Member Info for fleccy

Well it's certainly pumped up the Volume, 25,437,358 as of 15 mins ago.

"BT bolsters defence against potential bid from tycoon Drahi"

https://news.sky.com/story/bt-bolsters-defence-against-potential-bid-from-tycoon-drahi-12445093

looks like my wireless keyboard needs a re-charge

"It’s called DUCT SHARING, bought in years ago by OFCOM to generate “competition “, there’s bugga all BT can do about it."

It doesn't matter, because the duct and pole rental price is regulated to cover the cost of repair and allow Openreach (BT) a profit. As has been pointed out many times, BT own the Ducts and Poles separately to Openreach, even thou Openreach administer it. Should BT decide to sell Openreach, they could parcel the infrastructure into a separate holding company with its own valuation.

Here's some documentation submitted to Ofcom, detailing some of the issues. CityFibre and Openreach give their different points of view.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/210864/openreach-november-response.pdf

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/202464/cityfibre-supplemental-response.pdf

Link to WFTMR page at OFCOM.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-1/2021-26-wholesale-fixed-telecoms-market-review

Lots of Bedtime reading

Todays volume up to around 18:00

On Exchange Trade Volume 2.973626 Million
Off Book Volume 3.308635 Million
UT Morning/Evening 7.622716 Million

Total Volume 13.904977 Million

"he replied yes, well Openreach is part owned by the government, so we can use it. I said I don't think so, Openreach is owned by BT to which he assured me that it was. He either doesn't know what he's talking about or full of BS."

Nige the guy you spoke to in the street, he will just be doing as he's told by his manager, and wont have a clue about the processes leading up to him using the Duct. Virgin Media will have booked the work and cleared it through Openreach, and I assume will have to pay the PIA rental as soon as the work is completed. They may be able to lay the Fibre for free using there own authorised contractors, but the ongoing use of the duct isn't free.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/04/openreach-interview-the-challenges-of-sharing-cable-ducts-for-fibre.html

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/pricing/loadProductPriceDetails.do?data=z75T9D0yfFKL0UorCMMA7OVMbA8c5ofXzFv23yZvBj9Z6rNZujnCs99NbIKJZPD9hXYmiijxH6wrCQm97GZMyQ%3D%3D

According to Google, the current "average number of shares traded each day over the past 30 days" is "28.18M".

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BT.A:LON

Investopedia says:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/averagedailytradingvolume.asp

Here were the volumes leading up to the Final Results in May:
04/05/2021 49923447
05/05/2021 38156980
06/05/2021 49786174
07/05/2021 24956364
10/05/2021 68204698
11/05/2021 32601999
12/05/2021 67287017
13/05/2021 66938089

Here were the volumes leading up to the Q1 Results in July:
20/07/2021 27943520
21/07/2021 35020315
22/07/2021 13959312
23/07/2021 24098119
26/07/2021 16775630
27/07/2021 10412166
28/07/2021 28010851
29/07/2021 68810793
30/07/2021 32537277

Current Volumes
The volume was particularly low on Friday, but it blipped higher on Wednesday due to some big Off Book trades.
11/10/2021 22041751
12/10/2021 18559783
13/10/2021 17582324
14/10/2021 15236848
15/10/2021 20903757
18/10/2021 14616786
19/10/2021 18791615
20/10/2021 73378648
21/10/2021 10945555
22/10/2021 8667035

From the above, the volume appears to be tailing off after the big trades on Wednesday, and it's currently looking like volumes are going to be low today also, unless there are some big surprise trades later in the day.
If the Volumes stay low this week, it could be the market awaiting the Q2 results on the 4th November, or a lack of sellers/buyers for reasons we can only guess at.

It wont just involve links, there'll be applications, connectivity, backup capacity, etc, etc. The build will be shared amongst various companies.

"Most people can't even afford clean water, let alone a mobile phone! So, I see it more like India than Germany. It will be a miracle that VOD will make a fortune there."

To be fair, they are doing well in the metropolitan areas, and Mpesa, which is Africa's largest mobile money platform.
Mpesa is apparently used in 10 countries, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Lesotho, Ghana, Egypt, Afghanistan, South Africa and Ethiopia.

https://www.fao.org/e-agriculture/news/10-years-m-pesa-worlds-most-successful-money-transfer-service

The difference between Africa and India, is that African countries are truly independent of each other, whereas India is split up into regions under the same Government. The Indian Government have apparently helped Jio gain dominance through various policy actions, so Vodafone wrote off their investment and all but washed their hands of India, at least that's the impression I get from the various articles I've read.

"Africa (vodacom) could be vods saviour, or could be it's downfall,who knows? It's a gamble. We just have to wait & see."

Africa is a third world continent, most of Vodafone's profits come from elsewhere. Germany is where the bulk of Vodafone investment has gone, and more recently some of the Eastern Block EU states. Currently, germany comprises 31% of Vodafone service revenue's, with Germany's total revenue coming in at €12.984 Billion; The UK comes in at €6.151 Billion total revenue; Vodacom comes in at €5.181, but granted it does have potential for high profit growth, assuming it can expand its operations throughout the continent. I wouldn't describe Africa as make or break for VOD though.

