Where is the competition?

virgin bought ALL the cable companies...and linked them together. back to the first post though, competition is limited by the cost of setting up a network in this day and age. people want faster broadband but are unwilling to pay the prices they would cost. a competitor to virgin would have to have a spare 500 million quid to get anywhere near them, and I can't see anybody who has that kind of cash in 2011
 
Dist said:
Since most ISPs make most of their profit from their business customers (at least this is how it is to my knowledge), do you happen to know how VM are in terms of services provided to business customers compared to companies like BT?
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I don't have exact numbers but they're very keen to push business services, they're nowhere near BT levels though, trouble is their customer service is still rubbish even for the £50k+/year business services and it's built on the same backbone network as their broadband services, which is hopelessly congested and lacking in spare capacity.

I had a few dealings with them but after half a dozen installs where something always went wrong, delayed while they desperate searched for capacity, incorrect POP work meaning installs failed we gave up. They're cheap for a reason.

BT, for all their problems, woeful ordering system (I *hate* eco with a passion) and the like are good to work with in comparison. That's saying something. Real telco grade carriers like Abovenet, Level3, Global crossing are heaven on earth compared to either, and they aren't that great really.
 
PistolPete said:
Blueyonder WAS Telewest - it was the branding of their broadband.



How did you come to that conclusion??
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I'm kinda being a little simplistic, but Virgin did buy as many of them as they could get their hands on. NTL, Telewest, Cable & Wireless, Blueyonder were the biggest players and they're all part of Virgin now. Yes, you can still use the email addresses, but they are part of Virgins network. My sister was a blueyonder customer, now she's a Virgin (oeerrr missus). I was an NTL customer and it all changed over after they bought them...
 
Virgin didn't buy anyone. NTL and Telewest merged into NTL:Telewest, then they merged with Virgin mobile to be the first to offer phone/tv/broadband/mobile, part of the merger with virgin mobile was the agreement that the resulting company would be rebranded with the 'Virgin' name.
 
3dcandy said:
pedantic...you know what I meant...
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Indeed, in belfast the cable company was cabletel, they were bought by ntl, and then that evolved into virginmedia, which inc blueyonder and the rest of them, one large umbrella of cable goodness.
So simplistically vm inc everyone else and now cable is VM.
 
3dcandy said:
I'm kinda being a little simplistic, but Virgin did buy as many of them as they could get their hands on. NTL, Telewest, Cable & Wireless, Blueyonder were the biggest players and they're all part of Virgin now.
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Seeing as NTL bought out C&W in the 90s, then merged with Telewest 2005-ish (both NTL and Telewest had large numbers of shares owned by Microsoft of all people) there was NTL, Telewest or C&W for Virgin to buy anyway - and as I said Blueyonder was not a company, it was the brand name of Telewest's cable broadband service.

So not really simplistic as VM bought none of them. They all rolled up into 1 over a number of years and VM just conveniently just slapped their name on it all.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Indeed, in belfast the cable company was cabletel, they were bought by ntl
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That's another common misconception. Cabletel actually bought NTL and then went on to swallow up C&W and other smaller cable companies such as Cambridge Cable and BT Cable under the NTL name.

It gets really confusing when company A takes over company B and carries on using company B's name (or even a new name like VM did)
 
Who cares what they call them self

The service they have provided hasnt really got any better.. and degrades slightly every year when they think they are clever upgrading everyones up and download.

All they care about is download speed. My VM 30mbit connection is unplayable for PC gaming in peak hours. Ive spent the last month dealing with them. The more you dig the more people you uncover with a similar issue... They are so inconsistant. One tells me there are no issues, one tells me i have a fault and another tells me there are multiple faults.... Then when it comes to fixing them.. oh sorry we cant do anything about it. Cable is a real postcode lottery.

If i didnt live between 2 exchanges 1.5Km between both... what are the odds!!... Id be on ADSL tommrow. but i cant deal with 4mbit now... thats Ludicrous... My exchange has FTTH but i dont see localy and i expect im too far out again.
 
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I've taken a quick look at VM's financials, they aren't actually too bad now. They still have a lot of long term debt, but they are making a few hundred mil profit per quarter.
 
Efour2 said:
Cable is a real postcode lottery.
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That's one of the crappiest things about VM. The technology itself is spot on, but it's lack of capacity on many UBRs that means the overall service can be dire.

It's a shame as when it works, it's works like a charm.
 
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