Cable and Wireless campaigns for cheaper calls

[m419]

The company that launched One2One(Now T-Mobile) together with its high cost termination rates is now campaigning for cheaper calls to mobiles in the americas.

So what is stopping them lowering call rates here?

Cable and Wireless route most calls to mobiles for virgin media and the mobile networks have reduced the termination rates have dropped so why are companies such as Virgin Media,C&W and BT still charging up to 25p per minute for calling mobiles when the mobile network termination rates are no higher than 8p per minute???

Cable and Wireless is the 2nd largest telecoms company in the UK and should worry about its home country before preaching anywhere else.

No wonder Cable and Wireless has performed badly in the UK.

I remember when they launched 'Up2You' on One2One in 1997, it was the first pay as you go service and it charged 50p per minute to call anywhere at anytime with 15p per minute voicemail, now T-Mobile charge 15p per minute(From july 30th) and 10p per minute voicemail. Deutsche Telekom have really improved the network since taking it over in 1999 and the network coverage is much better with cheaper calling costs.

http://www.cw.com/media_events/media_centre/releases/2007/01_24_2007.html

[Toto]

The company that launched One2One(Now T-Mobile) together with its high cost termination rates is now campaigning for cheaper calls to mobiles in the americas.

So what is stopping them lowering call rates here?

Cable and Wireless route most calls to mobiles for virgin media and the mobile networks have reduced the termination rates have dropped so why are companies such as Virgin Media,C&W and BT still charging up to 25p per minute for calling mobiles when the mobile network termination rates are no higher than 8p per minute???

Cable and Wireless is the 2nd largest telecoms company in the UK and should worry about its home country before preaching anywhere else.

No wonder Cable and Wireless has performed badly in the UK.

I remember when they launched 'Up2You' on One2One in 1997, it was the first pay as you go service and it charged 50p per minute to call anywhere at anytime with 15p per minute voicemail, now T-Mobile charge 15p per minute(From july 30th) and 10p per minute voicemail. Deutsche Telekom have really improved the network since taking it over in 1999 and the network coverage is much better with cheaper calling costs.

http://www.cw.com/media_events/media_centre/releases/2007/01_24_2007.html

Sorry, I'm confused here, where did you get this from?

Cable and Wireless route most calls to mobiles for virgin media

Thanks.

[m419]

Cable and Wireless is the main carrier for calls between virgin media lines to mobiles. When calling a mobile from a virgin media landline, it is carried through another network such as C&W or BT in order to reach its destination.

Thats what an engineer told me a few years ago when I was experiencing problems calling mobiles and it was long after C&W sold the business to NTL and besides i'm in an ex-telewest area.

In the 1980's and early 1990's when the cable franchises were being built, the phone infrastrucutre was based around Mercury Communications network now known as Cable and Wireless, so when calling outside your local area or to mobiles and international numbers, the call is most certainly going to be routed through Cable and Wireless.

[Toto]

So you're saying that VM routes most of its calls to mobile numbers through CW rather than BT?

[m419]

No Virgin Media use both and perhaps a few other providers but mostly Cable and Wireless, the reason why Virgin Media use a mixture of networks is just incase all available Cable and Wireless lines are busy or out of order and they can route calls to mobiles though other networks so that customers are not without service.

Emergency services and operator services and the new 101 service which is being rolled out is provided by Cable and Wireless too.

[injuneer]

Not sure this is true anymore, when I worked for Ntl (ex-C&W areas) we spent a lot of time reducing the interconnect capacity with Cable & Wireless because they were so expensive. :erm:

[m419]

Maybe,because now coming to think about it, NTL has a national infrastructure that can inter-connect with other networks of which the local cable franchises are attached too.

However ex-telewest areas may well still be dependent on so many cable and wireless line.

Furthermore, I think the two companies well actually one company now, uses sim boxes to route calls through to mobiles to save money.

Sometimes when i've dialled a mobile number, I get a message saying 'Cable and Wireless connecting 'eg:01234-567-890'.

NTL would probably have reduced interconnectivity with Cable and Wireless for the following destinations:

(These are examples):

When a customer in the Blackburn ex-Nynex area calls someone in the Westminster ex-Videotron area, the call will be routed through NTL's own national infrastructure. If this is not possible, then unfortunately it would go through C&W and this is why the cable companies kept the free off-peak cable to cable calls local.

When a customer in Westminster-ex Videotron area calls a BT line in Glasgow. NTL would route the call through to its national infrastructure to a point in Glasgow where it would reach a local BT interconnection point in Glasgow to complete the calls destination. As before, it would have gone through to Cable and Wireless first and then onto the national NTL infrastructure.

When customers call Orange and Vodafone mobiles(Not telewest franchises) Because Arquiva was once part of NTL, Arquiva probably still use NTL resources and therefore because Orange and Vodafone rely on Arquiva transmission and network infrastructure solutions, it provides a cheaper solution to routing calls.

When customers call Hutchison 3G (3-Mobile) from Telewest franchises, apparently Telewest and 3 had a direct interconnection, if they did, there must have been a fault because the sound quality was crap.

Examples of where NTL would use Cable and Wireless interconnectivity:

When Virgin Media residential or NTL-Telewest business customers make calls which terminate on the Cable and Wireless (Mercury/Energis) network.

When Virgin Media residential or NTL-Telewest business customers make international calls.

When Virgin Media residential or NTL-Telewest business customers make calls to T-Mobile phones, the ex-C&W owned mobile network is still very dependent on Cable and Wireless.

*Just so that nobody is confused,References made have mentioned as NTL rather than Virgin as within the telecoms industry, its still classed as NTL, probably because of NTL-Telewest Business. And Videotron,Nynex and Telewest are cable franchises swallowed up by NTL/Virgin.

---------- Post added at 16:37 ---------- Previous post was at 16:00 ----------

BT and Cable and Wireless are the main companies for routing of international calls with the exclusion of Voip. Once BT and Cable and Wireless were one company owned by the goverment before privatisation and long before that Cable and Wireless was a privately owned company which started off in the 1850's providing telecommunications to the americas and other british colonies, so my guess is that Cable and Wireless so a chance of taking over all the cable companies when they provided the interconnectivity in the 80's and 90's, they focused too much on telephone services and did not participate or invest well on broadband services when they had the cable business which is why it was so poor. In 1998 they mentioned that they would either sell its cable business to NTL or else keep it but takeover Telewest and if it did it would have taken over NTL and would of branded as Virgin Media and had Flextech,NTL Home,NTL Telewest Business,Telewest residential and maybe NTL Broadcast if they had got their in time. Virgin Media/C&W would have been the largest telecoms company in the UK.And still there is a chance of Cable and Wireless taking over all the cable franchises as planned as I see Virgin Media is up for sale.