Are BT and Virgin Media charging too much to otther ISP's ?

onomatopoeia99

ffox wrote: »

. The research for much of this is in the public domain. In relation to the justification for the continuous price hikes for line rental say, does the industry's argument hold any water? No.

The wholesale line rental price that BT can charge is falling year on year and is controlled by OFCOM.

The retail price of line rental is up to whichever provider the consumer chooses to use. The ISP I use offers it for £10/month and does not insist you use them for your line rental if you use them as an ISP (nor does it charge a surcharge on your internet connection if you don't also use them for line rental, like some ISPs).

The cost of replacing the entire copper local loop with fibre optic would be many billions, I have no idea where you get "next to nothing" from as it clearly isn't, just think about the number of hours of labour required to do one street, then multiply it up for the whole country.

boatman

But the utility providers seem to think it is their right to earn billions, not turn a small profit and provide for the public as it should be.

Browntoa

you missed the point , OFCOM decides the amount of return they can get , not BT and Virgin


its continually reviewed so they have no "right to earn Billions"


the money made pays for the continuing ongoing investment to improve speeds and infrastructure.


you do realise theres almost continuous retrofit network upgrades going on to improve bandwidth on EXISTING equipment to REDUCE costs . The bandwidth is what you need to get your internet speed

littleboo

boatman wrote: »

But the utility providers seem to think it is their right to earn billions, not turn a small profit and provide for the public as it should be.

It's not their job to turn a small profit. As a PLC, their job is to maximise shareholder value.

ffox

The upkeep of the infrastructure is done in stages as are the upgrades. It couldn't all be done in one go. Besides, it's not clear to me that the system that's in place now is the most efficient or best value for the customer. Well some would argue that the prices paid for internet access are justified but then in the other thread you have customers hopping from one company to next in a bid to save a few £. And all of the ISPs are offering practically the same thing.

In order to make progressive developments with the tech R&D is essential. So some part of the industry has to do it. But let's remember that this is now applied research which we're talking about. The crux of the fundamentals is usually carried by more dedicated research groups the world over. In their R&D BT would just apply that tech to their infrastructure. Now BT are the ones in charge of the phone line system and applying pre-existing research and knowhow to their own system should not be overestimated. This is part of their job.

As a corollary to this I don't like the fact that you have several ISPs rehashing the same thing, just packaged differently. Then trying to promote themselves with slogans of value etc.. Basic internet -- it's all the same thing based on line rental to which there is no transparency in pricing whatsoever.

Basic internet runs on copper wires. Yet BT who are in charge of their network continue to maintain it in a bid to generate revenue out of holding back. They could quite easily replace/upgrade parts of the network on a rolling basis with FO instead. The cost of FO is lower when it comes to maintain cables. The cost of producing it is also plummeting much as in any other tech sector. Now if this was a public sector company with the attitude to drive things forward, things would be done differently. If you look at other countries in the far East (not backwards Europe) they have it sussed.

Browntoa

Again you miss the point , you can get fibre speeds over copper now , the investment is pointless and financially stupid .

R&d is looking at innovative ideas to extend high speed broadband to remote customers , MSANs on telegraph poles , in manholes etc

The government had a scheme to give grants to supplier's to provide high speed broadband to remote area's where it was uneconomic to provide it (cost vs customer numbers )only bidder was BT as no other supplier wants to invest or take the risk . Almost all these were FTTC and then copper pairs