Plusnet Wholesale...

An interesting setup...

http://www.btplusnetpartner.com/

I guess now we see where and why BT got Plusnet. They always had fingers in with some of the workplace stuff, so it finally comes to make sense...

I guess Plusnet has a long term future... of sorts...

Oh dear !!!!!

I thought Plusnet belonged to BT Retail?

This is a BT Wholesale linkup with Plusnet. We know there is no relationship whatsoever between BT Retail and BT Wholesale other than supplier and customer. That way there is equivalence with other ISPs using BT Wholesale.

OfCom says so.

But what if the web page said "With the new BT Wholesale joined at the hip with BT Retail Broadband"?

There is one consolation!

All those people who have been trialling this WBMC service for Plusnet can feel warm inside as they have contributed to the well-being of the BT Group and the circumvention of OfCom rules.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 10-Apr-09 21:51:27)

The odd thing about that website is that it isn't a BT site and when you go into the presentation there is an alarming confidentiality clause.
The website is registered to
Registrant Company: Free Rein Ltd
Registrant Address: 2, Hadleigh Enterprise Park
Registrant Address: Crockatt Road
and this is what they did http://www.free-rein.net/case_studies/bt_business

Just gets smellier and smellier doesn't it?

And still doesn't explain a direct BT Wholesale promotion of a BT Retail business on the wholesale market.

Post deleted by paddyclark

was an announcement 19th December, just googled it from Plusnet User group

http://usergroup.plus.net/News_081218-BT%20Wholesale...

and another one from BT themselves 2 February

http://www.btplc.com/ClimateChange/News/ShowArticle....

prev post was a duplicate.

Edited by deleted (Sat 11-Apr-09 09:42:33)

http://www.btwholesale.com/

Its a banner on the front page... not exactly secretive...

Are the rules for business different.... I'm sure Andrew or Seb will know?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Just gets smellier and smellier doesn't it?

And still doesn't explain a direct BT Wholesale promotion of a BT Retail business on the wholesale market.

Seems quite straightforward to me, BT Wholesale needed a consumer facing CRM system / portal to offer virtual ISP services and chose Plusnet as a partner rather than BT Retail.

In reply to a post by 50pence:

Seems quite straightforward to me, BT Wholesale needed a consumer facing CRM system / portal to offer virtual ISP services and chose Plusnet as a partner rather than BT Retail.

You completely miss the point.

BT used to be one business.

Because of their size they were forced to split into three major chunks, Retail, Wholesale and Openreach. Supposedly strong Chinese walls were set up by OfCom to ensure their monopoly position was not abused at the retail and wholesale level as that would have stifled competition.

All relationships between them are supposed to be subject to "equivalence". Hence the ridiculous rigmarole that users like ourselves have to go through with line/broadband faults, tag removal and the like.

The inter-company pricing already seems to be a question of "negotiation" as though there were a normal commercial relationship between them. I wonder how close the prices BT Retail and Plusnet pay to Wholesale are to non-BT ISP prices?

"Ah but, can be said", look at the volume of business - so bigger discounts are reasonable". Sorry, no! In Retails's case that's the whole purpose of the rules, to stop them pricing out the competition, and in Plusnet's case they aren't that big.

Similarly I wonder what Plusnet are charging Wholesale for these "services"?

This looks to me like a "clever" circumnavigation of OfCom anti-monopoly rules. It isn't even being sold by Plusnet, in similar fashion to Post Office phone/broadband or Vodaphone, it is being sold by Wholesale. Odd that! Something to do with Marketing psychology and credibility?

Or looking at your post another way - this site looks like Wholesale selling Plusnet to the business community. Not the other way round as you suggest. The portal is Wholesale not Plusnet.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

You completely miss the point.

...

Or looking at your post another way - this site looks like Wholesale selling Plusnet to the business community. Not the other way round as you suggest. The portal is Wholesale not Plusnet.

I have not missed the point and I did not suggest the other way around.

Wholesale want to sell OEM BB, business to business, though need to offer a CRM system etc, Plusnet can provide the functionality and support for the latter though it will not be Plusnet branded.

Hi RobertoS -

From what you've posted it may help you to understand more of the detail about the rules. It's a lot of reading, and during my time at Plusnet I had plenty of work to do in getting my head round what is and isn't allowed. The TSR is probably a good place to start, but suffice it to say I reckon you're a bit off base on this one.

The long and short is that BT Wholesale are free to make commercial deals with whoever they want, internal or external to BT Group. In this case a number of service providers have operated similar product lines for Wholesale over the years (Griffin for one I remember). I expect the pricing to the customer ended up being about the same as it would be now. Plusnet built a platform that is very efficient when it comes to managing those sorts of products, and it's a no brainer really that Wholesale would want to resell that. As I say, Wholesale sell the products of lots of companies, both owned by BT and not.

The main point about the regulatory environment BT are under is that there are strict rules that relate to cross-subsidisation for certain types of products and across the group, along with some other potential causes of anti-competitive behaviour in markets where BT have a monopoly (A monopoly that in the main part they were handed on a plate during privatisation!). To a point I think it's no bad thing to be cynical, and I for one would like to see them being more open in certain areas. But what I can say from personal experience is that BTs own regulatory team make sure the rules don't get broken and are pretty obsessive about doing so. The way the industry is, a lot of people move from company to company and word about uncompetitive behaviour would soon get about and result in potentially disastrous complaints to the regulator, even if internal people haven't blown the whistle first.

/me goes back to lurking

Ian

Edited by IanWild (Sat 25-Apr-09 20:33:24)

PS - I'll ask Seb to drop my ISP tag - I think this must be the first post I made since I left...

.... and you might want to update your sig

LOL. Nice Spot

Thanks Ian, that's a very well-reasoned and helpful post. As I'm suffering from a very bad cold at the moment I don't feel inclined to look into the linked document just yet .

I do have views on the current setup of BT, which may be affected by that document.

I hope things are going well for you. I forget where you went, but remember many here wished you luck and were sorry to see you go. I didn't really know anything about you at that time, but you were clearly well-liked .

Who is your ISP now?????????

Hope you haven't been black listed yet by BY

Edit
Typo re BT but didn't bother to change.

Edited by Apprentice (Sat 25-Apr-09 23:27:49)

BT wouldn't turn away the business

In fact, in my own house in Sheffield I've never had a BT line, and Virgin has always met my needs. My dad lives in a village in the Peak district where I spend a lot of time though, and Plusnet there works perfectly well. There were points when I was staying over there for longer periods of time and I paid for Pro (I hate waiting for anything and I don't mind paying for a better level of service!) but now I've got it on the lowest cost product and it still seems fine. These days I'm happy enough to recommend Plusnet to people who will suit the product set, but I think even the guys there would be the first to agree that it's horses for courses and with such a wide range of providers offering Broadband services, Plusnet isn't always going to be first choice.

Ian

but I think even the guys there would be the first to agree that it's horses for courses

Yes indeed.

It's probably true to say that there are a lot of horses who are not aware of all the courses available to them unfortunately

Yes, I used to recommend Pro in appropriate cases, or the very cheap broadband/phone bundle for very light users.

Now the eighteen month (12 for Pro) contracts have been introduced with no money-back period I have yet to see anyone looking for an ISP fit into the new regime.

And following on from what Apprentice has said about "horses for courses", it still amazes me that so many Plusnet users seem convinced that there is no alternative to the throttling of other packages, which comes down to simply trying to maximise profit.

But we are way OT.