for a reason, they are not a charity. Once PlusNet do not fullfill that reason they will be gone.

BT clearly bought PlusNet for a reason, they are not a charity. Once PlusNet do not fullfill that reason they will be gone.

Sorry, but that doesn't really make sense does it?

If BT are as ruthless as you say, then I doubt that Plusnet will be allowed not to fulfill that reason. I doubt they are independently calling the shots, dont you? Otherwise it would've been a pointless purchase in the first place wouldn't it?

If they didn't need them anymore it would be due to BT changing their strategy, not Plusnet failing to implement it.

Edited by mrnelster (Wed 30-Mar-11 19:50:35)

In reply to a post by Squirrel:

BT clearly bought PlusNet for a reason, they are not a charity. Once PlusNet do not fullfill that reason they will be gone.

The suggestion that was most circulated at the time was they did it to get hold of Plusnet's Ellacoya (for those who haven't heard of that it is the traffic management kit that they use) expertise, which after teething troubles was (is still) running well.

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

BT clearly bought PlusNet for a reason, they are not a charity. Once PlusNet do not fullfill that reason they will be gone.

Sorry, but that doesn't really make sense does it?

Makes perfect sense to me. If, for what ever reason, they don't provide what they were bought for any longer they will get rid of them. Without knowing exactly why they were bought it is hard to say whether that is because the PlusNet "experiment" failed or because BT changed direction. It is not relevant though, if not providing something useful it will go.

I work in a company that does this all the time. Buys a company for some bit of it they want and get rid of the bits they don't want. They also quite often sell areas of the original company that become "surplus to requirements" because they don't provide the required growth, become too expensive etc.

I work in a company that does this all the time. Buys a company for some bit of it they want and get rid of the bits they don't want. They also quite often sell areas of the original company that become "surplus to requirements" because they don't provide the required growth, become too expensive etc.

Agreed. But that is if it the company is not profitable or you want to remove an element of the competition.

Many companies buy others as a strategic move to pick up business from a different part of the market.

As Robertos says they wanted some of their tech. So why haven't they got rid of the rest of it yet? Because it suits their marketing strategy I would think.

Traffic management is a fluid tech, thus keeping Plusnet running as a test bed for this is worthwhile.
it is large enough to make data worthwhile, but not so large as to be difficult to manage in this respect.

Consider this, how many firms buy something to stop the competition getting their hands on something?