Too Scared To Invest

atush

There is infrastructure (towers and servers) and there is now competition in utilities all using the same infrastructure,

as for new tech, that tends to be done by phone makers (ie apple/nokia etc), not call providers unless we are talking 5G or more?

Glen_Clark

atush wrote: »

There is infrastructure (towers and servers) and there is now competition in utilities all using the same infrastructure,

as for new tech, that tends to be done by phone makers (ie apple/nokia etc), not call providers unless we are talking 5G or more?

You have several companies each with their own masts and servers bidding against each other for licenses to operate. That is real competition, as is shown by the astronomic costs Vodaphone has recently been obliged to pay for them.
You cannot have several companies each with their own underground water pipes, sewers, and mains cables to each house!

In theory there is still competition, but take BT for example. Because of the botched privatisation, if BT went bust the taxpayer would be landed with a £100bn bill to bail out its pension scheme. To avoid the political embarrassment of that, the Government turns a blind eye to BT's monopoly where it can.

sabretoothtigger

BT monopoly is consensual. People have no reason to pay them directly, the companies themselves pay a fee capped by the regulator. Unfortunately that set fee is not excessive, I own some of these shares

I dont think you can exclude them because of a competitive market, they still provide utilities. People can collect rain water and boil it if they wish, the water company is still a utility despite the competition

Telephony is border line as its not considered essential in any location though drinking water would be

BT is just inefficient, in time they'll be redundant maybe. Their best asset was the mobile division which they sold

Thrugelmir

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

i expect the boom days are over, but it still might be a good investment. a boring old business, throwing off lots of cash, can sometimes be a good thing to own.

Which raises the question. Why no special dividend this year? Share buybacks suggests that Vodafone wishes to retain the cash.