BT EE Merger Madness

DavidP24

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worried_jim

Consult MSE? Before or after they read the tea leafs!

VisionMan

DavidP24 wrote: »

The only conclusion I can come to is that the right hands were greased at the right level.

Thats liable and slander.

diamonds

DavidP24 wrote: »

I wonder whether MSE was consulted by the CMA before they approved BT buying EE?

It is clear to me that the CMA is not fit for purpose if they allow this through, this is their purpose:

"The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is a non-ministerial government department in the United Kingdom, responsible for strengthening business competition and preventing and reducing anti-competitive activities"

This merger, along with the Three and O2 merge will see the number of mobile networks reduced from 5 to 3

How does this strengthen competition?

However, my biggest concern is what this buyout will do to the broadband market.

When EE entered the market they brought a lot of competition and very cheap deals, as with TalkTalk it took some time for them to build up their customer support but they are now a player.

So now BT own and control

BT Broadband
Plusnet
EE

As well as BT Wholesale and all the other BT Companies.

BT has a vehicle in Plusnet for selling cheaper internet so it has no use for EE Broadband,

The CMA should have forced BT to Sell EE Broadband to a new competitor and they should have hived off BT's mobile business, remember that EE itself is T-Mobile and Orange as well as Deutsche Telekom and France T!l!com.

We now have a market dominated by three massive players and no chance for new companies to come into this market.

The small companies can only create ride on services but these big companies can control the market prices by making it expensive to use their network, O23 will do the same. That is in itself a an anti-competitive activity, we should have seen an obligation to provide use of their network for free for a period of 10 years by small players so that a new competitor can grow.

BT can now control the Broadband wholesale market of broadband and to an extent mobile.

The only conclusion I can come to is that the right hands were greased at the right level.

Anyone can see that this deal is BAD for consumers.

3 o2 merger will not happen on the back of this, duplicate and some spectrum will be sold off to a new 4th provider if it happens.

3 want 2G inhouse, buying o2 is the only way to get it as Vodafone wont be bought out and only EE is left and by Feb that will be BT's.


EE small base of landline and broadband customers is nothing near a monopoly when added to BT, now if BT had a massive subscription of BT Mobile Vodafone customers moved to EE or a massive EE base of BT Mobile customers this merger would never have got through, simply BT are buying a vast mobile network and vast retail store footprint, something it has neither of so its not anti competitive.

If anything Vodafone will be shook to the core because another massive multi international on its scale just bought its main competition... Voda Broadband (it bought Cable& Wireless) and Mobile is away to have a price war like Voda does in most its Euro sister companies.


BT really should have had Openreach off hived though. But many countries allow the national pots monopoly ownership, its common unfortunately.



For me I'm happy to see EE go elsewhere it was a mess of a merger and still is.


BT will close down Orange coded customers, mark my words, it wont pay more out than it has too with £13.5 billion in sports rights and EE, expect loads of UK call centre jobs to go offshore or third party.


On a plus, all EE customers on T-Mobile and Orange may get 4G access.

Ian011

It's nonsensical to have four mobile networks that duplicate services in most areas but which fail to cover the whole country either individually or collectively. Eventually, there will be consolidation to a single network infrastructure run separately from all the companies which supply service to customers. In this situation, the regulator can better specify coverage requirements

penrhyn

This is indeed shocking, come the revolution Comrade Corbyn will, renationalise BT, and you'll be issued with state broadband. Dial up for the Proles and Fibre Optics for the inner party.

Up the workers.

glentoran99

DavidP24 wrote: »

Well that WOULD be called communism

That is like saying that Coca Cola has to give up it's recipe and give it away to competitors who may freely sell it for huge profit in parts of the world where they are not yet selling it.

The issue of coverage you raise is an important one on both mobile and broadband, currenty no broadband company wants to invest in the exchange of some pokey village where 70% of the residents are elderly and either do not want or can't afford fibre. Enabling mobile in remote areas is even more expensive which is why it makes sense to move that mobile traffic to go wireless, this is already being done by some ISP's (including EE) on a consumber by consumer basis, but it needs to be done so that someone driving through can access it.

The Government does need to provide some sort of incentive for those areas on both mobile and broadband, I say incentive because if they tax them we will end up paying.

We have what you describe for telephone lines and it is managed by BT Wholesale, I do not think it works very well for the consumer. BT only exchanges (where even the LLU companies go via BT ) are not competitive and they are slow as hell. Also BT charge the ISP's ridiculous fees so those companies avoid investment. A friend of mine lived in a 70's housing estate, it was quite affluent but it had wiring where copper was shared between clusters of houses and was incompatible with ADSL, it all needed to be ripped out. His ISP TalkTalk told him that if they asked BT to correct the wiring they would charge TT £1000 but if he was a customer of BT then BT would do it free (that came from the CEO's office of TT after complaints were made about service level). So he moved to BT, they complained about getting less than half a meg and BT did indeed replace the cabling which infact prepared the home for fibre, BT just ran it as an ASDL service. Then after 12m with BT he moved back to TT until they stopped being competitive and now ironically he is back with BT.

Most consumers will not be told the real reason they are getting poor signal or service.

I was with Tesco who run over O2 I moved and got a crappy signal, yet I was in the middle of town, they did the investigation via O2 and told me that I am in an area that O2 do not want to invest in, they say that it is just how the cell towers overlap or don't in this case. They wrote me a letters saying that Tesco were not prepared to put any pressure on O2.

What would make sense would be for Tesco to have agreements with two providers so that when one does not have coverage they can move the consumer to the other. This already happens with Piggy Back providers, TalkTalk is moving from Vodafone to O2 and until they have migrated both are supported.

If the networks were forced to carry each others traffic and not pass on obscene charges (the reason why text messages can cost a lot when they use no bandwidth at all) they would see no reason to invest at all, just wait for someone else to.

If we had a world that thought about what was best for the planet or the consumer this would have taken off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU

It would have paid for all infrastructure at a local level.

Its what happens with electric

VisionMan

Ha! This entire thread is a rant. Hey ho...

Up the workers.

Ian011

DavidP24 wrote: »

If the networks were forced to carry each others traffic and ...

... or there was a single physical network infrastructure that covered the whole country ...

Almost twenty years of competition has clearly failed to get coverage up to the right level. Competition is the wrong mechanism.

VisionMan

Ian011 wrote: »

Competition is the wrong mechanism.

Ouch. Then what? State monopoly? Proletarian crunch boot unfettered by price comparisons in a one choice take it or leave it market? And up yours if you don't?

Up the workers!

System

I don't actually have an issue with the BT/EE merger (come on, they couldn't get much) and hope the O2/3 merger will proceed also.

Hiving off Openreach and giving them challenging coverage / MVNO obligations are more important IMO.