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

So the big two firms would be paying less once this margin playing came into effect - so how is that different to Openreach favouring BT Wholesale which some accuse it of doing?