Why don't Virginmedia....

[New to cable]

I just noticed Smallworld cable have reduced the cost of 50mb bb to £19 and will be rolling the new price out to all customers.

If this happened on Virgin then only new customers would get the new price and old customers would have to pay the "conversion" fee. WHY DON'T VIRGINMEDIA understand the benefit and good word of mouth generated by reducing everyones bill?

Ringing up a lot of loyal customers and saying "Hi Mr X we have just reduced your monthly bill by £10"??

We are all used of what seems to be the eternal price rises or added fee's...Why not give out some good news and put out a large advertising campaign saying.........

AT VIRGINMEDIA WE DIDNT FREEZE CUSTOMERS PRICES FOR 1 YEAR.....WE REDUCED THEM BY £XX

Good idea?

[Jameseh]

Because they already have the advantage of being the only TV and BB provider that can provide half decent internet throughout the UK. Why would they need to drop prices and lose millions in doing so?

[Jelly]

they probably cant afford offering cheaper broadband or having a more congested network

[New to cable]

Because they already have the advantage of being the only TV and BB provider that can provide half decent internet throughout the UK. Why would they need to drop prices and lose millions in doing so?

BT can offer upto 40mb
Smallworld cable upto 50mb
talktalk fibre upto 40mb

[Jameseh]

BT can offer upto 40mb
Smallworld cable upto 50mb
talktalk fibre upto 40mb

BT can offer Freeview with on demand tacked on.
Smallworld can't offer even half the UK services.
TalkTalk no longer offer TV services.

So my point is proven.

[New to cable]

BT can offer Freeview with on demand tacked on.
Smallworld can't offer even half the UK services.
TalkTalk no longer offer TV services.

So my point is proven.

Yes your point is proven.:)

[Chrysalis]

I dread to think what the service would be like if 50mbit was sold for £19 on VM.

So how are smallworld doing it? no idea but its possibly a loss leader as they selling sky sports for less than the wholesale cost. Bizarre as well that there is no online ordering.

When I was on adsl I deliberatly stayed away from cheap isps as something has to give way when the numbers dont add up, with VM of course tho there is no other cable isp in the area so I chose VM as it pounds adsl down hard. My feelings are on smallworld they loss leading to get a customer base and if their service is currently good it may well nose dive soon.

[Nopanic]

To provide the fastest service VM have to invest... To invest they need profit.

[kwikbreaks]

To maintain those profits VM need to retain customers to avoid - well I'll say annoying them to avoid the wrath of the mods here. Yet you still get this sort of thing...

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2011/10/9.png

from a 50Mbps connection even though it isn't particularly cheap.

[Nopanic]

Every ISP has faults.

[Welshchris]

To provide the fastest service VM have to invest... To invest they need profit.

if its profit u need why have VM just reported losses of £74 million pre tax? lol



http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/27/virgin_media_q3_results/

[Ignitionnet]

Simple - depreciation and amortisation, neither of which are a reflection of the company's actual cash income but are used within the net profit/loss statement - a handy way of calming the tax bill down and required as part of writing down the value of purchased assets.

In terms of actual cash that went into the business you need to look at Free Cash Flow: FCF up 13% to £136m for the quarter

'lol'

[kwikbreaks]

Vodafone had a cheaper approach to reducing their tax bills - just wine and dine the head of HMRC a few times and voilÃ* - a magic write off of a huge tax bill.

[Ignitionnet]

Vodafone had a cheaper approach to reducing their tax bills - just wine and dine the head of HMRC a few times and voilÃ* - a magic write off of a huge tax bill.

Or point out that the UK's tax system is on rather shaky ground and threaten some unpleasant legal action which may cost HMRC far more money as other companies we charge for their overseas profits win the right to only pay tax in the jurisdiction the revenue was generated.

That was German income, tax was paid in Germany on German profits, the same income was then taxed again in the UK, this is potentially in contravention of international agreements regarding double taxation and its legality within the EU, though this has not been legally tested yet and HMRC really didn't want to wait for their money while it was.

Rather than reading Private Eye or listening to UKUncut have a look at the specifics of this.

A Controlled Foreign Company ("CFC") is a company controlled by a UK resident that is not itself UK resident and is subject to a lower rate of tax in the territory in which it is resident.[60] Under certain circumstances, UK resident companies that control a CFC pay corporation tax on what the UK tax profits of that CFC would have been. However, because of a wide range of exemptions,[61] very few companies suffer a CFC charge.

