Member Info for snoopz

@Aus

Usual lazy response from a guy not prepared to do the hard yards. I never said you were a troll. This is what I posted in a discussion about the real trolls when I first registered:

"However the other guy (Aus3009) comes across as a bit of a confused soul, suffering himself a bit from the Dunning-Kruger effect he quotes - but he does not seem to be particularly malignant. I suppose he bought into BT when the shares were flying hight, and now he's getting a bit desperate and is clinging to any hope that there is some miracle strategy to get his money back. Seems he is not aware that none of the major shareholders or board have the time or inclination to read anything on this board. So all his bright ideas and opinions will pass them by, and they will just carry on and do whatever they were planning to do in the first place. Hopefully, just sitting on their hands and watching the share price rise slowly as the FTTP rollout instigated by Philip Jansen a few years back works it's magic."

Quite prophetic - never knew I was such a good judge. However, on reflection, I was a tad generous on my analysis of your character!

Find me a post where I said you are a troll - you can see every one on here!

@Aus3009

I've NEVER said you are a troll!

@Alwaysaprofit

Well done, you asked thevquestion along the lines that Aus should have used. Unfortunately your AI answered a different question. It even stated as much when it says “US Owners and Major Investors in UK Altnets” before producing its list. Only US-incorporated companies can go into Chapter 11. No altnet on that list is owned by a US-incorporated company, so none of them can go into Chapter 11. Feel free to pick one out and I’ll explain specifically why Chapter 11 is not pertinent.

Aus3009

A few people on here have tried to point out to you that AI is a tool. For it to give you the correct information, you have to ask it the correct question. In your case you fed it a question designed to give you an answer you like. Now that you have the answer that you think fits your narrative, try this follow-up question and see what your computer comes up with.

Question: “Give me a list of US owners of UK based altnets?”

I look forward to you posting the list on here!

@Aus3009

There you go again with the weird negativity. You are always desperate to identify anything, however remote, that might present a risk to BT - turning over every stone in search of bad news.

The suggestion that UK altnets could somehow enter Chapter 11 is, frankly, ridiculous - even by your own low standards. A minimal amount of research would show why. Chapter 11 is a US bankruptcy process, available to US-incorporated companies that get into financial trouble. While it can apply to US companies with overseas subsidiaries, UK altnets simply do not fit that profile.

UK incorporated altnets would have to use UK insolvency and restructuring processes (administration, restructuring plan, CVA, etc.), because that’s where their assets, customers, employees, and regulators are located. None of the 10 largest UK altnets is structured in a way that would allow them to enter Chapter 11. They may have US investors or US-provided debt, but they are incorporated in the UK and regulated by Ofcom - not US courts.

And before you inevitably raise the NTT example to support your crazy idea - it doesn’t help your case. The Japanese parent did not go bankrupt and remained solvent throughout. When certain NTT international subsidiaries used Chapter 11, UK infrastructure remained under UK regulatory control, while US courts dealt solely with US-incorporated entities. Network operations in the UK continued normally! There are no meaningful parallels between those events decades ago and today’s UK FTTP altnet rollouts. They can't go crying to judges in Delaware to help them out!

Sooo, fleccy has already done the hard part by doing all that research and laying out the facts. However, all that will probably be a bit too much for Aus, who would rather stare into the sky at satellites and wonder why he ever invested in BT now that Elon is going to park hundreds of Teslas on his lawn!

So let’s deal with the actual issue, namely what is the real competitive threat to BT from the altnets? We’re told that they have passed around 20 million premises which is quite impressive. But, although this is technically true, it’s very misleading. With roughly a hundred operators piling into the same urban postcodes, the industry has created a triumph of duplication, not coverage. Once you strip out the grotesque overbuild, the number of unique premises passed is probably closer to 15 million, and that’s being generous. Nobody wants to publish the real figure because it would expose just how wasteful this rollout has been.

Now compare that with BT. They have genuinely passed about 20 million premises already, are on track for roughly 25 million by the end of this year, and will push on to around 30 million by 2030 (with a take-up rate of almost 40%). That’s not spin. That’s delivery. And yes, Aus and the troll will sneer that these are “future targets”, but in infrastructure terms this future is arriving month by month, quarter by quarter, year by year, as each financial report shows. Even the loudest critics know BT has stuck to its numbers since the rollout began.

But coverage isn’t everything, what about profitability? Exactly, that's the whole point. BT does not have a pricing problem.....the altnets do!!! BT is profitable today. The altnets are haemorrhaging cash. The idea that BT should cut prices to “compete” is economically illiterate. Compete with whom? Companies that are losing money hand over fist? Even if altnets raised prices to BT’s level, many would still be underwater. The only way most of them could ever make money is by charging MORE than BT, which they can’t do because customers would leave in droves. This isn’t a market failure by BT. It’s a business-model failure by the altnets.

And that failure sits squarely at the feet of Ofcom. The regulator flooded the market with entrants, waved them through on the promise of infinite cheap debt, and pretended that capital discipline didn’t matter. It allowed dozens of under-scaled operators, many with limited engineering depth and no credible path to profitability, to build overlapping networks and call it “competition”.

Now the debt cycle has turned, the music has stopped, and the consequences are unavoidable. Normally Ofcom would try to punish the incumbent, block price cuts, tie BT’s hands, or manufacture artificial protection for failing competitors. But here’s the problem. In reality, BT doesn’t need to do anything. The altnets are collapsing on their own and there is nothing they or Ofcom can do about it!!!

