plan for collapse of Thames Water

Sythe79 said:
I wouldn't say telecoms has worked either really other than for the shareholders, it was sold off on the cheap just before two big telecommunication booms, and we are still subsidising broadband roll-outs with taxpayer money by the billion for example
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Telecoms was a disaster until Ofcom were given teeth and threatened to remove Openreach from BT. Since then Openreach have been doing the fastest FTTP rollout of any country in the world. So it has been a success more recently.
 
Dialup said:
Telecoms was a disaster until Ofcom were given teeth and threatened to remove Openreach from BT. Since then Openreach have been doing the fastest FTTP rollout of any country in the world. So it has been a success more recently.
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Only because telecommunications is a utility, but some people want it both ways. If you are pro privatisation, then you should also accept there's no profit to be made from hooking up half the country to broadband and the taxpayer shouldn't have to foot the bill. If you live in the country, you should be happy with 56k or have had to pay the actual cost of installing more modern lines.
 
Sythe79 said:
Only because telecommunications is a utility, but some people want it both ways. If you are pro privatisation, then you should also accept there's no profit to be made from hooking up half the country to broadband and the taxpayer shouldn't have to foot the bill. If you live in the country, you should be happy with 56k or have had to pay the actual cost of installing more modern lines.
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My view is that Openreach/the infrastructure division of BT should never have been privatised but the situation we have got to is the best compromise on the situation we ended up with. Most of the public subsidy for FTTP isn't going to BT, so actually their FTTP rollout is almost entirely privately funded.
 
Personally i don't think any infrastructure should be privatised, fair enough sell access to it for private companies but things like the pipes, wires, roads, tracks etc, etc. Should always be owned by the country because they're vital to the functioning of said country.
 
Dialup said:
Telecoms was a disaster until Ofcom were given teeth and threatened to remove Openreach from BT. Since then Openreach have been doing the fastest FTTP rollout of any country in the world. So it has been a success more recently.
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What about all the other companies that were doing rollouts of their own? Didn't that get them to get a move on. I have two lines coming to my house. One BT that is redundant and my Youfibre with VOIP. Youfibre gave me FTTP way before bt could even offer it. I also get a real 1 gig up and down and could get 10 gig up and down if I felt flush with cash.

Infact BT FTTP still isn't available in my area even though I have had FTTP for nearly two years now.
 
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adam cool dude said:
What about all the other companies that were doing rollouts of their own? Didn't that get them to get a move on. I have two lines coming to my house. One BT that is redundant and my Youfibre with VOIP. Youfibre gave me FTTP way before bt could even offer it. I also get a real 1 gig up and down and could get 10 gig up and down if I felt flush with cash.

Infact BT FTTP still isn't available in my area even though I have had FTTP for nearly two years now.
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Altnets are a good thing and where a lot of the public subsidy is going.

FTTP from Openreach may not have reached you yet but on current trajectory they'll have done most of the country by 2026 which was apparently "impossible" even three years ago, their own words.
 
Dialup said:
Altnets are a good thing and where a lot of the public subsidy is going.

FTTP from Openreach may not have reached you yet but on current trajectory they'll have done most of the country by 2026 which was apparently "impossible" even three years ago, their own words.
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They'll have done "most" of the country, BUT... approx 10-15% of properties in the areas that are "done" - including those with a stop sell on copper products - will have been skipped and categorised as "out of scope". This is purely done on costs.

10-15% of houses in towns and cities are "too expensive" for BTOR to connect up. There is literally no plan to return to these properties. BTOR have confirmed this with me on the phone and in writing.

There is no broadband USO that compels BTOR to install (or maintain) a cabled connection, if any property can instead get 4g or 5g internet through their phones. Thus they can actually decide to cut these people off in future at a point when they decide to retire copper and the equipment in their exchanges. They will just drop you as a customer and force you to wireless/Starlink instead.

e: Believe it or not, these "out of scope" properties are not being targeted by BDUK either. As one person in the loop said to me privately, this is a "blind spot" that nobody is allocating funds to resolve. Too expensive for commercial roll outs and BDUK is focused on rural.
 