There are also a number of other cases making their way, slowly, up to the European Court. In particular:
A Group Litigation Order arguing that dividends received from overseas companies should be exempt from tax in the same way as dividends received from UK companies are exempted from tax;
Claims that the UK CFC legislation is contrary to EU law (notably Vodafone).

Blame Calamity Broon, the dodgy CFC legislation removing double taxation relief is another of his tax grabs.

[kwikbreaks]

Rather than reading Private Eye...
Guilty as charged m'lud.

Now back to VM... why do they sell the same capacity several times over and take months to upgrade? I'll wait on their response to when the fault they raised for mine will be actioned and if I don't like the answer I'll downgrade to 10Mbps as that's all I get in peak times anyway. If it does come to that I'll desert to Infinity as soon as it's available to me.

[jb66]

Why does everyone think infinity has no issues?

[Ignitionnet]

Guilty as charged m'lud.

Now back to VM... why do they sell the same capacity several times over and take months to upgrade? I'll wait on their response to when the fault they raised for mine will be actioned and if I don't like the answer I'll downgrade to 10Mbps as that's all I get in peak times anyway. If it does come to that I'll desert to Infinity as soon as it's available to me.

They have to sell the same capacity several times over to make the maths work as far as charging what they do for the products runs.

Upgrades take excess time usually due to parts shortages and construction requirements.

There were no such restrictions for my area, lucky me, and it was upgraded within a fortnight, so it can and does happen.

---------- Post added at 09:50 ---------- Previous post was at 09:49 ----------

Why does everyone think infinity has no issues?

Infinity's bandwidth is more managed than VM's DOCSIS network, even under congestion conditions it keeps smooth gaming latency.

No-one can claim it's issue free but upstream congestion and latency problems aren't two of its issues.

[kwikbreaks]

I think the very nature of the way cable works with tiny local pipes makes it far more likely that a single user can screw you up. My connection was fine and suddenly became bad a lot of the time and dire some of the time. You can see the start and stop of dire periods clearly on the TBB monitor and that leads me to believe it could well be a single 100Mbps user using torrents flat out

---------- Post added at 10:38 ---------- Previous post was at 10:27 ----------

They have to sell the same capacity several times over to make the maths work as far as charging what they do for the products runs.You misunderstand me. I don't expect an uncontended service. I do expect one that isn't massively over-contended though.

[Ignitionnet]

Nah I didn't, VM's upstreams suffer from small pipe syndrome. Bonding will help a ton with this once it's good to go.

You've pointed out that services don't have to be massively over-contended to have problems with visible contention, in fact just 2 customers can mangle an upstream channel at this time.

[Chrysalis]

They have to sell the same capacity several times over to make the maths work as far as charging what they do for the products runs.

Upgrades take excess time usually due to parts shortages and construction requirements.

There were no such restrictions for my area, lucky me, and it was upgraded within a fortnight, so it can and does happen.

---------- Post added at 09:50 ---------- Previous post was at 09:49 ----------



Infinity's bandwidth is more managed than VM's DOCSIS network, even under congestion conditions it keeps smooth gaming latency.

No-one can claim it's issue free but upstream congestion and latency problems aren't two of its issues.

Ignition you see openreach's spec sheet for the 80mbit infinity service?

Openreach are going to add congestion controls on wholesale level, setting a lower speed and a higher speed on the service.

[Ignitionnet]

No, I haven't. Infinity is nothing to do with BT Openreach it's a product from BT Retail which is using a resold product from BT Wholesale which in turn is using a product from BT Openreach.

Are you referring to a spec sheet from Openreach or one from Wholesale?

Or are you referring to the modified FTR values which are irrelevant anyway as they only cover the Openreach segment of the connection?

OK I see - you're referring to Openreach guaranteeing 30Mb on the 80Mb product.

http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/updates/briefings/super-fastfibreaccessbriefings/super-fastfibreaccessbriefingsarticles/nga03211.do

[Chrysalis]

A mistake, I meant 80mbit FTTC service, so across all isps.

It is from openreach.

"if there is congestion any line currently above the prioritisation rate will be reduced momentarily to reduce the congestion"

VM take note.

[roughbeast]

if its profit u need why have VM just reported losses of £74 million pre tax? lol



http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/27/virgin_media_q3_results/

If VM use the same inspirational, but lying, advertising campaigns that BT use then they might get a few more customers.

---------- Post added at 14:13 ---------- Previous post was at 14:10 ----------

Why does everyone think infinity has no issues?

Because they haven't used it yet.