Sitting in the garden at night and watching the satellites go overhead? Weird, maybe you could consider knitting as an alternative!

Come on guys, lets be fair to Aus and the trolls. You only have to look at the share price movement today to understand how right they are about the affect starlink will have on BT's business!

@Aus3009

Come on now, if you’re going to be insulting, please do get the grammar right....otherwise you come across as an Aushole. The term you are grasping for is “blowhard”… one word.

@expatwelsh

I really just wanted to get my...for the birds...comment on the thread. BUT regardless of that, I dont think asset strippers will be any use to us intvesters!

@expatwelsh

Don't agree that the government should let them fight to get hold of BT - Vulture Funds are for the birds.

It’s obscene that a vulture fund can swoop in, take control and then push a company into administration within a week. Even if it is technically legal, it raises serious questions about how our financial system treats critical infrastructure, workers and customers.

But this will almost certainly be the trigger for a much wider collapse across the altnet sector. The business model was always fragile, and G.Network exposes just how extreme the financial gamble was. Around £300m of debt for only 25,000 customers works out at roughly £12,000 of debt per customer - a figure that no broadband tariff could ever support. With operating costs and interest likely running into tens of millions a year, the numbers were never going to stack up.

The real shock is not that it failed, but that so many supposedly sophisticated investors convinced themselves it would work. The entire sector was built on ultra-cheap debt and the assumption that interest rates would stay near zero forever. When rates moved back to historically normal levels, the economics collapsed. That was not an unforeseeable shock — it was basic financial reality.

What happens next is consolidation, and lots of it. In some parts of the country there are now half a dozen fibre networks competing for the same customers, which is commercially unsustainable. We will see distressed sales, assets changing hands for pennies, and many networks simply being written off. Not everyone will find a buyer.

Ironically, this may end up strengthening BT. While some of these networks will be picked up cheaply by larger players, integrating fragmented fibre builds is costly and messy. The failure of so many alt-nets exposes how fragile the whole sector really is - and it also raises serious questions about Ofcom’s role in allowing such reckless over-build and leverage to develop. Regulators may now find it much harder to justify squeezing BT’s pricing when the rest of the market is visibly imploding.

As the old Chinese curse goes..."may you live in interesting times."

@Bobsbank

A little tip on reading Telegraph articles (and many more hidden behind paywalls). Click on the article you want to read and then quickly turn off your internet connection. The article renders as it should, but the process stops before it's replaced by the request to subscribe!

@Aus3009

What happened to you over the festivity period? Whatever it was you should do it more often. You have managed to write a well balanced post setting out some of the negatives and POSITIVES of BT's position. You think "Fleccy is probably right the cost cutting and reduced spend should start taking effect over next 2-5 years" and that you are confident "£3 is achievable in the medium term". You appreciate BT’s plan to invest and rollout fibre and say you "recognise their potential to cut operating costs along with capex" and even mention the fact ct that BT pay a very healthy dividednd!

You even managed to spell debt correctly this time!

It's a good point you make about VM's workforce. The latest figure I read was 16k for the merged company and although you can double or treble this to account for their contractors (they outsource nearly all the physical work which BT do in-house), there is a BIG disparity when compared to BT.

Anyway, nice to see you have finally found some good things to say about the company. Mix such views in with any negative ones such as broadbank losses in future and you'll find a much more appreciate reception on here!

@Bigtimebilly

Good that you realize how dumb you are. A wiser man would have invested in BT at about £5 like Aus and our resident troll.

@bowler09

Nope, It's the 2nd. Last week they came out with an article titled "Why the BT share price still looks like a once-in-a-decade bargain to me as we start 2026"

https://www.fool.co.uk/2026/01/06/why-the-bt-share-price-still-looks-like-a-once-in-a-decade-bargain-to-me-as-we-start-2026/

@fleccy

Who do you think is craziest. The guy who claims to hold loads of BT shares and devotes his life to explaining how stupid this is. Or the guy who devotes his life to explaining what a good idea his investment was?

@ExBTandProud

Losing customers to new competitors is an inevitable consequence of BT’s transition from monopoly to a competitive fibre market. For decades they had 100% share - so once rival networks emerged, some customer loss was unavoidable. What matters is how effectively they are responding - and I think the response is the correct one.

Openreach will pass 25 million premises with FTTP by the end of this year, with take-up approaching 40%. That is an exceptional result for a premium-priced wholesale network and suggests BT’s pricing is broadly correct.

Cutting prices to chase altnets would likely be counter-productive. It would reduce revenue without guaranteeing customer retention, as altnets can simply cut prices further while absorbing even larger losses.

In reality it is the altnets that face the bigger structural problem. Many are selling broadband below its true economic cost to gain market share, yet still achieving take-up rates often below 10–15%, far short of what is required for profitability. This has already forced them to slow or halt network build and to look for consolidation as a way out.

However, consolidation cannot fix a flawed business model. The end state is likely to be a small number of surviving altnets that will eventually need to raise prices to survive.

BT, by contrast, is already profitable and continues to grow its fibre base at scale. It can afford to be patient while these weaker competitors are forced to throw in the towel.

@fleccy,

but it's nice to have Aus back! He brings a new negativity to the whole debate. Much more refreshing than our resident troll who has just been chatting to himself via his numerous alias while Aus was locked up over the holiday period.