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I’m not convinced many of these alt-nets will be around in the long term anyway.

To me it seems pretty clear many are going for the following strategy:
1)Hoover up PE and gov grants to build network
2)Offer rock bottom prices to pull customers away from BTOR
3) exit strategy - look for a buyer and sell or merge with another alt net.
4) new owner cranks prices

Or

3) run out of cash and get hoovered up by someone like Virgin media for penny’s on the pound.

We are currently at stage 2, I’m not sure how long it will be until we get to stage 3 and 4 but consolidation is inevitable IMO.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Virgin Media didn’t start slowly acquiring some of them where they only operate in non-virgin areas like mine.
 
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Dialup said:
Ultimately I think we will end up with VM, Openreach and another company that owns all of the other infrastructure.
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Which makes a total mockery of the idea of competition. Ultimately critical infrastructure, esp communications and energy, shouldn't be in private hands.
The idea that the current mess is in any way efficient is crazy when you've simultaneously got overbuild and altnets going bust left, right and centre.
 
FoxEye said:
Which makes a total mockery of the idea of competition. Ultimately critical infrastructure, esp communications and energy, shouldn't be in private hands.
The idea that the current mess is in any way efficient is crazy when you've simultaneously got overbuild and altnets going bust left, right and centre.
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We end up with a system where the subsidy has been very low and minimal and the risk is mainly on private companies.
 
Dialup said:
We end up with a system where the subsidy has been very low and minimal and the risk is mainly on private companies.
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And we lag behind other countries and the consumer gets shafted with high prices.
Sadly people in this country have a real blind spot. They are super quick to see money being taken away from them in tax, and start moaning. But they almost completely ignore money being taken away from them from private companies, even when other countries pay far, far, far less for the same goods.
Wonder why that is..
 
FoxEye said:
And we lag behind other countries and the consumer gets shafted with high prices.
Sadly people in this country have a real blind spot. They are super quick to see money being taken away from them in tax, and start moaning. But they almost completely ignore money being taken away from them from private companies, even when other countries pay far, far, far less for the same goods.
Wonder why that is..
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Again, it is the best we could have got out of the poor decision to privatise in the first place.
 
Dialup said:
My view is that Openreach/the infrastructure division of BT should never have been privatised but the situation we have got to is the best compromise on the situation we ended up with. Most of the public subsidy for FTTP isn't going to BT, so actually their FTTP rollout is almost entirely privately funded.
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Correct me if wrong, but for the longest time it was only going to BT. Not just including to BDUK as it is now, but also partnerships between local councils and BT, such as "Superfast Cornwall". BT was the sole game in town until fairly recently.

(Sorry I'm one of those annoying people that often reads threads backwards :p)
 
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FoxEye said:
Correct me if wrong, but for the longest time it was only going to BT. Not just including to BDUK as it is now, but also partnerships between local councils and BT, such as "Superfast Cornwall". BT was the sole game in town until fairly recently.

(Sorry I'm one of those annoying people that often reads threads backwards :p)
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FTTC yes, FTTP no.
 
adam cool dude said:
What about all the other companies that were doing rollouts of their own? Didn't that get them to get a move on. I have two lines coming to my house. One BT that is redundant and my Youfibre with VOIP. Youfibre gave me FTTP way before bt could even offer it. I also get a real 1 gig up and down and could get 10 gig up and down if I felt flush with cash.

Infact BT FTTP still isn't available in my area even though I have had FTTP for nearly two years now.
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The biggest change was Ofcom threatening to remove Openreach altogether. That was what forced BT to act.
 
www.bbc.co.uk

Camberley: Thames Water shipped 200 tankers of sewage, council hears

More than 200 tankers of raw sewage were shipped to Camberley over the summer, a committee hears.
www.bbc.co.uk

This isn't too far from me, it's just been discovered that they had shipped 200 tankers of waste there to avoid paying fines. Before they were caught brown handed, they denied residents compensation for the stench they caused over the summer.

They are boned.
 
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