Why doesn't the BBC diversify?

Rosa_Damascena

I'm in the market for a new and reliable BB provider - ideally with landline and TV provision for a reasonable price. Reading the monthly amounts being paid is making me feel faint...I just wouldn't get value from paying £50+ pm. Plus none of the providers seem as reliable as I would like.

My question is a theoretical one: the BBC has little choice but to commercialise to survive, so why doesn't it get into the telecomms market? The brand has huge value and given we're used to paying a license fee anyway, why not diversify in this direction?

MattMattMattUK

Rosa_Damascena said:

I'm in the market for a new and reliable BB provider - ideally with landline and TV provision for a reasonable price. Reading the monthly amounts being paid is making me feel faint...I just wouldn't get value from paying £50+ pm. Plus none of the providers seem as reliable as I would like.

£30-50 for decent broadband is not expensive, roughly equivalent to £25 from 2000 or or £20 from 1990. Or, 5-8 pints of beer, in a more enjoyable measure. You can get packages cheaper than £50 as well, you can drop the landline and save money, drop the additional TV and save even more. 

Rosa_Damascena said:

My question is a theoretical one: the BBC has little choice but to commercialise to survive, so why doesn't it get into the telecomms market? The brand has huge value and given we're used to paying a license fee anyway, why not diversify in this direction?

They have no experience of the market, nor will they want to invest the tens of millions required to do so. The best is that they would be a virtual broadband provider, offering another companies rebadged service, which would give them very little control, only a low amount of revenue and put them at huge risk of reputational damage. 

KxMx

I wouldn't get value at those prices either, £5pm Lebara sim contract (unlimited calls/texts) , £27pm for Talk Talk Faster Fibre BB, and I use free catch up tv plus dip in/out of streaming services depending on what I want to see.

Always have Prime video through Prime subscription, about to take out an offer for Now, 3 months £4.99 per month (left 8 months ago when ran out of things to watch)
After that the plan is Disney + for 3 months free via Clubcard deal. 

Brie

EE for broadband and landline for £34.  Includes free international calls.  Just saying...

Cornucopia

I've seen recent Fibre BB offers as low as £18pm.    

With suitable hardware (starting from about £10 second-hand, £20 new) you can get all the TV you want these days, even without an aerial or dish.

Pay TV - good VFM offerings from the Streaming companies.   From £5.99pm.   

There's really no need to be paying c. £50pm.


As far as the BBC is concerned, I am not confident that it has the commercial nous to do anything other than put its brand on someone else's BB service, and I'm not convinced that would bring mega profits.   The issue that the BBC has is that it provides an expensive service - c. £5bn per year, and selling products/services with low margins is not going to make a dent in that.  

penners324

Are you bonkers? Most people want the licence fee scrapped ASAP let alone bbc wasting money competing with bt, sky etc 

Thrugelmir

The BBC has no expertise in the field.  Tesco's should start car servicing using the same logic. 

Rosa_Damascena

Thrugelmir said:

The BBC has no expertise in the field.  Tesco's should start car servicing using the same logic. 

Tesco would do exactly that if there was a profit in it...think opticians, pharmacies, mobile phone services.

hangryconsumer

The reason that there might be no "profit in it" is because the BBC are paying all the celebrities millions of pounds, but then again so do Netflix and still manage to make a profit.

Grumpy_chap

Thrugelmir said:

The BBC has no expertise in the field.  Tesco's should start car servicing using the same logic. 

Like Halfords...
So well it worked for them, no reputational damage whatsoever.

Bigphil1474

About a quarter of the BBC's revenue comes from non-license sources (commercial activities) which for 20/21 was about £1.3 billion. They obviously have some commercial nouse, which may or may not be any good. 

The problem they'll have is that I can't see many people wanting to subscribe to the i-player if it went behind a paywall. The naff offering of BritBox only has about 500k subscribers in the UK compared to 14 million on Netflix. 

Personally, I'm happy with the license fee, as I think it gives the BBC the opportunity to produce a far greater range of TV programmes to meet the needs of all parts of society, compared to the likes of ITV, C4 and C5. I don't want another broadcaster that just panders to the mainstream audience.