Soldato
- Joined
- 13 Jul 2004
- Posts
- 20,344
- Location
- Stanley Hotel, Colorado
If living next door to the cab does FTTP give great advantages over FTTC.
BT Openreach effigy set alight by villagers
- Thread starter Fishbait
- Start date
If living next door to the cab does FTTP give great advantages over FTTC.
Deleted member 68110
Deleted member 68110
It doesn't surprise me that in a town in an area that voted for Brexit, they feel they can demand stuff from a private company as though a) the company is tax funded and b) they pay enough tax to deserve it.
Graspers and scapegoatists need to take some ownership of their situation.
Graspers and scapegoatists need to take some ownership of their situation.
Should we remind ourselves that "BT" put a lot of the copper infrastructure - that it holds so dear and charges us so much for - into place at tax payer's expense, back when it was a state-owned utility? BT was only privatised in 1984!
The UK govt handed BT a defacto monopoly that had been built with govt (tax) money.
So yeah... about that "entitlement complex to have services from a private company"... it's not so simple, is it?
e: And to cap it all off, Thatcher deliberately sold it off below market value.
https://moneyweek.com/3-december-1984-bt-is-sold-off-in-a-gamble-over-privatisation/
Why is it relevant that BT used to be nationalised? It's not now, and that doesn't give people any more of a say in how they allocate resources than they have a say in how Virgin Media do it.
Yes the telephone line that pops up in your house might have been put there with public money, but the equipment on the end of it has been changed several times over since then.
Yes the telephone line that pops up in your house might have been put there with public money, but the equipment on the end of it has been changed several times over since then.
Well surely you haven't missed the fact that BT are only investing their own money into new infrastructure when the govt agrees to give them cash to help them do it?
And then the resulting infrastructure is exclusively owned by BT? Sweet deal for them, tbh... Govt has been massively subsidising BT to lay fibre and roll out VDSL, etc. And BT gets to 100% own this infrastructure and charge Sky, TT, etc whatever it feels like charging them.
Not exactly a model for free market forces and private industry riding to the rescue.
I really hope Labour do get in next time and do follow through with their plans to re-nationalise our service providers. Energy esp, but also railways, telecomms, etc.
Oh and get this... the UK govt (treasury) is also responsible for guaranteeing (paying the deficit) on BT's pension scheme. Sweet deal part 2.
Even the Tories have previously drawn up plans to renationalise it, lol.
e: Not going to argue against your rebuttal of something I didn't actually say. Try again maybe?
I more or less quoted you word for word so I don't know where you've gotten the impression that it's a mischaracterization. Here they are:
Yup, I said those things. And you replied...
Which bears what resemblance to the posts above of mine that you quoted?
Ok, my bad, I misread. You seem to think BT (Openreach) only invest when the government agrees to provide funding as well - that's not true. Neither is it true that Labour plan to nationalise the company.
There are definitely criticisms that can be levelled at BT, but making stuff up just nullifies any point that you were trying to make.
There are definitely criticisms that can be levelled at BT, but making stuff up just nullifies any point that you were trying to make.
The vast majority of BT's major infrastructure projects, and possibly all the fiber rollout projects, involved substantial funding from the UK govt.
Heck BT in many press releases has often stated this time and again.
Down here in Cornwall the fibre rollout was in a large part funded by the EU, local council, and BDUK funding. Elsewhere in the country other regional projects have been funded in the same way.
"Making stuff up" is patently not what I'm doing, at all. BT is rolling out fibre as and when other parties are agreeing to jointly finance it with them.
No external funding == good luck getting upgraded, suckers. Classic BT.
Heck BT in many press releases has often stated this time and again.
Down here in Cornwall the fibre rollout was in a large part funded by the EU, local council, and BDUK funding. Elsewhere in the country other regional projects have been funded in the same way.
"Making stuff up" is patently not what I'm doing, at all. BT is rolling out fibre as and when other parties are agreeing to jointly finance it with them.
No external funding == good luck getting upgraded, suckers. Classic BT.
Deleted member 68110
Deleted member 68110
If I understand correctly, there's no dispute over access to the copper wiring installed when BT was state-owned up until "only" 33 years ago.
Do you have anything at all to back up the claim that the "vast majority of BT's major infrastructure projects, and possibly all the fiber rollout projects" have involved government funding? You'll always be able to find regional projects that have received public funding - but you would have been able to bid for that work if you wanted to, and met the requirements.
Simplifying it and boiling it down to "no external funding == good luck getting upgraded" doesn't make it any more of an accurate statement. I expect the overwhelming majority of people on FTTC/FTTP that was deployed commercially (e.g. no public funds) would disagree with you. Your insight into this is likely heavily skewed based on where you live.
Simplifying it and boiling it down to "no external funding == good luck getting upgraded" doesn't make it any more of an accurate statement. I expect the overwhelming majority of people on FTTC/FTTP that was deployed commercially (e.g. no public funds) would disagree with you. Your insight into this is likely heavily skewed based on where you live.
That was 33 years ago and this is today. Billions has been spent by BT in that time upgrading the decrepit network they inherited. It was the Iron Lady who stopped BT investing in fibre because her friends in the city complained that BT's competitors wouldn't be able to compete/cherry pick the bits they wanted.
If BT's competitors want to build a network then fine, they know where the shovels are. It looks like Vodafone are already digging.
You do realise the contracts were put out to tender and no one else wanted to go near them. BT are also paying back to government quite a bit of the installation costs. Once the take up reaches 20% it's pay-back time.
Much of it paid in rental and other charges to Openreach by BT's direct competitors.
And in exchange those competitors (who are free to go and build their own networks if they wish) have received a service. Presumably you aren't against Sky wholesaling their sports content to other TV providers and using that income to fund development of their products?
I am very cynical about the arguments that Sky put forward in this area, because they spend more time complaining about how Openreach should be a separate company than doing anything about what they see as the problem. They don't offer their broadband service over Openreach FTTP despite saying that the UK needs full-fibre, and they have already written off the idea of building their own physical network as being not a commercially viable option (York trial). It's very clear that their interest in getting BT Group tied up in the work involved in carving off Openreach is to put them in a worse position when it comes to bidding for football rights.
If Sky were as interested in fibre deployment as their press releases claim to be then we'd see their name attached to some investment in this area - like Vodafone have managed with CityFibre. But they aren't really that fussed - they're quite happy to have somebody else do all the difficult stuff and then pay a regulated access price to use it. From 2016: