In reply to a post by WWWombat:

You are assuming that VM are giving an acceptable service, and that FTTC will take fewer of the VM customers than of the non-VM customers. Is that strictly known to be the case?

Yes, hence why smaller capacity cabinets relative to homes passed are planned for VM heavy areas.

About 2/3rds of VM customers are triple play. Takes a tad more than offering broadband speeds inferior to those they can already get from VM in the downstream direction to make most people change their TV and phone service.

So yes, it is strictly known and indeed blatantly obvious. Trying to pull people away from 30Mb / 60Mb / 120Mb services along with line rental and TV on to upto 40Mb / 80Mb requiring a change of line rental and TV is obviously going to be a harder sell than a free upgrade in the case of BT Broadband / Infinity and a small cost increment in the case of other providers with a clear and obvious performance improvement.

VM have reported no churn spike as a result of increased FTTC availability. Openreach are deploying in the wrong places then bemoaning disappointing uptake when operators are actually asking people to pay for fibre rather than getting it as a freebie.

Edited by deleted (Tue 13-Nov-12 19:14:14)

VM are pretty much saturated in their areas now and have been for a while.

When using Infinity numbers it should be remembered they're offering this for free to some of their subscribers.

On the key metric, churn, there is absolutely no evidence that FTTC is having any impact at all on Virgin.

I think BT have been taking lessons from the government in creative accounting. Offer FTTC for no price increase at the retail level, play games with the wholesale pricing to try and balance out the retail hit then report flattering results to Openreach and FTTC penetration, fairly neutral results at retail, while carrying on the ongoing trend of BT Wholesale's revenue dropping.

I agree on the demand, but the point is all BT will care about is revenue and profits.

A customer pays them already due to lack of viable competition I expect is a factor. Clearly not the only factor of course since FTTC is in many non VM areas. But its my opinion it was a factor here, either that or a openreach manager lives in the area serviced maybe.

REALLY!!!! YOU SURE ABOUT THAT!

Have a look at MK17 8AR.

That isn't BDUK because the project hasn't completed the initial stages.

One on a industrial estate?

Try MK10 0AT that has TWO cabs!!!!!


Regards,


Gareth

The GPO as it was pre 1984 was a paragon of virtue as you knew where you were in the queue to be allowed pay line rental and the rental of the handset.

Openreach should be run for the benefit of it's shareholders. It's the law.

Openreach should be competing with Virgin Media. Competition is good and leads to lower prices.

Openreach have gone from nothing to millions of homes passed in 30 months. Virgin have passed next to no extra homes in this time.

Perhaps we should look to nationalise the Virgin platform.

It is stagnant on coverage. It locks out providers such as BT, Sky, TalkTalk, o2 etc. That punters want to buy from. It does not engage with punters or local authorities that wish to bring superfast to the public.

Virgin is fat. Virgin is lazy. Virgin is simply quite happy working a cable monopoly.

I am not in favour of nationalising any communications provider.

The government would simply starve them of cash and funnel the money into badly running health and education.

But if we are force to nationalise a fat, lazy, anti competitive and cherry picking platform out there, it's Virgins.

Edited by deleted (Tue 13-Nov-12 21:02:22)

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

If you look at it logically the demand on a Cabinet in a VM area is going to be considerable less than in a non VM area.
...
even if FTTC takes 10% of the VM customers
...
Typical FTTC take up is about 20%

You are assuming that VM are giving an acceptable service, and that FTTC will take fewer of the VM customers than of the non-VM customers. Is that strictly known to be the case?

When I moved I had the choice of VM or FTTC, and very firmly chose FTTC - because of what I know can happen with VM. It wouldn't surprise me to see a fair proportion of the VM subscribers turning out to be disgruntled, and jumping at the opportunity.

It also makes an assumption that while VM passes 40% of the properties, those properties all choose VM as a phone/broadband supplier. I'm not sure that's the case either. People with Sky satellite subscriptions are probably more likely to stick with their phone & broadband through Openreach's copper, and are good targets for FTTC.

I can say in my area, the VM service is poor, now I am seeing performance levels similiar to 2 years ago before VM did what was considered for them major uplift work, its now normal for me to get under 1.5mbit/sec during evenings and weekends which is 5% of my rated max speed. Plus VM are lagging no upload performance.

However I am led to believe my area's performance is not typical for VM and it does normally perform better, personally I will be off like lightning to FTTC but I am not a typical customer,. I dont care for the tv package and the performance of my broadband is important to me.

With all that said and done I believe VM's future is a budget provider competing on price and dodgy headline speeds, even if an area isnt congested STM is pretty agressive only allowing 15-20 mins or so of downloading at full speed, BT like sky have now direct ownership of premium tv content, VM are still limited to reselling it only. The day will come when this catches up on VM I feel, I could be very wrong of course but I feel the tables are turning because VM no longer have the technology advantage and compared to BT and sky financially they very weak.

My view is this.

If a state spends money for something, then clearly its deemed as somethign required which capitalism has failed to provide, hence the subsidies.

I strongly have a belief commercial companies should never be subsidised by the state unless is clauses in place.

So eg. with BDUK even if the initial outlay was higher due to no base network a state owned network should either be built to compete with BT which woudl then give BT (or VM) the choice of upgrading their own network to compete or the alternative would be to pay BT as is now but have a requirement for BT to pay the state back so instead of a gift its a loan. It could have the condition the loan is not fully paid back if a profit isnt made maybe but its better than what happens now where the state just writes blank cheques and someone else makes the profit.

Lets face facts here. Either areas are viable or they are not. If areas are unviable nobody is going to come to the party without help from the councils.

There are two infrastructure players out there.

One of them is matching council funding. Is providing realistic options for councils and communities. Has publicly released rollout info. Is offering equivalent wholesale access to anyone who wants it, including monster players such as BT, Sky and TalkTalk. Is generating jobs and growth in the industry. Is bringing superfast to the market towns.

The other is the closed shop cable monopoly.

Edited by deleted (Tue 13-Nov-12 22:30:45)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

or the alternative would be to pay BT as is now but have a requirement for BT to pay the state back so instead of a gift its a loan. It could have the condition the loan is not fully paid back if a profit isnt made maybe but its better than what happens now where the state just writes blank cheques and someone else makes the profit.

The reality is inbetween...

BT take the money as a "gift" to spend on installing infrastructure. They have to take the penalty if insufficient people take up the upgrade, but can only take limited profits if too many take it up.

As Bob_s2 pointed out recently, there are clawbacks that send money back to the council if BT end up making too much profit. And of course, the cheques aren't really blank. If a cabinet makes a loss after the subsidy, then BT get to shoulder that alone.