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.