Member Info for fleccy

"For all the legitimate counter arguments Fleccy makes to Mandy , I often think... Can this persons time be better used for capitalist and/ or expansionist endeavours"

Abject can clarify who your post was aimed at? I'm not clear if it was me or Mandy you were having a dig at.

Both my contracts are pre 2024, so theoretically my sim only and Broadband plan's should only increase by CPI+3.9%.

This what the Plusnet email said:

"We want to remind you about some upcoming changes to your prices. On 31st March 2025, the price for your Plusnet services will be increasing by £1.66 a month. This price change is in line with your current terms and conditions.

We know that your home relies on brilliant broadband to keep everyone and everything connected. That’s why we’ll continue to provide you with our best products, customer service and value.

What's changing?

Here’s the detail of how much your price/s will increase:

• Broadband: £1.66

If you receive a discount on your price, it is taken into account when the percentage price increase is applied. This increase is in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rate of inflation published in January this year, plus 3.9%.

If you have other services with us that aren’t listed above then don’t worry, it just means their prices aren’t changing"

Pre price increase

"We'll soon be taking a payment of £25.89 for your service. This will leave your account on or after 28th March 2025"

Post price increase

"We'll soon be taking a payment of £27.55 for your service. This will leave your account on or after 29th April 2025"

On Plusnet the price increases for new Broadband customers are £3 a month, so under the new system my bill would have increased to £28.89, an increase of nearly 11.6%

My EE account was ported over from Plusnet, when Plusnet stopped offering mobile services. My current EE bill is £6.88 a month for unlimited calls and texts and I can't remember my data allowance, but it serves my purposes.

"Revenue after summer and that is getting very close now"

I've read similar posts many times, since I started watching QBT; It's an interesting example of a jam tomorrow investing strategy, where tomorrow never comes. If all of the latest hype comes to nothing, I'm not sure QBT will have anything else to raise investor hopes. You've had method's A, B and C, SaaS, ASIC hype, Quantum, Alternative Blockchains and various mentions of NDA's over the years, and yet the elusive revenue remains just out of reach. Statements like Next month, next summer, in the New Year and other Jam tomorrow opinions should be viewed in a historical context when it comes to judging QBT.

Reform are leading the voting intention statistics at 29% over Labour's 22%

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/voting-intention

Nick there's a big valuation gap between US and UK stocks, I would suggest there's good reason to exit US stocks since you brought up Buffet; In my opinion UK stocks are undervalued and between me and my wife we're pulling in a very good tax free dividend income from our investments. The best return on a cash ISA is about 4.87% and we're near to 5.5% on our dividend yield, so we'd lose on dividend income and be at risk if inflation started going ballistic. I'll stick with safe dividend paying value stocks over cash any day of the week, I view stocks as a safer bet than cash. You're relying on making a killing on the assumption that the market will crash, I'm happy with our investments and unwilling to take a chance on cash. We all have different strategies which is why the market works, only time will tell what the best and worst strategies are, hindsight's a wonderful thing.

"In my instance, most of SHARES ISA have been sold and transferred to cash ISA's split between banks and building society ISA'S, ensuring the £85K maximum is not breached. The daily mail money column will give you up to date rates"

I take a completely different view to you. If you believe there'll be an economic crash, whether that be Global or UK specific, in my opinion cash is the worst thing you could be in. Usually economic drops feed through to a drop in currency which then feeds into inflation, which leads to stocks and assets climbing in cash terms. Cash basically inflates away, whereas assets hold their intrinsic value. If what you believe comes to pass cash is the worst thing to be in, with things like Gold and selected stocks being an obvious choice. Personally I'm not a fan of Gold, since it doesn't pay dividends, so I'll stick with selected stocks and reshape my portfolio to what I perceive as safer options under your scenario.

"aggressively average down) to make some big volume sales and thereby triggering formation of some gaps down at those high 60p's and low 70p's - i.e. gaps which recently filled in opening back up once again"

In English please, Google translate doesn't recognise B0II0X 😕Honestly, if you're going to print an opinion ensure it makes sense. The chance of what you're suggesting without an underlying reason/event, whether that be macro or stock specific, is highly unlikely. It's possible that Vodafone may drop back, but it would require the whole Telecom sector, or market, to shift with it. At the moment the narrative driven market is moving to a more risk on position, because of renewed optimism based on the US/EU agreeing a framework toward a trade deal; Once the dust settles I'm expecting the market to resume its risk off direction and a slow move into value/defensives.

Nick, what are you doing with the cash you release by selling your investments?

Savage there's a flaw in your logic. For Vodafone to drop down into 60's it would require a big market crash, so whatever you sell to buy VOD will also see a significant drop.

I use Plusnet for Broadband and EE for Mobile, we no longer have a landline and left Sky TV a few years ago. We do have Prime and Netflix reinforcing my view that BT were right to come out of streaming, since the streamers are digging deep into their pockets and spending Billions yearly to produce new content.

Why Aus, are you implying I'm stupid? And if I am, explain the nature of my stupidity. I've got broad shoulders, you can be honest.

I think you missed the point Aus, I was suggesting your neighbours must be stupid.

"In my street alone. 4 neighbours have it, initially because we don’t have fibre, but now we have, they’ve kept starlink"

Why would they stay/use Starlink since FTTP is available? I don't understand why anyone would use an expensive satellite service when Fibre to the Premise is available.

https://www.gocompare.com/broadband/starlink-broadband/

"What Starlink broadband speeds can I expect?

Standard Starlink home broadband: 25-100Mbps

Priority broadband: 40-220Mbps

Starlink mobile broadband: 5-50Mbps

Priority mobile: 40-220Mbps

None of Starlink’s services have a top speed that can reach the UK average of 223Mbps, although the Priority package comes close.[4]

Is Starlink faster than 5G?