[Ignitionnet]

BT's advertising, if lies, is against regulations. Would be wise to complain about it in that case.

http://www.asa.org.uk/

[Nopanic]

BT's advertising, if lies, is against regulations. Would be wise to complain about it in that case.

http://www.asa.org.uk/

You working for BT now ?

[horseman]

You working for BT now ?

Whoever pays the most! ;)

[Ignitionnet]

Nope haven't worked in consumer space for a while. I would give the exact same response regardless of the company accused of advertising with lies :)

[m419]

BT can offer upto 40mb
Smallworld cable upto 50mb
talktalk fibre upto 40mb

5% of customers of those providers are lucky to get them speeds. My dad is on TalkTalk and barely gets 2MB, its a new build so Virgin Media only cover half of the street.

Smallworld only covers a small region and does not overlap Virgin Media's Cable network following the Cable licenses which they hold.

---------- Post added at 20:33 ---------- Previous post was at 20:30 ----------

Why does everyone think infinity has no issues?

Because nobody knows anyone that uses it, but you try it and i'm sure you'll encounter problems.

[Ignitionnet]

5% of customers of those providers are lucky to get them speeds. My dad is on TalkTalk and barely gets 2MB, its a new build so Virgin Media only cover half of the street.

You missed the 'fibre' part of all those. Quite a different story from the exchange based stuff.

---------- Post added at 20:45 ---------- Previous post was at 20:42 ----------

Because nobody knows anyone that uses it, but you try it and i'm sure you'll encounter problems.

I know several people who do, very few issues at all, one had some problems at installation time, port on cabinet MSAN had to be reconfigured.

Think the slowest any of them receive is 34Mb down and 9Mb up.

I appreciate it must be rubbish though because it's not VM.

[roughbeast]

BT's advertising, if lies, is against regulations. Would be wise to complain about it in that case.

http://www.asa.org.uk/

I should have made myself clear.

I despise any advertising that suggests that you actually get more than the product can actually give you. I do not believe, for instance, that using BT Infinity or any other high speed broadband product can give you a virtually orgasmic shopping experience. I abhor advertising that suggests that you can be happy to the point of having a permanently fixed inane grin or be sexually fulfilled surrounded by people frantic to be your friend or lover. It is all lies wrapped up in a pseudo art form. All that cash and talent wasted on telling lies about products is one of the biggest scandals of our times.

Yes people do believe that crap or they wouldn't keep on dishing it out and passing advertising costs on to us.

Just tell us what the product does please. eg. You can get on average 92.84Mb on our up to 100Mb product. OR Our home hub is pretty good at avoiding interference, but you may still get some at times. OR Our fibre optic product is excellent for responsive gaming most of the time.

Let the product speak for itself, warts and all.

By the way, I did complain to BT some years ago about their BT Vision product. They didn't and still don't stand a chance of giving anyone on demand TV or any kind of viewable TV down a copper wire, unless all other household internet usage was put on hold during viewing time. I complained so much they suggested I try a different ISP, so I did.

I'm done ranting.

[Chrysalis]

infinity in its current guise is a good product, however when they rollout the 80mbit version, I assume the 40mbit product will be canned and they will go back to their one size fits all approach meaning people with say 20mbit are going to be feeling ripped off. The same way people feel now on adsl2+ with crappy 4mbit syncs.

[Ignitionnet]

<Snip>

That's advertising, it's hardly going to be a blank list of numbers on a sheet showing average speeds.

The point of advertising is to entice. You appear not to have a problem with BT so much as any and all advertising. :)

Generalisation isn't good - generalising that because your BT Vision service didn't work properly no-one's can for example. My phone line here is good for >20Mb, more than enough to take a BT Vision stream along with normal usage, and I was using IPTV over DSL from Homechoice, working just fine, back in 2006.

[roughbeast]

The point of advertising is to entice.

I want to be enticed by what the product actually does, even if a set of figures is the main illustration. I could go on and blame our consumerist attitudes on the bloated and emotive claims of advertising, but I won't lol.

I take your point about generalisation, but I haven't come across many satisfied customers getting their BT Vision via copper. Indeed, you are my first.

[Ignitionnet]

I want to be enticed by what the product actually does, even if a set of figures is the main illustration. I could go on and blame our consumerist attitudes on the bloated and emotive claims of advertising, but I won't lol.

I take your point about generalisation, but I haven't come across many satisfied customers getting their BT Vision via copper. Indeed, you are my first.

I wasn't, mine was supplied by Homechoice.