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About LinkBacksRead more.Both competition and quality of service have 'issues' due to Openreach, it asserts.
Read more.Both competition and quality of service have 'issues' due to Openreach, it asserts.
At least, for once, its not Sky whinging about wanting access to things they dont want to pay for or invest in.
Would be interesting to know if the same problems effect any other ISPs, and more specifically if BT seem to have better stats.
Honestly it's about time they got 'reviewed'. Having said that I've seen more BT vans and fibre installers in my area in the last couple of months than I have for the prior 10 years... supposedly I can now get fibre lol
The issues with network reliability is likely nationwide, it's not like BT has really invested in improving our network since it was privatised hence why we're so far behind in terms of high speed internet compared with other similar sized countries.
It has only been relatively recently that they started doing fibre and I have this idea in my head that the government 'invested' in this too and it all seems to be heavily focused in 'major cities' over rural areas, some still stuck on sub broadband speeds.
Took OpenReach more than 15 days to visit my exchange and switch me to Fibre, one month in there was a fault on the line that EE had me running around in circles in because they didn't know there was a fault, and they tried twice to get a BT engineer out to me. In the end, I asked open BT guys myself who were working nearby, and let EE know and they said they were grateful, because BT Wholesale don't let them know.
And, I can handle long install times and the missed appointments, my issue is that the more people who join Fibre now in my area will inevitably meant slower speeds for me, and that isn't acceptable. If they cannot maintain the speeds someone signed up for, then they should stop taking subscriptions, or add more hardware to handle the load. They took billions of public money for this.
These things are always going to be extremely subjective from person to person.
I personally wouldn't touch Sky as I saw the bother they gave my parents. When the time came to get rid of Sky the Virgin engineer was literally waiting outside as the satellite was removed. The sky van reversed out and the Virgin van pulled in and he could not have been a nice, more accommodating guy.
I moved out a couple years ago and there was only one service provider I wanted. Rang up, 3 days for an engineer. He came in, saw the situation, asked me my preference ( I don't like cables being visible ) and set to work performing some of the tidiest cable routing I've ever seen. He asked if he could drill a couple holes and I said yes. Whilst he did that I ran and grabbed the guy a drink of coffee only to come back and see him hoovering where he had just drilled!
/Fluffing Virgin's pillow.
It's amazing that BT have let this go on for so long that Sky has had to do this. Will be interesting to see the outcome.
Steam - ReapedYou - Feel free to add me!!
Originally Posted by LSG501
Both the above demonstrate the problem.
Why would any company invest in something they then cant exploit to recoup the costs?
If Sky and other non-Virgin companies had to contribute to the roll out costs too, maybe things would progress, or maybe they would go quiet about it. You only have to look at Skys "whine" a while back about wanting duct access to install their own fibre lines, only shareholders prevent them doing all the work themselves.
Virgin are efficient and do the job well because its entirely their cable network, they install it where they want to, so any investment can always be recouped from customers.
Quite why Openreach is allowed to be part of BT still is beyond me. It should be spun off and nationalised (remember that the entire network was originally nationalised) with a single aim of improving and extending service capability for its customers (BT, Sky, etc).
It worked great for Network Rail, ... oh, wait.
crossy (30-06-2015)
If it had been made a separate company from the start, it would probably have been ok.
Probably the best option now is that it becomes some sort of stakeholder entity, with BT required to jointly own it with the other providers, selling all but their own portion to them.
Obviously Sky etc would baulk at that and demand they were given it for free or substantially below cost.
Well lets be realistic here, they basically have a monopoly on the telephone lines and even if you go with another provider you still have to use 'their' network in most cases, hence the usual line rental charge being the same on 'other providers'.
And it's not like BT isn't making any profit, they only made a pre-tax profit of £2.6bn according to a quick google, an increase of 14% year on year, yeah tiny profit I know.... plus when they went private they never had to invest in the original infrastructure so they saved a HUGE amount of money at the start too.
