[Everything Goes]

Quote:

Originally Posted by moox

I'm assuming that O2 doesn't actually meet those obligations yet?

O2 and Vodafone got into trouble from Ofcom for failing to meet their 3G coverage obligations

Actually if Three were to buy O2 it would save O2 a lot of money as Three are miles ahead of O2 when it come to their data networks.

[Richard_T]

Another prospect could be that Hutchinson whampoa could buy O2 UK and keep it as a separate entity in its own right, the O2 brand is still seen as superior to the three brand
also there doesnt seem to be a hurry to dump the O2 brand in Ireland.
Another possibility is BT, the last I heard is that they are struggling with their Wifi/4G proposition, could we see a return of BT Cellnet (O2 > O2 Cellent > Cellent UK > BT Cellent )

[Gigabit]

^^ O2 Ireland is still going strong, despite being owned by Hutchinson, so that seems plausible.

[jonmorris]

If O2 could realistically promise 2Mbps today on 3G it could have been laughing at having got one over Ofcom, but I'm not sure it can in even built up areas let alone rural areas.

To be fair, unless it really does make a total pigs ear of things then by the deadline it should be near impossible not to be offering such pathetic (IMO) speeds.

[noise747]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thine Wonk

It is not about what you want though, this discussion is about what makes the most sense from a business perspective. Can a large scale market leader like O2 compete if Virgin, BT and others all crowd around them playing multiplay and offering consumers big discounts seemingly on mobile but subsidised elsewhere, especially with O2's cost setup being a premium provider.

You will always be free to choose personally to have different suppliers, but if you do that you are potentially paying more, especially if you're buying from premium / higher end of the market companies like O2.

It is about what I want as I am a potential customer. I can see what you are getting at and I understand that some may want everything in one and they think they are getting something for nothing. But then other products go up in price to pay for it, like Line rental on home phone for instance.

You say we are free to choose, are we really? Look at home broadband, all the larger providers apart from Plusnet forces their customers to also pay for their line rental. it was not that long ago you could have line rental from say first telecom and broadband from BT. you can't now, if you want Broadband from Bt, you GOT to have their line rental and then they also bundle in what they call free sport, but we know it is not really free as BT is more expensive than most other providers anyway.

If Vodafone goes into the broadband market, how long will it be before they force you to have one of their mobile phones, Lets see how long before Talk Talk gets rid of packages without their TV service and say you got to have their TV.

See where it could go to? Sure there are a few smaller providers still around, but a lot of them have been taken over by larger companies.

My mobile phone is separate to my broadband, I got no fixed line, but if I do go back to fixed line, I would have to think hard about who I would go with.

i have never liked this bundling idea, putting all your eggs in one basket

[moox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by noise747

It is about what I want as I am a potential customer. I can see what you are getting at and I understand that some may want everything in one and they think they are getting something for nothing. But then other products go up in price to pay for it, like Line rental on home phone for instance.
.....

Perhaps there's a reason why the large ISPs are going down that path. People do like one bill and one provider and this is why the various companies are becoming participants in the other areas too so they can all do triple/quad play.

It's also a source of revenue, it costs little to supply a voice service on a phone line but they can still charge 15 quid for it.

There is also a technical reason for some providers to do this. TalkTalk for example will rent the entire copper line from BT, meaning that the line is connected straight into their equipment only and this provides both the voice line and broadband. It also aids in troubleshooting and reduces complexity (they can run line tests without involving BT and their exchange equipment, for example)

You're assuming that what you want is what everyone wants and so the ISPs are wrong.

[bigpete15]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard_T

Another prospect could be that Hutchinson whampoa could buy O2 UK and keep it as a separate entity in its own right, the O2 brand is still seen as superior to the three brand
also there doesnt seem to be a hurry to dump the O2 brand in Ireland.
Another possibility is BT, the last I heard is that they are struggling with their Wifi/4G proposition, could we see a return of BT Cellnet (O2 > O2 Cellent > Cellent UK > BT Cellent )

In Ireland the O2 brand is on its way out. The o2 in Dublin is already rebranded to the 3 arena, both the Irish rugby and football teams have the 3 logo on this years shirts rather than the O2 logo.
High street shop rebrand / closures are now making progress.

[Everything Goes]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigpete15

In Ireland the O2 brand is on its way out. The o2 in Dublin is already rebranded to the 3 arena, both the Irish rugby and football teams have the 3 logo on this years shirts rather than the O2 logo.
High street shop rebrand / closures are now making progress.

What quite often happens in take overs is a company will have a time period to change branding as Telefonica will no doubt maintain the copyright to the O2 brand. This is happening right now with Nokia / Microsoft as they are changing over to Microsoft branding on their phones.

[noise747]

Quote:

Originally Posted by moox

Perhaps there's a reason why the large ISPs are going down that path. People do like one bill and one provider and this is why the various companies are becoming participants in the other areas too so they can all do triple/quad play.

