Member Info for fleccy

"A former Whitehall insider told the Financial Times"

An unnamed Whitehall source? Most likely a cleaner or security guard, if you believe as I do that stories like this are just a shakeout and not based on fact. We can all speculate about what Labour may do, but any attack on Banks will affect lending and quickly feed into the real economy. I intensely dislike Labour, but I've heard nothing to suggest they're going after banks. The FCA should pursue stories like these as they have a single aim, which is to knock the share prices of the targeted stocks.

Looks like one of my posts have disappeared, at least I can't find it. It looks as though you're not allowed to call out politicians for their obvious shortcomings. Maybe it was removed because I suggested Clowns are in charge, or accused them all of being ideologues when we need pragmatists. Cancel culture alive and well.

We lived in Cornwall for 10 years and I loved it, but my missus hated it so we no longer live there.

I couldn't resist it.

https://i.postimg.cc/wv2bwt3k/ybug.jpg

"Many people are worried about the future of satire in the UK: the threat of draconian laws to make it illegal to say that Yvette Cooper looks like a character from A Bug’s Life doesn’t immediately bode well"

"Asked to elaborate on the millionaire donor’s pass, Sir Keir described Alli’s role as “transition work”, which is one way of saying “giving me money to buy glasses”. Starmer has more than an element of Malvolio about him: saying transparently ludicrous things while not grasping his essential absurdity"

"And then there’s the PM’s fatal flaw – his sense-of-humour bypass. This became all too apparent during the election campaign, when Sir Keir expressed outrage at studio audiences laughing at his nth rendition of “my father was a toolmaker” during the TV debates. “My father would have turned in his grave,” he huffed to GB News, attributing the giggles to snobbery rather than just, you know, him saying the same thing over and over again, which became a running joke"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/27/labour-party-has-become-national-joke/

Eightyeight I know Public sector pensions are Defined Benefit. My private pension was a DB pension, it didn't stop the company degrading my pension following Brown's raid; Over a number of years my pension benefits were degraded, then changed to include a salary sacrifice and then closed completely 6 years before I retired, to add insult to injury my pension increases are capped at 4.235%, even when inflation is running at 10%. My blood boils when I think about what Brown did to my pension, Reeves will probably hammer others to pay for big public sector pay rises, including future private sector pensioners.

I've got an idea, why don't they cap public sector pension rises at a maximum of 5% and make public sector workers pay more into their pensions?

I notice articles aimed at hurting sentiment in BT are coming thick and fast at the moment.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/bt-faces-exodus-of-customers-after-sky-strikes-deal-with-cityfibre-rival-warns/ar-AA1ps0aq?ocid=msedgntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=b7458daec9d04bebb5a6a70f377ef936&ei=16

It seems certain parties are trying really hard to push the share price down, it isn't like we haven't seen this sort of negative sentiment play before.

It's the same link.

"It's time that BT PR department earned their money when our national broadcaster can get away with putting lies and free publicity for BT competition on the airwaves"

BT aren't allowed to say anything that might damage investment into the Altnets, remember the end in tears comment by Jansen and the reaction?

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/uks-ofcom-delays-bt-fibre-pricing-decision-after-ceo-remarks-2023-03-17/

BT appear to be banned from saying anything against the Altnets for fear of OFCOM wrath. Jansen decided to give notice not long after that incident. OFCOM appear to regulate BT's comments as well as the their Network.

The reason I don't worry about Altnet competition, is because the current environment has a real Deja Vu feel, it reminds me of the cable company start ups and other previous actions aimed at promoting competition; Anyone remember Mercury smartbox, carrier preselect, DSLAMS in BT Exchange co-location areas and other innovations that were meant to encourage competition.

The advantage of Fibre, over mobile and Fixed Wireless Access, is that Fibre can support massive Bandwidths and is more easily upgradeable; Also Passive Optical Network's are cheaper to run, as there's no need for powered equipment in the street so no maintenance required. In an urban setting, to meet the required bandwidth needs to allow RF to come even close to competing with Fibre, you'd have to build lots of masts per sq KM and have lots directional antennas, meaning lots of street furniture and they'd still connect them with Fibre. FWA and mobile broadband is probably fine for a village, but once you get to the size of a town Fibre wins hands down.

"Fast forward another decade or two and 6G emerges plus other new tech, so it's all a bit of a cycle"

Savage I keep reading opinions about 6G replacing 5G and it being a completely new cycle, but I see it differently, in my opinion 6G will be more an evolution of 5G rather than being a completely new cycle. In many cases 6G will be application specific and reuse 5G frequencies. The much hyped 100Ghz plus high bandwidth 6G applications will be more akin to WiFi than mobile services, and will likely be used in short range line of site locations with large numbers of users simultaneously accessing content, stadiums, shopping centers, Railway stations, etc spring to mind.

LEO's also have frequency/bandwidth issues, since they're subject to the same limitations as terrestrial communications, the higher the frequency the shorter the range. They can use more advanced modulation techniques to squeeze more bandwidth out of lower frequencies, but that has its limitations due to noise; Also a satellite at an altitude of over 500Km, and travelling at high speed relative to the customer's on the ground, has to efficiently use it's phased array antenna's to provide services. Physics and distance means LEO's will never be able to compete against ground based communications, there are limits to the number of uses and users even with 12,000 satellites orbiting.