Sky and other non-Virgin companies have to 'lease' the lines from openreach which is still part of BT, technically so does BT under ofcom rules but that's mute really, so technically they are contributing to the cost of any new roll outs. It's about reinvesting their profits into infrastructure and until recently (they're now playing catchup) they weren't doing this and to put it bluntly ofcom are pretty useless when it comes to enforcing stuff.
At the end of the day our infrastructure is outdated and the fault of that lays with BT/openreach, their lack of looking ahead and not 'investing in the future' early enough.
Don't forget the £100Ms they spent on BT sport deals! (Off topic - That annoyed me as a BT customer who doesn't watch sport - I was subsidising it with my fibre package!)
tell me about it, we have bt line, we use bt for our telephone but because our internet is with another supplier we can't get access to their video service, which we've technically paid towards like you via line rental etc (and still do with the 'changes to billing' recently).
Copper... some of us on FTTC dream of having all copper in 'the last mile'. Here on the edge of a linear almost-conurbation extending ~12.3 miles (11.2m urban blocks), last mile is ~1050 metres, of which ~500m is aluminium.
Half a mile away on a different cabinet, several properties clocking 66Mb+, we're stuck on 14Mb - what we should have been getting on ADSL2 (if we had all copper).
Are you a BT shill or just ignorant of the current situation?Both the above demonstrate the problem.
Why would any company invest in something they then cant exploit to recoup the costs?
If Sky and other non-Virgin companies had to contribute to the roll out costs too, maybe things would progress, or maybe they would go quiet about it. You only have to look at Skys "whine" a while back about wanting duct access to install their own fibre lines, only shareholders prevent them doing all the work themselves.
Virgin are efficient and do the job well because its entirely their cable network, they install it where they want to, so any investment can always be recouped from customers.
Sky's "whinge" is that upon privatisation BT was not only granted a taxpayer funded national phone line infrastructure they were also granted a legal monopoly over that infrastructure. The cost to Sky to replicate that infrastructure would cost billions. Then there's the issue of getting all the planning permission from local councils to dig up roads and cause disruptions.
Sky is "whining" that they should be given access to this largely tax funded infrastructure to install their cabling and exchanges in a cost effective manner that increases consumer choice.
[QUOTE=MattEvansC3;374017]They have this. It's called Local Loop Unbundling. The parts of the network that Openreach own and control are the 'last mile' lines from the exchange to the customer's demark. I bet if you told Sky "hey, you can go lay your own copper to everyone!" they would suddenly go rather quiet at that level of investment.
+1 for the idea of Openreach being spun off as a separate company - the whole idea that a part of BT is providing a key part of the offering of BT's competitors strikes me as ridiculous in the extreme. Not sure I'd necessarily agree that nationalisation is the answer, but definitely think it needs to be watched extremely carefully.
I'm guessing that the key driver for Sky's latest anti-BT whinge is that they (Sky) are getting the flack for BT's incompetence in not delivering to timescales etc. Maybe I'm being very naive, but surely Sky should have had some service agreement with BT in place that gave compensation for bad service? Okay, that's not going to please the customers much, but maybe the thought that being slow will lose them money will focus BT's attention, plus some of the compensation could be funnelled back to the customers?
I'm a disinterested party (not being a BT nor Sky customer) yet it seems telling that TV comedians can make BT Openreach-is-lousy jokes and get a general round of applause. Then again, correct me if I'm wrong but don't Sky also have a pretty poor customer service reputation?
Also +1 on the "happy with Virginmedia" opinions - only had an issue with an engineer once in all the time I've been with them (a long time) and even then it was a case of "he didn't fix the problem properly". That said, I was a bit annoyed about the three hour unplanned outage last week - right in the middle of a VOIP-hosted business teleconference.
Career status: still enjoying my new career in DevOps, but it's keeping me busy...
.....in cherry picked areas where it is most profitable.
That is the LLU curse, there is only competition in areas where it's cheap to do so.
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