I don't think that any amount of money is going to help given that both Sky and TT have been saying that they are happy to make losses for the first couple of years in order to gain a strong foothold on the ADSL market.

I mean, how can compete with the big boys and their marketing dollars?

It seems that Plus.net are now just about treading water and any further problems with their service is going to cause more people to look at migrating elsewhere.

I think I remember reading that the profit margins per base customer isn't that big so I don't know how they are going to survive when times are really tough.

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Ah yes, God rest his soul!..

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I think you'll find that Don, ie Sadoldman, is still very much with us

You're thinking of Martin (Icarus), a sad loss.

"I mean, how can compete with the big boys and their marketing dollars?"

Why do they have to compete with the spend? If they were looking to punch above their weight and get a higher number of subscribers per advertising

Sorry, I got my Don's and Martin's a bit mixed up!..

We could always make Don a diety any way

I think that the shareholders would want them to compete with the Big Boys to prove that Plus.net are a very capable "market leader" (their words, not mine!)

We've constantly been told that Plus.net are two years ahead of the competition so now i guess its time to get that talk in to action ..

Edited by caesar_salad (Sun 27-Aug-06 17:10:09)

"I think I remember reading that the profit margins per base customer isn't that big so I don't know how they are going to survive when times are really tough."

I think one of the more interesting aspects of this forum in particular is the way that people endow other ISP's with some sort of magical quality that makes them immune from the effects that Sky and TT and others are going to have: in that the assumption seems to be that only Plusnet is in danger of going under or customers are not going to leave them in favour of Sky, TT, or any of the other big players about to enter the scene, and is it merely coincidence that AOL have decided to rid themselves of the general consumer market here in the UK

I suspect that a lot of managers of other ISP's are breaking into a cold sweat at the moment.

Rhetorical question: if it was not for financial reasons why did Zen just weeks after saying "that we have no intentions of introducing caps or limit downloads" or words to that effect do that very thing albeit for new customers and left those that were happy to remain on 2Meg connections keep their unlimited status as did a number of ISP's.

So one could possably deduce that given the price of bandwidth those ISP's may not have had a very good "profit margin",and were attempting to batten down the hatches ready for a stormy ride

I personally think that during the next few months after the dust has settled a lot of names will be gone or bought out by bigger companies.

I agree, the broadband market is in for a big shake-up, that's for sure.

In answer to your question, no ISP is safe and there will be casualties for sure.

It''s just that a lot of the other ISPs haven't being pushing the self destruct button as much as Plus.net has.

I personally don't want Plus.net to go out of business because it will be a nightmare for all the subscribers who will have to deal with possible migration without MAC addresses in pretty much the same way that another ISP did recently.

It's been said that once BTw put a cease on your line there ain't going to be much of a chance of getting a MAC address after that.

"We've constantly been told that Plus.net are two years ahead of the competition so now i guess its time to get that talk in to action"

They're stuck in a rut and incapable of getting out of it. All they can do is resell and cream off a little profit until the market changes. When the next stage in the evolution of the UK's access infrastructure (vDSL/WiMAX) is certain, then that is the time for investment and action.

TT

The subscribers that they are looking for probably won't need all those fancy bits and bobs and if Plus.net can make a bit of profit from running a business then good luck to them.

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I reckon that Plus.net are regretting about pulling out from here but there isn't any way that they can come back on here without looking like they've made a U turn.

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I hope that if they do come back here, we don't end up an "I told you so" response.


seb