RE: Next flavour27 Nov 2021 09:22
However name me another industry as highly regulated as telecommunications has been and in particular the restraints put on only one company who had to have its prices maintained at higher prices across all its products and watch as government after government oversaw the introduction of foreign subsidised competition that could also offer TV as well as a phone line who were then pretty much unregulated for years whilst BTs hands were tied.
Yeah thought so, no other industry.
It’s only in the last decade that OFCOM have allowed BT to compete on pricing and also be able to offer TV.
Guess who took on thousands of redundant service personnel during the crash in 2008? Yeah while the whole of the world was crashing under financial crises, good old BT bucked the trend and increased its CAPEX to install FTTC across the nation.
Now during the pandemic, one company strode on with no furlough and actually again increased CAPEX, employed thousands more to install the FTTP network. Once completed BT will be a much leaner and profitable company with dividends that will be eye watering.
Oh and yeah 30 years ago… if only the Thatcher government had given BT the license to FTTP the nation that it requested back then, imagine the SP now. No doubt the backhanders and directorships of Cable companies were too tempting to make a decision to have the best comms network in the world fit for then and now and the future.
South Korea were held in past arguments in Parliament, the News, Question Time etc about their incredible broadband compared to BT well guess what, when BT were refused the fibre licence (and the Tory government actually then invented a fibre tax to dis-incentivise fibre development by the way) all the R and D all the tooling all the equipment that BT had ready to go, South Korea couldn’t believe their luck and our governments stupidity or greed for back handers and bought the whole kit and caboodle for themselves.
It’s easy to kick BT, it’s a big target often with faux pas made by its own board like 3G licenses, selling O2 too cheaply, but much dither and delay has been foisted upon BT but now there seems like an easing of regulations to allow Openreach to build the FTTP network and for BT to recoup their outlay in the next 10 years.
I probably won’t be around to see it, but if there is no meddling from loan shark takeover muppets like Drahi and just let BT get on with it then huge dividends await us not the likes of hedge funds and loan junkies who will bleed us and the company dry and then move on to other poor souls that they wish to feed off.
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