Member Info for fleccy

Only an issue if you're a day trader, or need to sell.

"UBS downgrade was on Friday mng early"

Tomayto, tomahto

"Regulators investigate elite London law firm Mishcon de Reya"

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/sep/09/regulators-investigate-elite-london-law-firm-mishcon-de-reya

The Law Firm dealing with the case on behalf of Justin Le Patourel is Mishcon de Reya.

"SRA reportedly probing Mishcon de Reya"

https://www.legalcheek.com/2020/09/sra-reportedly-probing-mishcon-de-reya/

I've just searched the Competition Appeal Tribunal website and can't find this case. It appears that this is currently just a headline, with no case showing on the CAT website.

https://www.catribunal.org.uk/

The more I think about this, the more I can't see any reasoning behind this case. There's a legal requirement for BT to provide a Landline if requested, but there's no legal requirement for someone to have a landline. Even as far back as 2015, there were alternatives to landlines. There was mobile contracts and Pay As You Go offerings, no one was forcing someone to use BT. There may be individual cases, if it can be proved there was no mobile coverage in certain areas, but there was choice in 2015, where's the case?

Funny how it comes out the same weekend as a litigation announcement. BT's share price has been under sustained attack for a long time imo. Not the first time this sort of thing has happened.

Lol, I just need to add one more thing, I currently pay £7.10 a month to Plusnet and have unlimited calls plus 2GB of data a month. My mobile charge is considerably less than landline rental, and that doesn't include added call charges. Where there's choice, there's competition, I just can't see how BT has a case to answer.

"Emm, I think your point about other providers is incorrect - the very point is that BT is monopoly provider of infrastructure. However it does read as opportunistic lawyers cashing in- which I think is a disgraceful practice."

I'm with SKY and moved house recently. My previous connection was ADSL, and I had a basic TV package. When I moved I contacted SKY and the operator advised that we would see a reduction in payments even though the new connection would be FTTC and even secured a better TV package. You hear the same story all the time across all industries, anyone watched the adverts from companies like booking.com, or switch.com? Commercial companies can charge what they want, and you can't compare a 70 year old individual to a company like TalkTalk who has a million users. BT hasn't done anything wrong, every other company in every other industry does the same. I pay for a landline with Sky which doesn't even have a phone plugged in, as we use mobiles instead, and pay line rental on it.
BT will argue that the people affected by this case had other options other than a BT landline, they could have changed providers, or taken a number of steps if they didn't like the charges on BT. Nobody forced these people to use BT's service, the fact that these people didn't change providers was down to personal preference. BT reduced their charges voluntarily, if BT had been doing anything wrong OFCOM would have dealt with them.
Just to tie this one up, if BT did lose this case, then all the other providers will get hit by similar cases. The reasoning behind this is that the likes of SKY and Talk receive a substantial discount on bulk, if they haven't passed the discount on then they must also be liable, not that I believe there's any case to answer.

Just to add to my last post, BT either charged within the rules allowed by OFCOM at the time, or they overcharged. If BT were guilty of overcharging OFCOM would have been all over them. If there was a case why didn't OFCOM fine BT and force a refund. I have no legal background, but applying a common sense view, where's the case to be answered?

Sometimes this type of litigation is started in the hope that the company will settle for a much lower figure and the lawyers get an easy pay-out. Another possibility is that it's an attack on the share price by other interested parties. It'll probably make a few headlines now and we'll never hear of it again. It feels more like a shakedown, in my opinion, than a real class action case.

"Harbour Litigation Funding or 'Harbour' is one of the UK's first litigation funders and one of the largest litigation funders in the world, measured by the size of its investment funds.[1] It operates hubs in London and Hong Kong and has funded litigation in 13 jurisdictions and arbitration under 4 arbitral rules. Harbour is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Litigation funders pay all or part of the costs of a dispute. If the case is won and monies received, they take a pre-agreed share of the proceeds. If the case is lost, the loss is the funder's - not the claimant's."

Justin Le Patourel
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-le-patourel-691a3214a/?originalSubdomain=uk

The £5 Billion is likely to be handed out in dribs and drabs, the more important milestone is the decision on the wholesale fixed telecoms market review due in March. OFCOM have spoiled other operators, offering them discounted access to BT infrastructure, like all spoiled children the more they receive the more they want. The latest request from other operators is for OFCOM to force BT's Ducts and Poles into a separate unit. With BT's commitment to a £12 Billion investment in FTTP, and taking into account Openreach already demonstrating a commitment to fair access to infrastructure, I just can't see OFCOM tightening the screw anymore. BT have already committed to a full Fibre rollout, where's the need to open up BT's network more than it already is? As I've pointed out before, Vodafone has invested enough capital into Germany to Fibre out the UK 10 times, and I state that as a Vodafone investor myself. I could be wrong, but I suspect that it wont be bad news for BT in March, and I'm also hoping the pension review is good news too.

Has Grantdrew and his thread disappeared? He must have been ejected out of the hatch at 20,000 feet.

"What would be that cost? Has to include the ability to “hook up” at any point along any road, any field etc rather than per premise
On that basis, starlink sounds low cost to me.

