I don't remember minnows. I remember big foreign firms getting most of the franchises like Nynex, Bell Cablemedia, United Cable of Denver, Videotron, Eurobell, United Artists etc.

Edited by FibreBubble (Sat 16-Nov-24 12:27:57)

Yeah at the time that cable was first being used to deliver broadband to UK households - i.e. around 2000 - the regional UK cable companies were already 5-10 years into consolidation being swallowed up by the mega-corporates.

When ntl bought CWC in 1999 the deal was over £8 billion. In today's money that's over £18 billion: https://www.theguardian.com/business/1999/jul/27/1

Telewest acquired the rest of Cable London in 1999 and the next year bought Eurobell. Telewest passed almost 5 million homes.

By the time ntl and Telewest merged and then bought Virgin Mobile and got the naming rights to Virgin Media some 7 years later, it was Goliath meets Goliath with basically 3.5 million TV customers, 4.5 million mobile customers, and 3 million broadband customers. The minnows had disappeared 15 years prior.

The rough parallel in today's altnet universe would be CityFibre and CommunityFibre joining hands and then merging with Virgin Media.

That's the Administrators'/Liquidators' problem to solve. That's what they are paid for.

No doubt in a case such as this it would be with input from the government.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Yeah at the time that cable was first being used to deliver broadband to UK households - i.e. around 2000

In the trial area we had cable modems in July 1999. It was a very small rollout, couple of hundred, and paused - and then was relaunched in the early 2000s alongside an indirect unlimited/2hr dialup service. Telewest's Blueyonder service was faster to get going and upgrade speeds.

When ntl bought CWC in 1999 the deal was over £8 billion.

Remember when cableTel bought National Transcommunications Ltd and then sold that satellite uplink business to Arqiva? No interest other than how the NTL initials appeared.

Of course on the Isle of Wight the WightCable company didn't get swallowed by the mainland mergers, and ages ago renamed itself WightFibre. It is unclear if they still have coax/DOCSIS as well as newer areas on FTTP.

Seems like WF are very proud of their FTTP rollout...

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/06/report...

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Seems like WF are very proud of their FTTP rollout...

I actually think they've done well, having been over there a couple of times you can see why cable did the built up areas, but there are a lot of rural homes/farms too. It sounds as if they've pretty much covered the island, which is good news.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

We’re already well in it. The music stopped a while ago. It’s just we’ve all got headphones on like a silent disco. 😂

There's going to be lots more 'little' consolidations of true minnows like Spring Fibre, announced on Friday, before they are big enough to be worth bothering about for the likes of the big players, with the serious funding behind them.

So we're very much in minnow gets eaten by another (unheard of) minnow - or a couple of minnows, decide to pool financial resources under one umbrella co - time. Big player consolidation is a little way off yet.

Gosh and just catching up the news on ISPR, more of it from Thursday: this time Zzoomm and Freedom Fibre considering a merger.

Slightly bigger minnows. What's the next size fish up in the altnet food-chain? Minnow++ 🤣

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/11/broadb...

Pike?