What they are doing is trying to get people to think they are getting something for nothing or at lower price. the one big problem is if you have a problem with one part of the service, it is not easy to change that service to another provider, Say i was with Talk Talk and i was having all sorts of problems with their broadband and decided to move to BT. but my mobile phone was also with TalkTalk as part of a package.

So I move to BT, but because of that my mobile phone package price on Talk Talk have gone up, so I now need to go and change my mobile service provider as I am not prepared to pay the higher price. so more hassle.

Quote:

It's also a source of revenue, it costs little to supply a voice service on a phone line but they can still charge 15 quid for it.

That is a problem, some people pay £15 a month for a phone line they never use for voice. It is time that was sorted, but then Ofcom is a total waste of time.

Quote:

There is also a technical reason for some providers to do this. TalkTalk for example will rent the entire copper line from BT, meaning that the line is connected straight into their equipment only and this provides both the voice line and broadband. It also aids in troubleshooting and reduces complexity (they can run line tests without involving BT and their exchange equipment, for example)

i understand, that, but Talk Talk is still supplying separate broadband, even if they are now stuffing the price up.

My sister's household, used to be with Tiscali and TT took them over, now at the time my sister was with Bt for line rental, they changed to Sky when they had Sky TV. For about 5 years they have been happy with that arrangement, Talk Talk broadband and sky line rental. Broadband been pretty good.

A few weeks back they decided to get rid of Sky TV, which meant they had to put their line rental to another provider, they choose BT. so sky have lost money from the TV package and what they made on line rental and Sky Talk.
Last week my sister, ok my brother in law to be exact had a letter from Talk talk to say they are putting his broadband up by a fiver. My brother in law is not going to pay that.
But because he have just entered into a contract with Bt for line rental, the only logical choice is to go with Bt fro broadband since he have very little choice.

So the greed of TT have lost them a customer.

Quote:

You're assuming that what you want is what everyone wants and so the ISPs are wrong.

ISP's are assuming that all of us wants what they think we want, but not all of us do and yet we then have to suffer with higher costs.

Ofcom should get off their backside and do what they are paid to do and sort it out.

[noise747]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigpete15

In Ireland the O2 brand is on its way out. The o2 in Dublin is already rebranded to the 3 arena, both the Irish rugby and football teams have the 3 logo on this years shirts rather than the O2 logo.
High street shop rebrand / closures are now making progress.

Makes no difference if they go or stay, mobile networks will still be naff int he UK.

[Everything Goes]

Quote:

Originally Posted by noise747

That is a problem, some people pay £15 a month for a phone line they never use for voice. It is time that was sorted, but then Ofcom is a total waste of time.

A number of years ago Ofcom decided to look at this and they said that no one would want a broadband only service and that was it! Yes Ofcom are useless. I haven't used my landline in months and could happily live without it as there is no reason what so ever to have such an archaic service. If people want to get in touch with me I have a mobile phone which I take everywhere.

[moox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Everything Goes

A number of years ago Ofcom decided to look at this and they said that no one would want a broadband only service and that was it! Yes Ofcom are useless. I haven't used my landline in months and could happily live without it as there is no reason what so ever to have such an archaic service. If people want to get in touch with me I have a mobile phone which I take everywhere.

It wouldn't represent a huge saving though - the line rental tends to pay for the physical copper rental, so BT would probably still get maybe £7 or 8 a month even if it was a dry loop. It wouldn't be £0 anyway.

Some ISPs use the line rental to lower the broadband price. TalkTalk currently offers broadband for something like £1.50 plus line rental. I'm reasonably sure it costs more than that to offer the service.

And some like Virgin just take the piss, they don't need to rent a copper line from anyone, but they will charge you approximately £15 more for broadband without a phone line, unless you take the approximately £15 a month phone line. I guess they have a lot of 90s' era phone switches that they want to at least make back their maintenance costs on

[de525ma]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Everything Goes

A number of years ago Ofcom decided to look at this and they said that no one would want a broadband only service and that was it! Yes Ofcom are useless. I haven't used my landline in months and could happily live without it as there is no reason what so ever to have such an archaic service. If people want to get in touch with me I have a mobile phone which I take everywhere.

Yeah but your line rental goes towards the maintenance of the line, exchange etc (and pays for all those Openreach visits when there is a fault). The fact that it provides a voice service is moot. If you were allowed a broadband service without voice, the price of broadband would shoot up.

[Everything Goes]

Quote:

Originally Posted by de525ma

Yeah but your line rental goes towards the maintenance of the line, exchange etc (and pays for all those Openreach visits when there is a fault). The fact that it provides a voice service is moot. If you were allowed a broadband service without voice, the price of broadband would shoot up.

So your saying the fact that I don't use my landline means they are making a loss. Obviously this is wrong.

In fact BT’s share of fixed-line voice call volumes decreased by ten percentage points to 39% between 2007 and 2012. Im sure that has fallen even more.

Obviously they make money from voice calls and that's a bonus.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/mar...onal/icmr-6.22

[de525ma]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Everything Goes

So your saying the fact that I don't use my landline means they are making a loss. Obviously this is wrong.

