Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Its fair to say its LUCK OF THE DRAW! :D

Neither BT, Sky, ntl, Telewest, Orange, O2, T-Mobile, Vodafone (mmmmmmm whats the connection) are particularly fantastic at answering or dealing with customers.

They are all Communications companies that can communicate, none is really better than the others, service is eratic, sometimes good, sometimes bad...........never exceptional, which in my opinion is what it should be.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

It also depends where you are.
Like many things, internet depends on the line, if your next door neighbour is messing with the network, if you have a decent computer, connection speeds, number subscribers on your area, etc.
Everyone will have different service outcomes.

As for the merger, I see it as a good thing. As long as prices dont go up, telewest could offer NTL some much needed money to upgrade a lot of the network.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

:confused: :dunce:

How could telewest give ntl some money to upgrade?!? they are as skint if not more so than ntl!!

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

come back to planet earth.

I can confidently predict 1 thing. Add both work forces together, then reduce by a third.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

I doubt that will happen. Mainly because Telewest is a fraction of the size of NTL, so therefore any money they can bring to the merger would probably be not nearly enough. AFAIK the only reason they had enough money to upgrade is that they have decided not to upgrade speeds accross the whole of their areas (for instance, NTL spent millions so all their broadband areas could have the increased speeds, apparently, Telewest can not offer any speed increases in some areas).

Also, they have just restructured, so may not have an awful lot of money to use anyway.

TBH, I think what will happen is what Pierre said Merge both companies then reduce staff levels by a third..

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

NTL have more money than Telewest in relative terms.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

What exactly is that supposed to mean?

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Shouldn't it be who has the smallest debt rather than who has most money? :D

I would imagine it is the shareholders of both companies who decide if and when they merge and who is put in charge, the if decision having been taken some time back.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Telewest is coming to NTL.

Im not sure how it will be arranged though.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

No because NTL will have much greater assets compared with Telewest.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Simon Duffy just has to go. Hes a proper numpty.
Just like most of the NTL senior managemnt.
Robbin Davison and Pete Dick couldnt organise a Pi*sup in a pub

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Really???

Under them, NTLs service has consistantly improved!.

CS answer the phone much quicker and are helpful (FINALLY!!!)

LCR3 has been rolled out, and works well (if slowly).

Broadband speeds have improved, and are set to improve again.

The general reliability of the HFC network has improved.

VOD is being added.

For me, NTL are definitely a company on the up!

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Well as far as we can see Simon Duffy actually answers the concerns of ntl customers, not just bury his head in the sand and hope the problems go away.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

I agree things look better than they did pre-chapter 11, but any worse and the company wouldn't exist in it's present form. (I dont think even the hardened ntl'ee will disagree)

I wonder if the comment about HFC network relaibility is based on "Stats" or talking to the guys out in the field. Downtime is lower because of many factors, the increase in broadband customers has meant the network cannot be taken down during the daytime without a very good reason. Also no build menas there is very little chance of any disruptions being caused at hubsite, nodal and DA level. If the same criteria is used for fault stats these days, the network down for 30 mins at 3am and no-one logs a fault used to mean it wasn't recorded as network unavailability.

Also next to nothing is being done in many areas for preventative maintenance, so there are very few requests being made to take parts of the network offline to carry out maintenance. Hence giving the appearance that the network is more reliable.

My final point, I understand there is a different criteria for recording power outages. These used to be recorded as network unavailability and were scored against the regions bonus. I understand these outages are not recorded as ntl service unavailable these days.

When there was a power outage, we used to be asked how many customrs it affected. We would take a guess at how many customers were fed from the affected node, then we would take away another guessed figure for customers whos own power to their house was affected by the power outage. These customers were not included in the ntl figures because they didn't have power from their electricity supplier during the ntl outage.

I know thats not of much interest but I just mentioned it to show how hit and miss these figures are on a network where you dont actually know how many customers are fed form a node. It also shows just how relaible statistics are when given an insight to how accurate the data is thats being put in! Also different regions would record the same fault under different fault codes, it was all down to individual interpretation.

Re: Merger happening in early 2005!!
 

Who says we don't know how many people are fed from a node? I have a report here, colour coded, showing % online/offline at node level for any UBR. Dead useful.