Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Come next year, NTL will have higher BB speeds for most people, and VoD. I use both regularly, and it's a myth that Telewest's service is miles ahead of NTL's. They're better in some respects, worse in others, but overall there's not much to choose between them.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Sorry to disappoint but a lot of what it comes down to is as simple as this:

NTLI:US NTL Inc Market Cap (Millions) $5,961.524
TLWT:US Telewest Global Inc Market Cap (Millions) $3,356.500

Market Capitalisation, value of all floated shares.

http://tinyurl.com/7yx8a

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

From experiences of the ntl - cwc merger it's not easy to generalise. I think certain areas/departments of ntl took control in their area, and the other way around for other areas of the business.
(Areas I mean tasks/departments not just geographical)

cwc people took control of certain functions with regards to headends and Hubsites, the opposite people originally from ntl were the ones made redundant in the cuts. I expect the same would happen again, it's not necessarily down to who is the best to take over a task during the ntl-cwc shake-up it was all down to who had the ba**s to push their head up and force the opposition out.

I was amazed how managers at regional and national level seemed to create their own jobs by forcefully taking over other peoples jobs. It really was a case of musical chairs and I expect the same will happen again.

Taking my old area of Wales as an example, in the last 4-5 years the regional boundries have changed as follows Celtic Region, Wales and the West, Wales and the Midland, Celtic Region, and now again I understand it is going back to Wales and the Midlands under the latest wave of restructures and redundancies currently taking place.

It was always rumoured that the "Wales and the Midlands" region was chosen to accomodate the rumoured ntl-telewest merger before chapter 11.
It made no sense from an ntl - cwc point of view, so perhaps they are working towards this again.

Whatever happens it's part of the ongoing 18 months changes and restructures that happen when things are not working, I was told last night " I never know who's going to be boss when I arrive for work tomorrow"
Stability is not something we can associate ntl with, and look out for less stability when the merger happens and things get combined to save costs.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

I don't really think you can make an comparison between when ntl bought C&W out as this would be completely different because NTL do not have the funding to buy out a company the size of telewest without causing problem.

There are still large areas of telewests network where it is yet to have been upgraded to support digital i.e. similar to videotron.

I have actually seen Telewest vans over in NTL's area recently round wallasey looking at CABs and saw an NTL crew in Liverpool on friday (Liverpool is a Telewest area).

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

if ntl take major control then the company is gonna be dragged down and the service quality will go down so i might end up leaving if that happens but if miraculously they manage to pull it off and improve then i'll be more than happy.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

why will it ????????? , there is good and bad in any company ;)

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Higher speeds are not innovative, at least not at the current prices. They're short-lived headline grabbers that appeal to a tiny, tiny market.

The growth in broadband is at entry level and NTL has always been a pioneer in providing low-cost broadband to consumers, or at lest they used to be until Wandoo launched a sub-£20 1Mb offering.

But far from sitting in the shadows, NTL now plans to take on Wandoo-head-to-head and beat them with a better value proposition, reclaiming their crown as not only Britain's biggest, but best value broadband service.

NTL were the first major ISP to offer sub-£20 broadband when ADSL was £40 to £50 (Telewest was still £33/mth), the first major ISP to successfully launch a sub-£15 service that literally wiped the floor with every single other broadband service in the UK.

AOL and Telewest both tried to dismiss NTL's subscriber numbers claiming they included those on a sub-512K "not proper broadband" service. Of course the fact is they were jealous of NTL's success, and we now have AOL & Telewest both flogging 256K 'broadband' for £17.99 while NTL has moved on and plans to offer 1Mb for the same price.

Simon Duffy is expected to remain in control of the merged cable group, It'll certainly not be run by somebody on a temporary contract at Telewest Global, itself intended as nothing more than a temporary entity to facilitate a smooth merger.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Either that's a quote from somewhere or someone has their head screwed on.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

:clap: :clap:

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Very well thought out post mate!

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Those who like speed would dismiss < 512k as "not proper broadband", but a speed of 1 Megabit with a crippling cap is "not proper broadband" either - what you can't do with < 512k because it's too slow, you can't do for LONG with a tightly capped service, but lets not hijack this into another capping thread :angel:

As for "who comes out top", size isn't everything ... giving backhanders to the right people is :shocked:

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Crippling cap? 1Mb/5Gb looks better to me than 512Kb/1GB but there you go.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

There will be no more talk of 'caps' in here please - the topic is the [possible] merger. :)

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

I had to jump in here and point out that in my entire time with sky (ever since the forgotten days of analogue sat) and BT (for a LONG time), I've never had to wait more than 30 seconds to get a response from either of them on the phone and their customer service has always been far superior to any other telecoms company I have ever been a customer of, so I have to disagree with the person who made a point that "every telecom company is the same", because I personally don't feel that's true.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Sorry but what rubbish! Sky often took ages to answer the phone and when I was with BT I used to have to wait hours getting through to the faults dept.