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Old 14-12-2011, 21:08   #13
m419
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Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: London
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Re: Westminster Cable TV closing but what about the hidden telephone service?

Quote:
Originally Posted by madmacfan10 View Post
I don't know the exact situation with the bt owned Westminster franchise, but I do know that Ntl, now Virgin media did not completely pull out of the Isle of Dogs, Ex bell cablemedia franchise, as they still offer a cable landline service to pre 2000 residents and local businesses over this network. I know this as I still to this day subscribe to a cable landline service from virgin media over this network. I originally had the cable landline service installed by Bell cablemedia back in 1994, and have been using this service ever since. Whether or not, virgin decides to keep the landline service going in the westminster franchise area remains to be seen, as they don't own the network there. But if they could resolve their disputes with bt (Highly unlikely) who knows what could happen.
Well because BT held the Cable Television licence for the City of Westminster and City of London boroughs(Not that Westminster Cable TV actually covered 100% of properties and streets across the 2 boroughs) It was not possible for Videotron or any other Cable company to obtain a licence for Cable Television, however it was still able to apply for a Telecommunications licence including the licence covering Electronic Communications Apparatus something that covers street cabinets and telephone boxes ect... Therefore, it constructed its telephone network across the boroughs Videotron City and Westminster limited later to be called NTL City and Westminster. The plan was to offer a competitive telephone service to BT and provide IPTV services something similar to what TalkTalk TV(Tiscali/Homechoice) offer today as well as Internet.

However, when NTL took over the BT Cable TV franchise, the deal was set by BT that NTL must not offer telephone services, at this time Cable and Wireless still owned the Videotron cable franchise and finally when NTL acquired Cable and Wireless cable franchises, it stopped taking on new customers.

So i've come to the conclusion that Virgin Media could use the ducts ect.... they own them so why not use them! to build a fibre optic network across the borough that could serve many businesses who are suffering with 6mb broadband from BT and provide Digital TV to the social housing (Citywest homes) and any properties that struggle to get a decent TV signal by either Freeview,Freesat or Sky. Many homes are not able to construct dishes and additional attenae that the council views as an eyesore from street level, properties around Mayfair and Marylebone would benefit from that.

You say that you are still using Virgin Media's home phone service, the reason why some old customers can use it is because local authorities and a small number of businesses still use the service too making it commercially viable to do, however as they need for broadband expands and increasing costs of maintaining the network, they will soon force you off by offering you a deal to use Virgin Media National.

Other reasons why they have kept it on maybe that Virgin Media once it has enough funds may look into reinstating the network in that area.

NTL explained that they pulled out of the Isle of Dogs because the network was in a bad state of disrepair and was costly to repair and were no longer able to provide a fault free service, why was it so bad! It was only built in 1993/4!

A reason for NTL's choice was at the time, they were in a financial mess. Originally, Cable and Wireless was aiming to take over Telewest around 1999/2000 but that fell through and Cable and Wireless decided to sell up to a borrowing NTL that didn't have enough funds. Therefore, if Cable and Wireless still owned the network, you probably wouldn't have that problem in that area.

Maybe the government needs to block virtually bankrupt companies from borrowing so much money and acquiring rivals when they clearly have no funds, as the first thing to go when this happens is peoples jobs and a dip in the quality of service to the public and slow development of technology, surely the government doesn't want that!
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