Member Info for Aus3009

Fleccy - honestly nope, I wouldn’t know.....

Hey NDN I agree it’s a nightmare but it’s not like they haven’t done it before. 17m premised now, what do you think another 5 to 10m and they will be done, leaving BT with the rest. Although as you said I’ve read articles where liberty are talking about areas they may have previously considered uneconomic?

Who knows, I’m just trying to point out some of the conclusions I have come to, off my own back regarding the risk. It might turn out Comcast and liberty don’t get in?

Haha Fleccy I’ve heard telecom industry is full of BS’ers & only 1% of engineers actually understand any of it (earthnet). Cisco is only just over 30 years old isn’t it? .... close run thing that. States maybe?

Fleccy changing the colour of water in the pipes is one thing, but the pipes themselves ? I think we’ve been helped by NDN who has already explained digging and laying pipes in the hard costly bit

I was also very careful to say BT’s “network” was public funded (access is still same twisted pair in the main) I AND it gave them too much of an advantage.

It’s the combination of public funding and market advantage. I’ll say it for the 3rd time Neither of which virgin has

I also didn’t say virgins network wouldn’t be regulated, of course it’s regulated, I was careful to say “forced to open its network to others”

Because neither of those 2 previous conditions can be met..... this is a pointless discussion unless you know something new?

Fleccy I wasn’t talking about Openreach and company ipo’s. I said network. I said bt’s Network was funded by public money and that this gave them too much of an advantage in the market. Neither of which apply to the cable “network” which is why ofcom will never force them to open it up to others

NDN we’ve discussed this before, your argument doesn’t stack up to me. You say it too difficult, too costly,,yet Virgin already has 17m + premises passed. I wouldn’t expect them to cover 100% but equally I can’t see why they wouldn’t do more, especially now they are cash rich, they have a potential partner in the U.K. & it’s the only way they can expand or grow. You already answered you own question regarding 3rd party access, all the other cable companies used private money & then telewest/ntl bought them and all their assets, later for liberty to do the same. BT had its ducts and network (physicals) paid for with public money & were handed too much of an advantage / monopoly because of it. Liberty has none of these, liberty will never be forced to share their cable network unless I’ve missed something or don’t know something this subject can’t keep coming up for debate..... there literally is no debate.

Continued - just to add I see apple struggling with my “enough “ theory, iPhone sales are down because iPhone customers already have “enough” so the expense of a new one are no longer a primary concern. The difference is apple have lots of other things people want to buy.... ergo the problem.

Sorry 1 giga bit

Virgin Media’s network will never be regulated and forced to open to others like Openreach because it’s been entirely built with private money. That’s not to say for example they won’t open up to fellow cable operator COMCAST (sky) which I’ve already said might happen because Comcast will be of the view cable is king. Liberty have all the cash from their european sales to Vodafone & the pair of them might be game changers in the U.K. with Openreach & maybe virgin networks plus new 5G solutions, I would have to say that reaches the definition of enough network, both of which delivering more than enough to a retail customer, But this still leaves BT needing something to sell at a level covering their costs plus profits. It’s not new network, because most users already have “enough”. The cost of enough is going to go down & Virgin for example is much more streamlined than BT is it less than 6000 staff?. This is all down to the “as much “ as you can eat model, the capacity is growing in cost & increasing every month, whilst the cost or what people will pay goes down driven by the customer already having “enough”. The model works if BT could charge for usage, but it can’t. BT TB and sport was a brave attempt to have something not network related to create revenue but sky is equally as dominant in TV as Openreach is to network, or was before Virgin and others arrived. BT has missed the boat a bit on TV, they had the chance to blaze a trail & get a head start with a really smart tv offering before SKY could change, but they have now with Q and NOW tv........ BT could have been the first to bring everything together over IPTV (like Apple TV does) but they chose the set top box model which was more like a sky offering in a market where sky was dominant. Looking to the future, there might be one last hurrah before BT needs to get successful at other things. The bojo government might throw money and reduce regulation for full fibre..... but this worries me too. The risk here is BT increase prices but forced COMCAST into agreeing terms with virgin, not only based on ideology but price?.. of course BT is much bigger than broadband to the home, but none of its other business are making money either. So what does the future hold, where will BT find a market to cover its extraordinary costs, driven by over the top services who do not pay nearly enough for what the use / encourage others to use. BT needs to find a way to leverage its network, otherwise it’s not king, it’s a mill stone. Any ideas ? Bearing in mind Virgin will offer 1ghz download to all their customers end of next year.