In fact BT’s share of fixed-line voice call volumes decreased by ten percentage points to 39% between 2007 and 2012. Im sure that has fallen even more.

Obviously they make money from voice calls and that's a bonus.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/mar...onal/icmr-6.22

No I said nothing of the sort! I said that the line rental goes towards the maintenance of the line, which is used for both voice and data services. Voice doesn't cost that much more to provide so you may as well have it.

BT make a profit on this obviously.

[Everything Goes]

Quote:

Originally Posted by de525ma

No I said nothing of the sort! I said that the line rental goes towards the maintenance of the line, which is used for both voice and data services. Voice doesn't cost that much more to provide so you may as well have it.

BT make a profit on this obviously.

But you were suggesting that:

Quote:

If you were allowed a broadband service without voice, the price of broadband would shoot up.

Which suggests you think at the very least margins on voice calls is not enough to keep prices stable and they would rise to offset not having any voice revenue.

In the bigger picture BT are obviously worried by falling voice revenue. See this article:

http://www.techzone360.com/topics/te...voice-line.htm

I suspect the main market for Voice calls from a landlines involve Business, OAP's and technophobes who aren't comfortable with mobile phones. BT have realised better late than never that voice revenue from landlines is on the long term decline. Which brings us back to O2 or BT Cellnet as it was known before BT sold it to Telefonica. Some regrets perhaps by BT?

[noise747]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Everything Goes

A number of years ago Ofcom decided to look at this and they said that no one would want a broadband only service and that was it! Yes Ofcom are useless. I haven't used my landline in months and could happily live without it as there is no reason what so ever to have such an archaic service. If people want to get in touch with me I have a mobile phone which I take everywhere.

And ofcom knows this, how?

I don't have a landline, but I do have a VoIP system, but only so my Dad and couple of other people can call me. If i went back to fixed line broadband i would put my VoIP on that and not use the normal voice service.

I did hear something not that long ago about Naked broadband being looked at again.
Anyway it is not just about the line rental, how long will it be before they bundle more and more things together, put up the price and give people no choice?

Look at you view with Talk Talk and BT. it is not doing amazing to be honest, so what is to stop BT or Talk Talk, making it a compulsory part of their broadband package? Then they will put the price up and say but we give you this for free.

[noise747]

Quote:

Originally Posted by de525ma

Yeah but your line rental goes towards the maintenance of the line, exchange etc (and pays for all those Openreach visits when there is a fault). The fact that it provides a voice service is moot. If you were allowed a broadband service without voice, the price of broadband would shoot up.

i only once had BTOR here to fix a fault and they told me that they was going to replace my line as it was old and not up to the job. they never did.

I am also sure that with all the money they get from line rental the cost of maintaining the lines and equipment comes to a small fraction of that amount.

If line rental payment is for the line and equipment, then why do providers make money on line rental since it is not their line? surly all the money for line rental should go back to BTOR.

[Icaraa]

Reuters are reporting today about a BT/Telefonica deal for O2.

http://www.euronews.com/business-new...-to-bt-report/

[Charlie_Hobbs]

BT press release extract... We have received expressions of interest from shareholders in two UK mobile network operators, of which one is O2, about a possible transaction in which BT would acquire their UK mobile business. All discussions are at a highly preliminary stage and there can be no certainty that any transaction will occur.

[moox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by noise747

If line rental payment is for the line and equipment, then why do providers make money on line rental since it is not their line? surly all the money for line rental should go back to BTOR.

Because they want to use it to subsidise other things. TalkTalk uses it to be able to sell broadband for "only" £1.50 a month, BT uses it to be able to offer "free" BT sport to broadband customers and so on

[interactiv-uk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlie_Hobbs

BT press release extract... We have received expressions of interest from shareholders in two UK mobile network operators, of which one is O2, about a possible transaction in which BT would acquire their UK mobile business. All discussions are at a highly preliminary stage and there can be no certainty that any transaction will occur.

Have you got a link to the release? Just interested to have a read through and I can't find anything past Nov 18th on the BT Press site.

Thank!

[omnidirectional]

Here's an FT article which quotes the press release and confirms BT is looking at O2:

http://www.ft.com/fastft/240622/post-240622

But who is the other network? I doubt Vodafone would sell. but EE's owners have talked about selling or floating the business recently. Not sure about 3.

UPDATE:

Quote:

According to sources, the other UK network being offered to BT is EE, the 50:50 joint venture between Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom and the UK's largest mobile operator by customers.

[Zee_Bukhari]

I wonder who the 2nd mobile company could be?

[ney]

Whoever buys 02 will need to put money in to improving the coverage.
I have been north of Perth a few times in the last few years for short breaks away and the 02 coverage up that way is very poor. Even when you do get 2g or E as I have seen few times on my phone the signal at times has never been at full bars.
I have also been to places where you would expect to get a good 3g signal only to find the 3g signal only had 1 bar.
Cant see Sky buying 02 for they are putting most of there money in to there TV and broadband services the now.
Also im not sure if BT would go ahead with a bid to buy 02 as they are also putting there money in there TV and broadband services to try and take on Sky.

Darren