NTL Telewest merge price changes???

[Smilie]

With the NTL and telewest merge going through
when they do finalise everything
what will happen with the broadband prices plans caps??
as currently Telewest is cheaper with the 3/10mb tier
and has a unlimited bandwidth cap
i know they wont change anything soon
but they will be changing it so that packages will be the same
would u guys think that they will raise Telewest customers price and impose a cap (more likely)
or drop prices with NTL customers and remove cap???

[Lemonzest]

HA, NTL do something like lower a price? Telewest customers are just waiting to be raped.

[Toto]

Originally Posted by Lemonzest

HA, NTL do something like lower a price? Telewest customers are just waiting to be raped.

Raped? Charming.

We will have to wait and see what happens.

[King Of Fools]

I would not expect to see any major package or price changes for most of 2006. They will probably just bring everybody in line during the annual price rises.

Regarding broadband, NTL are expected to bring out some different packages (including uncapped) before the merger goes ahead, in any case.

[Enuff]

I'd expect ntl to drop their prices on the broadband soon, maybe within the first quarter of 2006. If this doesn't happen, then I can see quite a few customers moving to the other side to take advantage of the higher speeds and more importantly, the savings!.

[King Of Fools]

Originally Posted by Dodger444

I can see quite a few customers moving to the other side to take advantage of the higher speeds

There will not be many people offering speeds faster than 10Mbps!

[Enuff]

Originally Posted by King Of Fools

There will not be many. people offering speeds faster than 10Mbps!

There doesn't need to be that many, the point I'm making is that the customer has a choice to pay higher prices for lower bandwidth or vise versa BE = upto 24mb, UKOnline = upto 22mb, plus more isp's are trialing the higher speeds. I know in order to get the higher speeds it depends on your distance from the exchange, but imagine all the NTL customers that are well within that distance.

[SMHarman]

Hardly national offerings though.

[DaggaDagga]

I do think that £38 is far too much, even for 10Mb (or more likely 6Mb). Given the competition, I would guess that the price will need to be well under the £30 mark by the middle of next year, otherwise NTL will run out of customers (including me).

I guess it all depends on the traffic caps. When the 1Mb and 2Mb tiers become 10Mb then they will need realistic caps, or they'll be useless. Streaming net TV will become mainstream within the next year. Then we'll see whether NTL's network crumbles.

I can see a situation where my VOIP phone won't work if next door is watching telly.

[Chrysalis]

There wont be a mass leave because of triple play it needs a phone line change. Also to get 10mbit/512 of adsl I think the coverage for that is fairly low. You also forgot the nice £80 fee for the modem which will put a lot of people off.

[DaggaDagga]

My point (and I hope I'm proved wrong) is that it waits to be seen how well NTL's network will cope when a number of people start downloading and uploading lots of traffic. Yes, there are quoted contention ratios but the average subscriber expects to get somewhere near the quoted speed all the time. ADSL has contention too, but it's much easier for the ISP to add extra capacity if enough subscribers moan, as they will when people expect to be able to watch TV through their web connection without stuttering. NTL are fundamentally limited by their communal network.

It's possible that, in some places at least, an 8Mb ADSL line could be generally faster than a 10Mb cable modem. Whether the typical subscriber is capable of understanding this is another matter.

The next year will be interesting as the internet evolves into being generally used for a lot more than just reading web pages. I really can't see how NTL's top tier price can stay as high. The two lower tiers will need to have a fairly high cap if NTL wants to avoid having to discipline a lot of their subscribers. If the two lower caps are pretty high then there's not a lot of incentive to pay the higher price for the same download speed. I really can't see how any broadband can stay higher than £30.

I wouldn't see an £80 one-off payment as a big deal if I can recoup that investment within a few months. If the performance was better and I could save a few quid then that would swing it for me.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by SMHarman

Hardly national offerings though.

NTL are hardly national either, 1/3rd of population or so covered, Bulldog have comparable or probably higher coverage now, Easynet / UKOnine cover over 20% of population.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by DaggaDagga

My point (and I hope I'm proved wrong) is that it waits to be seen how well NTL's network will cope when a number of people start downloading and uploading lots of traffic. Yes, there are quoted contention ratios but the average subscriber expects to get somewhere near the quoted speed all the time. ADSL has contention too, but it's much easier for the ISP to add extra capacity if enough subscribers moan, as they will when people expect to be able to watch TV through their web connection without stuttering. NTL are fundamentally limited by their communal network.

It's possible that, in some places at least, an 8Mb ADSL line could be generally faster than a 10Mb cable modem. Whether the typical subscriber is capable of understanding this is another matter.

I wouldn't 100% agree with that statement, some BT exchanges share backhaul with others, and to upgrade is extremely difficult, comparable to a resegmentation on a cable network, and available backhauls to each group of subscribers are 34Mbit at most and as low as 4Mbit where doable.

In some areas yes probably 8Mbit DSL will beat a 10Mbit cable modem, however for the majority so long as NTL have done their sums right 10Mbit should be the better choice.

BT's own 8Mbit offering (actually delivers about 7.1Mbit) is being advertised to providers as potentially going down as low as 2Mbit/s at peak times, that's in the SIN for the product.

Of course if you're in an area where most people have cable and some are heavy users you're probably better off with DSL, likewise if you're in a DSL heavy area with loads of heavy users and relatively few cable subscribers on your node cable will be the better choice.

[Rob2005]

On broadband pricing, I agree that with the competition hotting up, ntl will need to do something on price, but not necessarily lower it...When everyone is on 10mb, that it is quite a competitive speed, what's not competitive is the usage allowances. I reckon rather than lower prices, you'll get more for your money just like the current 10mb upgrades. So somebody on the top tier of might be offered the chance to upgrade to an uncapped service for £40 or stick with the current usuage allowances but for £10 cheaper. So pricing might be something like this:

All basic speeds up to 10MB with:
Uncapped service costing £40-£50 per month - 75gig allowance £30-35 - 35gig allowance £20-£20 and a basic tier of 5 gig usage allowance for £12-£18.

Super speeds of up to 24Mb with:
Uncapped service: £80-£100 - 200gig usage allowance £60-£80 etc....

I reckon we'll see something like this by this time next year...

[Wicked_and_Crazy]

I cant see NTL dropping prices for Broadband for some time yet. The NTL approach always seems to be to give more for the same money. I would expect that what they are giving you in extras doesnt cost as much as dropping their prices.