I’m unclear about the future too. The telecoms model doesn’t seem to work well in the modern connected world, once consumers “get enough”. What I mean about that is new tech companies get to make loads of money off the back of telecoms company’s connectivity, selling services through it, whilst telecoms companies are left with the expense of maintaining and upgrading it. All the way up to 4G and 30 plus megabit home broadband, telecoms company’s generate revenue because everyone wants to upgrade or wants more. Mean while telecoms company’s are not getting their piece of the pie for the increased traffic, other than small opportunities to revenue very low cost rental / wholesale income ( in the 90’s loads of carrier companies went bust because this model doesn’t work with competition). Now the vast majority of consumers “have enough” telecoms company’s have what they don’t need any more. I think this is why markets see value in the services and not the network. I hear people say “network is king” but I don’t agree when the network already delivers what over the top services need & where there are alternatives. When this happens it starts to be about cost, lower retail costs then look like the 3rd and worst of the problems. Tech companies won’t care so long as the network doesn’t deteriorate

I never block anyone on a public site. Regardless.

Longish - we will have to disagree on this one I’m afraid. I’m concerned you don’t get my point. The reason why not very many technology services /are sold / bought from third parties and visa versus, is not because they can’t its because internally it’s all one set of rules & one standard therefore companies choose not to have two, or three or risk their customer data to new complexity & therefore risk. This won’t stop such trade but it will damage it. If the UK carries on being ridiculous about the whole thing and the harm out choices will do to others, they will certainly make a conscious decision to not take on risk & complexity, when they can choose not to. I find this a fairly obvious and compelling conclusion. Obviously U.K. market will suffer in its own right.

Fleccy - although you are much more polite than me, it seems you are coming round when it comes to Avro

Longish - I think we will have wait and see. I’m pretty sure EU companies will shy away from third countries. Can you imagine key banking for the Euro remaining in London long term. Bad enough a country outside the euro area, outside EU jurisdiction... european bank.... there’s no chance.

Longish - so you don’t think different jurisdiction areas for data protection and information sharing won’t affect services .... really ?

Sorry missed out Irish border. WTO will force Britain into having an Irish border otherwise their WTO membership will be invalid

Dodger777 do you are one of them then. For a start BT do lots of telecoms for the “actual “ EU itself, when bidding starts they restrict it to EU members to ensure their rules and regulations are followed. Speaking of which BT outside the EU will no longer be signed up to all the data protection and information sharing regulations, again this will automatically remove them from the bidding process for many european companies. & by the way another important fact if U.K. crashes out of EU they will have to have a border or they will crash out of the WTO too. (That will further damage BT) WTO regulations & rules clearly require then to have a hard and manned customs and trade border......... oops

NDN of okay. That makes sense thanks.

NDN I’m not sure a share plan like that before tax is legal. I think government allows £1500 tax free investment but that I think would be fixed to 5 years..

I can see the internet police are in again. Particularly like the post taking the moral high ground whilst using swear word insults and name calling. As its not a weekend & there’s actual company news happening, I’d like to add I don’t buy into to this leaches argument. I’m sure BT see them as paying customers, each and everyone of them (ahem) I mean Openreach do. I do agree with the regulator point though, there is a debate available whether BT (ahem) I mean Openreach is allowed to charge a fair price or not?