"I am a bit out of date but recall a LEO constellations could generate multiple tax costs depending where the ground earth stations are location"

I believe that Starlink are looking at the Isle of Man for one of their ground stations, so there may be something in that. A lot of money appears to be directed at Leo's, but the technological solutions seem to fall into the category of "to complicated", in my opinion.

"From $0.85 ten years ago to a stupendous $5m in another ten or so years. So still a chance to make 10x your money ??? I think not. I think the 50 expert predictions are all self serving."

I agree with Jamie Dimon, I don't see any value in Bitcoin. The terminology is used to give it a psychological comparison to Gold. We're lead to believe that they're both mined, so bitcoin must be real, right? They've created something out of thin air based on a useful technology (Blockchain), then they've created a market and pumped it stratospherically. They build the myth around scarcity, saying only 21 million Bitcoins are possible, and then use techniques like Fractionalisation to increase the investor base.
The pump stories touting £5 million Bitcoin, are targeted at new investment and retaining existing investment, but what can you actually do apart from trade it, or store it.
I watched Life at 50 degrees today, on BBC news. A Fderik Goat Farmer was feeding his goats with cardboard, but fed them real food just before he was about to sell them; The goats could digest the cardboard, but with next to no nutritional value. I wonder if it's possible to construct a metaphor around the Goats and Bitcoin; What would be the cardboard, who are the goats, who is the farmer, and what happens to the Goats once they're sold? I thought Bitcoin might be likened to the cardboard, with the Goats being the people buying it, and the farmer could be likened to the big players pulling the strings. The documentary didn't show the last bit, when the Goats we're being sold on, so the end result is unknown. What isn't in doubt is that the farmer will make a profit, but did the goats go on to graze in green pastures, or did they get slaughtered?

"Hopefully BT can tender a winning bid for this contract. I guess we will be fully out of the government austerity phase."

I doubt it will be just one contract, even subcontracts will likely have subcontracts. By the time it comes to the individual profits, they will likely be well spread out.

"Elon Musk’s Starlink is eyeing a tie-up with Vodafone to expand its satellite broadband service in the UK."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/10/24/elon-musks-starlink-talks-vodafone-uk-expansion/

I'm sceptical about the ability of Low Earth Orbit Satellite backhaul reliability as you get higher up the mm wave frequencies. Terrestrial links, using mm wave frequencies, are subject to ever higher rain fade as you get above 11Ghz. I would suspect that the Ground stations would need large dishes, or arrays, to deal with uplink/downlink losses, and the signal to noise ratio issues as you try and cram more data into the bandwidth. The Earth (Ground) stations might best be sited in areas where there's less occurrence of heavy rain; So for the UK maybe the south of England, with the inter satellite links from higher latitudes carrying the data to a satellite train transiting close to the Earth station. It appears that the UK currently has Starlink trains transiting at no higher latitudes than around 53 degree's North.

https://satellitemap.space/

I used to be sceptical that the model would work at all, but I can see work arounds for most of the operational problems, but at what cost? Another issue with LEO's, which I'm sure the Engineers and Scientists will have considered, is Solar Storms. Solar activity has the potential to wreak havoc with Terrestrial communications, what would a repeat of the Carrington event do to Satellites?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2I6sqeaSDk

Just Fools Gold in my opinion, but what do I know?

"Now, a panel of 50 bitcoin and cryptocurrency experts has predicted the bitcoin price will continue to climb through 2021, hitting highs of around $80,000, before surging to $250,000 by 2025 and a staggering $5 million per bitcoin by 2030."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc2sICvyeuY

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/10/23/crypto-price-prediction-bitcoin-forecast-to-hit-5-million-as-price-soars-through-2021/

This tailing off in volumes may be something worth keeping an eye on, it might have some significance if it continues. It may also be worth noting the quantity of Off Book Trades, set against On Exchange trades.

"BT has the permission of major stakeholders to make even further price cuts to equinox in order to ensure BT/OR remain competitive."

They have to be a bit careful, OFCOM will veto anything deemed as damaging competition. Personally, I believe OFCOM want Openreach to become the defacto access network provider, via products like PIA, etc. BT would possibly be another ISP, but offering wholesale products to other ISP's. I think Openreach will be seperated off at some point in the future, possibly once the pension is sorted and the current builds are completed; Openreach will likely eventually be a public listed company in its own right, which would mean a windfall for BT shareholders at that point.

"My own view is that BT needs to cut out many more managers and keep driving down costs as quickly as possible to enable that competitiveness."

Bt will be a much simpler and slimed down company 6 years from now, with the same capability. The access network will be majority Fibre, all the PSTN Network will be gone, and all the data/voice/video will be converged onto IP. The Access and Core Router/switches will deal with everything, so the diverse array of Network Equipments will be massively reduced also; Basically the Network will consist of three components, Access Fibre, Router/Cloud Network, and DWDM Transmission, 4G/5G will also be dealt with in the cloud in similar fashion. By 2031, I expect BT will also have handed back the majority of the leasehold buildings to Telereal. There will probably bespoke/premium services for business customers, and I think the Altnets will really struggle there.