My point is that once the current FTTP and 5G rollouts are completed, I don't really see any major future generational upgrades from here, just a slow grind as better more efficient equipment's becomes available; Unless they somehow discover some new science fiction solution like Quantum communications.

They have the same CEO?

Youfibre is part of Netomnia and they mostly use Openreach ducts and poles, utilising BT's regulated PIA rental product's, so BT/Openreach gets a cut of their profits. Netomnia benefits from the regulatory regime, created by OFCOM, but it costs them to use BT's infrastructure. The truth is Altnets only exist because OFCOM hold BT/Openreach down and if a truly competitive environment was allowed to play out, BT would wipe the floor with all of them and they know it.

This deal between Sky and Cityfibre changes nothing, as far as the investment case for BT is concerned, as I've pointed out previously BT's a cost cutting and increased efficiency play. Building closures, PSTN switch off, convergence and completion of FTTP/5G rollouts will increase BT's Net Income and cash flow significantly, so losing some wholesale broadband customers isn't as relevant as some suggest.

BT own EE which will always be a top 3 MNO and are still winning large Enterprise/Government contracts, as demonstrated by the recent NATS and ESN win's. The market and media treat BT as though it's a one trick pony, you could be fooled into thinking that BT is just a Fibre provider, like the Altnets, but they're much more than that.

Nearly a third of the headline Net debt is lease liabilities, which is on a downward trend due to BT's planned Exchange closures around 2032, allowed under the Telereal Trillium leaseback deal. BT's financial debt has been increasing, but that'll stop as the FTTP/5G capex winds down, so the BT debt narrative is overblown in my opinion.

Even if Openreach lost all its other wholesale ISP customers, BT could just drop its prices and start a price war which'd see much of the competition rapidly go out of business. Most of the UK's communication providers (CP's) only exist because OFCOM has created a survivable environment for them to thrive in. If OFCOM released BT's shackles the other CP's would be in real trouble, you only need to look at the reactions to Equinox pricing. Sky using Cityfibre, in addition to Openreach, will strengthen BT's argument for OFCOM to loosen regulation at the next Fixed Access Telecoms review covering the 2026 to 2031 period, which should worry the Altnets.

Aim you're saying that Labour would help a non unionised company, owned by Comcast, in preference to a unionised UK company like BT, I'm sure the CWU would be really happy about that.

Let me start by saying that I don't view this in any way a threat to BT, or Openreach, I will however fill my boots should this shakeout drop the price low enough. I had some previous purchases at £1.06 and £1.12, it'd be awesome if those prices were revisited, I might even consider selling my Lloyds shares to really pile into BT at those prices. If I'm reading the articles correctly, Sky will maintain their partnership with BT so where's the immediate problem? Sky are only doing what Talk and Vodafone have already done.

I wasn't making it up when I said the post office clerk mentioned lots of equipment returns to Sky. The reason we decided to come off Sky TV (Signature package), was that the price was about to go up from £28 a month to £36 a month, or thereabouts, so we decided to jump ship since my wife only watched free to air content and Discovery +. We already had Netflix and Prime, so after binning Sky we just subscribed to Discovery + separately and my wife has been more than happy since. Our next TV will either be Freely capable, or we'll buy a Freely set top box when they become available, so we were just paying Sky over the odds for the facility to record and pause live TV. Sky tried to win us back by offering us Sky Signature for £22 a month, but we said no and I've now blocked their number since they kept ringing. They also tried to persuade us to subscribe to their streaming service, but why would we do that when Freely will offer much of the same content for free? I have no idea how many other people have done the same as us, but other streaming providers must be eating into Sky's customer base, and why would people subscribe to Sky broadband unless the basic Signature TV package is thrown in for free?

Ofcom wouldn't allow it even if BT wanted to do it, which I suspect they wouldn't. There'd be a lot to unwind with TalkTalk and the only thing of value at Talk is their customer base. If Talk eventually go bust, their creditor's will likely take over and Openreach will still have them as a wholesale customer. VMO2 and other major ISP's would also probably be blocked from buying the customer base, and why would they when churn will probably cause a significant natural customer migration.

"Where does that leave openreach and all that investment - serious question"

Even if every single independent ISP left BT, for other wholesale providers, Openreach would still have their anchor ISP's EE and Plusnet. Arguably if BT was the only provider left on Openreach they could compete directly on price with the other ISP's, and cause pricing problems for the ISP's and other wholesale providers. The only reason BT/Openreach aren't currently directly competing on price, is due to OFCOM forcing price control on them, Altnets and VMO2 becoming serious competitors to BT would force Ofcom to release BT's shackles.

James Warrington strikes again, there's a pattern to share price drops associated with Telegraph articles by him. It's not the first time spurious articles have knocked BT's share price.

We've recently binned Sky TV, after moving off their Broadband a couple of years ago and moving to Plusnet. When we returned the Sky Q box at the Post Office, the clerk said they'd recently dealt with lots of equipment returns for Sky. If this story's true I don't personally see it as a big problem for BT, it's just hype used to knock the share price.