Talk Talk (CPW) purchase Onetel and Tele2

That news is worse than I expected. I thought at least we would still have Tele2 but now that is no longer true.

I don't like being moved over to TalkTalk neither on the tariffs as we often talk for more than their pathetic 70mins limit hence main reason for choosing OneTel. We were going to move to Tele2 all-inclusive once our free evening&weekend with OneTel was finished.

Is there any point in complaining to whomever would deal with things like the (soon to be) lack of competition? It's either Competition Commission or Office of Fair Trading (OFT)?

Update:

Just reading the Competition Commission's website and it appears they deal complaints only when asked by another authority - in our case this would be the OFT.

I'd get used to this, guys.

The only people making money on resi at the moment are BT. The regulation is all going in the direction of focussing on parts of the network which aren't economically replicable, which in practical terms is the local loop. This means that all the regulated pricing will favour LLU, and you can't be in the LLU game without a rather large wallet.

This is bound to lead to consolidation.

My wager is that in a few years there'll probably be <5 major network players (BT, C&W, ntl/telewest, easynet/sky, CPW, possibly Tiscali, Wanadoo), potentially with more service providers sat on top of them...these will be those with a strong user brand, e.g. British Gas feeding CPW, Tesco/Post Office feeding C&W, Virgin feeding ntl. Interestingly until yesterday OneTel were feeding C&W...be interesting to see how long it is before the traffic's switched to Opal.

I wouldn't say the days of the niche players are over, but the likes of 1899 etc will be transient, basically because their business model doesn't stack up (retail rates don't cover the wholesale prices, let alone cost of network operation). They're working on the basis that they get the market base, then can hike their prices and customers won't churn away, but unfortunately the MSE-ers they're picking up are savvy and just jump to another supplier when they increase prices. That's not to say there won't be successors to the likes of 1899, just that we'll have to continually switch supplier as it'll be a case of exploiting the good rate before company realises they can't make money and increases it.

There's two big issues in this prediction, however. 1) Will LLU take-up sufficiently eat into BT's retail market share that the regulatory mandate to provide access to 1899 etc be no longer applicable? 2) What about competition from VoIP? Will standard calls become an irrelevance?

bbb_uk. I don't have the market shares to hand, but OneTel might have 5% of the residential market, CPW perhaps a little more. BT has approx 60-70%. What chance any competition authority intervening to stop OneTel and CPW being combined? Conventional wisdom would be that it should strengthen competition, otherwise such minnows are on a highway to nowhere.

Marjorie

Correct. But one wonders how long the queue of suppliers such as 1866 etc will continue to be, given anyone with knowledge of interconnect rates can see that they patently can't be making any money (sorry, couldn't be profitable at the previous rates, but at new rates may have profitable pricing, but a lack of customers...).

On Skype, you're right, other than I would have said "creates" or "has created" rather than "will create". In the businessplace, it's an IT security nightmare...

bunking_off wrote:

If you mean "CPS only" as opposed to CPS + line rental, you may have a point - there might be an issue that it gets more difficult to buy calls without moving your line rental.

I did.

...This said, I don't think that stands up to scrutiny as I'm not sure there's any shortage of providers willing to offer you CPS without line rental so I'd be dubious.

I agree and it was just a thought. Realistically, OFT most likely would have not done anything for reasons you state.