Coms' report on their acquisition of ADSL24 (May 2nd 2013)

"...the ADSL24 network presently generates a monthly gross margin of approximately £20,000 on revenues of circa £75,000."

So basically ADSL24 only got 50k cash and the rest is in shares.. ouch, pretty bad deal seeing how things have gone down so far.

In reply to a post by aibreeze:

So basically ADSL24 only got 50k cash and the rest is in shares.. ouch, pretty bad deal seeing how things have gone down so far.

Yes especially as Coms share price is now in seemingly steady decline , has lost a third in value since January this year .

Edited by deleted (Sun 13-Apr-14 11:08:32)

My uneducated guess would be that Coms wish their broadband acquisition to show an increase in profitability over the short term. As they are not exactly straining themselves to do this by increasing the customer base, I wonder how they might achieve this objective?

Edited by deleted (Sun 13-Apr-14 12:24:17)

In reply to a post by Molehusband:

My uneducated guess would be that Coms wish their broadband acquisition to show an increase in profitability over the short term. As they are not exactly straining themselves to do this by increasing the customer base, I wonder how they might achieve this objective?

Not sure that Coms are that concerned , it seems a very much "suck it and see" operation to me. A tiny part of their operation. Having watched an interview with David Breith on Youtube, Coms is all about aquisition, expanding the company as a whole, by aquiring rival companies. Voip and re-selling seem to be his aim. Adsl24 only gets a small mention, all he talks about is aquisition, aquisition and aquisition.

Edited by deleted (Sun 13-Apr-14 12:53:46)

I tried to migrate only to find the MAC I had been given had already been used to place a migrate days earlier.

Turns out according to BT when they said it had failed, my line now belongs to Enta International Ltd. Emailed Coms to find out what on earth was going in to be told that some lines were caught up in a final migration of their lines and they'd ask for another MAC.

Just what on earth is going on there. Pigs and ears come to mind.

TE

Thanks for the links, when I get time I will look through them properly. I must say that when I tried to look for the T&Cs before we were migrated I couldn't find them, don't know if I was looking in the wrong place or if they weren't there? There are different T&Cs for the telephone side than the broadband side it appears. Looking through the T&Cs quickly I did notice a couple of areas that could be considered unfair terms straight away. Just because something is in T&Cs doesn't mean it's either legal or enforceable and I would reiterate that if one side has broken a contract the other half does not have to be bound by the contract either.

I won't say any more as Coms monitor these posts, as you know, no point in forewarning them any more than is necessary at this stage. I'm also aware that for a lot of us they can identify which Coms users are posting here because we used PMs to Coms staff to give them our Coms details to get things sorted - I said at the time that it was not a good idea, so if my service gets suddenly worse I'll know why! Am I bovvered?

"...the ADSL24 network presently generates a monthly gross margin of approximately £20,000 on revenues of circa £75,000."

Well unless I read that wrong that's a £20k profit before tax on a revenue of £75k per month, pretty good ratio of over 26% profit from where I'm standing. Maybe they should plough some of that profit back into providing a better service?

I have just checked my email archive and the first email I had from Coms was dated 3rd Dec 2013 entitled 'Welcome to Coms'. In it they say..

'...This move will allow you to benefit from Coms�s own next generation network and infrastructure, allowing you to enjoy continuous improvements.....

Rest assured we�ll be in touch every step of the way to keep you informed of exactly what we�re doing....

Please be assured that there will be no change to the cost of your service, or your existing contract length. There will be no adverse effect on your monthly usage limit, or maximum available broadband speed....'

Oh my, I needed a good laugh

I can't see that I've had single email from Coms since then except for confirmation of my monthly payments. Is that the same for all of you or has anyone had a Coms update by email since December?

I must admit that the silence from some users on the forum is deafening, raging at each other but missing the opportunity to have their input on something that could get things moving. Unless of course they are concerned that Coms know who they are...

Perhaps the ones that are staying quiet have already jumped ship?

Like me who jumped ship on 10th February and I am so glad I did. Look at the mess that has developed since but I would support you if required as I had a job to get a MAC but eventually did.

Caley.

A lot of "normal" users probably don't use these forums at all, or maybe simply haven't noticed the problems. In my case I'm not impacted (directly) by the throttling as I don't use those services - but that's not to say I don't care.

And to be fair to Coms (though not sure why I should be) things have been, hmmm, lets just say okay, for a little while now - I've not been disconnected since 1st April - the second longest session I've had since the cutover.

My biggest problem with Coms is the incredible lack of communication, which means I simply do not trust them at all. It is just a matter of time before I jump ship - but I'm probably going to fibre anyway. I know some other companies don't bother with a status page either, referring users to twitter instead, but I really can't see the problem in doing both - and I have a big problem with companies that don't make it clear to see what's going on. We all know things go wrong from time to time, but don't hide it, just be honest and open about it.


I've raised a number of tickets over the past year, since Coms took over and not been impressed by most of the answers. A few examples:

Reported last June that the ADSL24 Status page wasn't available - initally told "the website seems to be down" (yes, that's what I reported) - we'll get back to you. Followed up with - there's a complication, we'll have to make some changes...can't say when it will be back.

Reported an email outage last August (at least the 3rd one I'd noticed that year up to that point) and I also stated "I've heard stories that adsl24 have been taken over by another hosting company. In theory I know this should mean things should continue as they were, completely transparently to me, but that's not been the case. I'd also have assumed that a larger comms/hosting company would have more than likely meant a better service with increased resilience. "

The response was: "I've been advised that there was a power outage at the data centre that caused a loss of some of their core networking system. While most systems have recovered, we're seeing higher than usual latency at the data centres 'borders' however I would expect this to be addressed & resolved throughout the day.

The newer parent company (coms plc) are looking to expand and invest upon what we presently offer, so I would indeed hope that we should see an increased resilience going forward. "


An issue with sending emails in January this year - response "Our supplier had an issue with reverse DNS affecting many ADSL24 customers, our senior engineers have been liaising with our suppliers and we now believe the issue to be resolved." - yet there was no communication that I'd seen to notify customers of that. I also asked again about a status page, but told (again) they don't have one.