I wouldn't want one of those dishes stuck on top of my car, imagine the wind resistance and added fuel costs lol. I'm not so sure the cost and difficulty setting up would be worthwhile for caravans either, in view of future 5G capabilities. Whichever way you cut it, Starlink will be a niche offering. I suppose it may do well in a maritime setting, but time will tell. As I mentioned previously, the low latency Trans-Atlantic and Transpacific capability may be of interest to the Trading World, as I believe the potential latency could be less than low latency subsea cables like Hibernia.

Shareholders are given zero priority in terms of Government policy, so what would happen if every single Airline and Travel company went bust? The vultures would just move in strip the carcasses and business would recover with new entities taking over, and the current shareholders would lose most if not all of their investment. I'm not saying that would happen, but it just adds perspective. All it will take is for vaccine resistant covid 19 variants to emerge, and the Travel industry will be tested to destruction.

"SpaceX’s Starlink fleet is reportedly set to cost around $10 billion, with nearly 12,000 Ku-band, Ka-band and V-band satellites positioned in at different altitudes in multiple orbital planes."

https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/05/15/spacex-releases-new-details-on-starlink-satellite-design/

"SpaceX designed its satellites to have a lifespan of 1 to 5 years, they plan to intentionally deorbit old satellites so they could completely burn up into Earth's atmosphere, this feature avoids contributing to space junk. This way, they could continually upgrade the satellite constellation by deploying new satellites to replace the old ones as years go by. Each satellite is equipped by ion thrusters powered by krypton which allow each to adjust into orbit. It is probable (not confirmed) that SpaceX tested the thrusters adjusting capabilities with the Starlink-46 satellite to see if the feature is working at optimal levels."

https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/starlink-deorbit

BT's FTTP Rollout is estimated to cost £12 Billion (approximately $16.5 Billion), and will last for generations. Assuming each starlink satellite lasts 5 years, the whole of the constellation will cost at least $2 billion in replacements alone each year, not including operational costs for running the system. I'll gladly be corrected if I'm reading this wrong.

2025 should be interesting, solar activity has been known to affect power grids and even terrestrial communication systems, I wonder how many satellites will survive heightened solar activity.

"These storms have the potential to cause serious problems for modern technological systems, disrupting or damaging satellites in space and the multitude of services – like navigation and telecoms – that rely on them. Geomagnetic storms can also black out power grids and radio communications, as well as creating a radiation hazard for astronauts in space, even serving potentially harmful doses of radiation to astronauts on future missions to the Moon or Mars."

https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Solar_cycle_25_the_Sun_wakes_up

The Starlink Satellites have ION thrusters, but there may be a limit to the the amount of adjustment. I suspect lots of atmospheric drag will reduce the working life of the satellites.

"This drag slows low Earth orbit satellites, causing them to lose altitude. These insights could be useful for developing strategies to counter the effects of solar activity on the orbits of such satellites."

https://www.natureasia.com/en/nindia/article/10.1038/nindia.2015.79

Potentially severe solar storms could cause cause major issues, and risk statistically increases with the number of satellites in orbit. This will be a massive technological feat with a lot of things that can go wrong. I consider myself to be an optimist, but with thousands of low Earth orbit satellites with a limited working life, due to their low orbit, what could possibly go wrong?

Just realised the link I posted is wrong, here is the correct link.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=46726.0;attach=1972395

From what I've been reading, they're quoting 4.06 watts maximum at the antenna flange equivalent, with a maximum EIRP of 38.2dbw. I'm assuming I'm looking at the correct document, where did the 100W figure come from?
EIRP stands for Effective Isotropic Radiated Power and takes account of any dish gains, cable losses, etc, but the transmitter only kicks out just over 4W max.

"At the phased array’s equivalent of an “antenna flange,” the highest transmit power (4.06 W) occurs at
maximum slant, while the lowest transmit power (0.76 W) occurs at boresight. Similarly, the
highest EIRP for all carriers (38.2 dBW) occurs at maximum slant and the lowest level (33.4
dBW) occurs at boresight. Conversely, the antenna gain is highest at boresight (33.2 dBi and
34.6 dBi for the receive and transmit antennas, respectively) and lowest at maximum slant
(30.6 dBi and 32.0 dBi for the receive and transmit antennas, respectively)."

file:///C:/Users/fflet/Downloads/259301%20(1).pdf

"So early testers in rural areas got average 80mbps which is awesome. £439 for the dish, £89 per month subscription and £54 delivery."

Bear in mind that Beta testers don't have the same uplink/downlink contention issues that a fully utilised system would have, should they persuade enough users onto the system. Since the uplink/downlink uses microwave, it has much less bandwidth available than optical systems. They can get around some of the bandwidth limitations using quadrature amplitude modulation techniques, but these are more prone to atmospheric distortion. They might also be able to get around some of the atmospheric line of sight issues using multiple satellites as an array, but that comes with loading issues dependent on conditions. Starlink will have a ton of issues, I just can't see it having mass appeal in developed countries, It's another interesting thing to watch though.