No, Starlink broadband isn’t reliably faster than 5G.

As you’ve just read, there’s a wide range of possible speeds with Starlink - from 25 to 220Mbps. Real-world download speeds for 5G mobile broadband are 70 to 205Mbps.[5]

If you’re a customer of Three, currently the fastest provider, you can expect to get speeds near the high end of that - assuming there’s a good 5G signal where you are. Where Starlink might win over mobile broadband is in parts of the UK with poor 5G coverage.

Is Starlink internet worth it?

Starlink is expensive! As of March 2025 a standard home broadband package in our home city of Cardiff will set you back:

£75/month for the service

£299 for the hardware

£19 shipping and handling charge

£75 ‘congestion charge’

Charges for optional extra mounts and accessories for your satellite receiver[3][6]

If your home is one of the seven in 10 UK households with access to full fibre, you can get much faster speeds from a fixed-line connection.[6] There’s no benefit to paying extra for satellite broadband unless your circumstances make it hard to get fibre, cable or mobile broadband"

Maybe you should show your neighbours what Go Compare say.

Aus, only a complete idiot would choose to use Starlink where FTTP is available for service. I would suggest that any UK Starlink customer are on it because they don' have FTTP availability. We have a WhatsApp group for our road and we're still awaiting FTTP availability; One of the road group members do have Starlink, but they've said they'll go onto FTTP once it becomes available on the road. Who would pay more for a substandard service that uses more electricity than an FTTP connection? They wouldn't, even Musk has said "Starlink is not some huge threat to telcos. I want to be super clear: it is not". Musk knows he'd look ridiculous if he suggested Starlink was even a slight threat to Terrestrial Telecoms business models, so to suggest that Starlink is a disrupter doesn't stand up to scrutiny; If anything Starlink need Telecom companies as partners, not competitors.

The accompanying article to the Forbes video:

"Musk has never claimed that Starlink would do anything more than connect remote, sparsely settled areas that were too expensive to run fiber-optic cable to. "Starlink is not some huge threat to telcos. I want to be super clear: it is not," he said at a satellite conference in 2020. He pegged the total business opportunity to be “as high as $30 billion a year.”"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2025/04/09/spacex-starlink-elon-musk/

Balanced piece by Forbes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt0eWL9Ahb0

Critical I suggest you carefully read this article, it will likely help you understand better. It discusses the issues around direct satellite to mobile communications:

https://strandconsult.dk/blog/leo-satellites-revolutionary-connectivity-or-a-supporting-act/

"Some Takeaways.

Direct-to-Cell LEO satellite networks face considerable technology hurdles in providing services comparable to terrestrial cellular networks.

They must overcome substantial free-space path loss and ensure uplink connectivity from low-power mobile devices with omnidirectional antennas.

Cellular devices transmit at low power (typically 23–30 dBm), making it very challenging for uplink cellular signals to reach satellites in LEO at 300–1,200 km altitudes, particularly if the cellular device is indoor.

Uplink signals from multiple devices within a satellite beam area can overlap, creating interference that challenges the satellite’s ability to separate and process individual uplink signals.

Must address bandwidth limitations and efficiently reuse spectrum while minimizing interference with terrestrial and other satellite networks.

Scaling globally may require satellites to carry varied payload configurations to accommodate regional spectrum requirements, increasing technical complexity and deployment expenses.

Operating on terrestrial frequencies necessitates dynamic spectrum sharing and interference mitigation strategies, especially in densely populated areas, limiting coverage efficiency and capacity"

"For instance, Starlink’s satellite-based Direct-to-Cell (D2C) service could be a smart way to provide coverage in remote areas where mobile service is currently limited or non-existent"

BT are already doing this:

https://newsroom.bt.com/bt-and-oneweb-deliver-high-speed-satellite-connectivity-to-lundy-island/

https://www.avanti.space/case-studies/extending-ees-4g-network/

EE and other's will likely use more satellite backhaul for backup, or for primary connectivity in remote areas, as time goes on and LEO networks expand.

"I respect your opinion fleccy but disagree with it. I would not dream of saying 'you do not know what you are talking about' as you inferred about me"

Well anyone has the right to disagree with other's opinions, but I post my views based on my experience of working in terrestrial microwave radio for the first 25 years of my telecom career. I've first hand experience of dealing with problems associated with various issues related to rain fade, free space path loss, line of sight issues and understand the principles and shortfall's of Radio Frequency communications as you go higher up the Frequency spectrum.

Satellite to cell is feasible, since you can have more powerful transceivers wit phased array antennas to track the satellites and provide extra gain for the uplink; Satellite to mobile would mean a fast moving satellite would have to supply the entire directional gain to multiple devices, spread out over a geographic area, since mobile phones don't supply any directional gain themselves. Just common sense alone should tell you that satellite direct to mobile communication isn't feasible to multiple's of mobile devices simultaneously, the best you could hope for is a low number of mobiles in a sparsely populated area.

"Then there will be less talk here and in other forums about Starlink being a costly option and technical failure, as it grows its network to tens of thousands of satellites and becomes a real challenger to incumbents like BT, Voda and VM"

This old chestnut keeps popping up in posts, the posters who believe this show their ignorance of the facts. Radio frequencies have limited bandwidth at lower frequencies and the higher the frequency the more problems experienced through atmospherics and path loss. Satellite will never ever ever replace terrestrial communications in urban areas, due to physics, bandwidth limitations and general capacity constraints.

Anyone who suggests that satellite would replace terrestrial communications don't know what they're talking about.