Broadband suppliers: why so little competition?

QrizB

iniltous said:

The reason , almost certainly why they have no Alt Net available is the way Alt Nets look at areas they are to cover , generally Alt Nets only are interested in the most ‘profitable’ areas , 

It has echoes of the cable TV boom of the 80s and 90s, where the cable cos would have their own little patch. Then when they all started running out of money there was consolidaiton (around here, Telecential into Comtel into Cabletel which became NTL) until eventually it was all* owned by Virgin.

(* All except Hull.)

I can see something similar happening with the altnets.

M25

Virgin Media doesn't own anything off course they're renting the name only and the banks and investors control them.

I think CityFibre posted figures where every customer was essentially costing them £500.00 a year in debt and management costs.

Trying to find a supplier that's £27.99 instead of £29.99 is a waste of effort.

If you can get a better service then it's always worth moving IME but you must pay for it.

prowla

M25 said:

I think CityFibre posted figures where every customer was essentially costing them £500.00 a year in debt and management costs.

Yikes!
Do you have a link?

JSmithy45AD

amanda1024 said:

My broadband contract is up for renewal and I'm feeling disheartened by the paucity of options - I want to move away from Vodafone (speed is ok but have to hard-reset the router ~ monthly to get Netflix to work). It seems like there's less choice and poorer value than a decade ago despite all the fanfare of 'altnets' etc. - am I looking in the wrong places? I'm in Croydon town centre and pretty close to the nearest cabinet, in case that makes a difference. I get c 70Mb, FTTC. 

As far as I can see options are:
- Contracts baking in annual increases around 15% with the likes of Plusnet, BT, TalkTalk, Onestream, all at similar prices, all at the same speeds as I have with Vodafone 
- Sky come up top in the MSE comparison tool but when I click through their Full Fibre isn't actually available (which presumably means the £100 voucher offer would be void too, which puts them on a par with Now)
- Virgin claim faster speeds but similarly have 15% annual price increases and I've not seen great feedback
- Higher cost and slower speed options from Rebel

Where's the competition? Why are there fewer options for speed/cost, even within the same suppliers? Is it that Openreach means it's effectively a monopoly in disguise? Or have all the smaller/newer providers gone bust like with energy companies? 

Where do you get your 15% price increase figures from?

saajan_12

amanda1024 said:

QrizB said:

amanda1024 said:

My broadband contract is up for renewal and I'm feeling disheartened by the paucity of options ... I get c 70Mb, FTTC. 

It's not clear to me what you think is missing?

• You're in a FTTC area. FTTC tops out at 80Mb or so but reduces as you get further from the cabinet; you're getting 70. You should have the choice of a dozen or more FTTC suppliers and a choice of not-quite-80Mb or not-quite-40Mb.
• There's no OpenReach FTTP in your aea, so full fibre isn't an option.
• There's no altnets in your area, so they're not availble either.
• It sounds like Virgin have cabled your area, so that's available, but you don't like the feedback?

What option do you think you should have but don't?

It's the fact that I keep hearing that there are new developments and innovations, that there are more providers beyond the usual suspects, that there are altnets and Full Fibre and 5G and the future's bright etc. - but when it comes down to it, like you say, none of those are an option here, in central Croydon (i.e. not in a remote rural location), where it's essentially a choice between fewer than a dozen FTTC suppliers (unless I'm missing some? I see Sky, Onestream, Plusnet, Vodafone, BT, TalkTalk, Rebel, POP telecom, Direct Save Telecom, which is 9 - or 10 if I add Now but that redirects straight to Sky), all offering the same speeds at similar prices, or Virgin, or Three but they're only offering 4G. 

Over the last decade I'm fairly sure both the number of suppliers and the options within suppliers has decreased - most of the suppliers used to offer different tiers (for bandwidth and/or data) at different prices, now most of them don't seem to (only Onestream are offering not-quite-40). To me - that doesn't seem like much competition. I can't choose to pay more and get more/better or pay less and get less/worse. This is far less choice than I have for mobile, energy, groceries etc. In fact I now feel more disheartened, having gone through the long list of new and exciting sounding providers in lots of other parts of the country, and hearing what choices I could have if I lived somewhere else! But obviously I'll settle for one for now and hopefully the next time I'm looking there will be more choice.

And sorry that this is more a complaint rather than a technical question - but I did genuinely want to know if there were other options I should be looking into - thank you to everyone who offered pointers on where to look! I do at least feel like I understand this all a bit better now!

I struggle to see how 9 competitors for something is "low". Whether its ketchup brands, supermarkets or gyms, there's never 9 different brands or options to choose from in a given area. 

As for their offerings being similar, its similar to say a courier or taxi company quoting times.. they all use the same road network, so it'll take roughly the same time. Some may offer something else entirely eg send your package by drone, but most will just use the roads. 

As for prices being similar, that is precisely competition at work.. if a company priced it abnormally high, they'd get no business and lower their price to match the competition.