Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Talking about on topic...I thought the Cap thread was like ---> Over there somewhere? Anyhow Ian post there mentioned Telepohone etc - well id like to reply to this if I may.

Water and Sewerage - i dont montior that very much, dont egt some letter telling me ive used too much. Sky - again, pay and watch as much or as little as I require. Telephones, I have a online web page where i can check my Bill and so forth to see how much it has been hammered of late. End of the day ist called progress, remember when cars could only reach astaggering 30mph?? now they can like do over 200. I would laso like to pull out the old Dial up card if i may - if the price was cheap enough per month, then there is no reason why a Lot of people (the general masses then) could not survive month after month on that but the companies are pricing the dial up close to a broadband connection to try and force people onto it - simple why cos it must cost a lot more for racks of 56k Modems then it does to provide a ADSl/CM connetion.

My last and final point if I may be so kind - Unless NTL (or BT for that matter, hell anyone) provide some way for the end user to check there useage, then its gonna be hard for a lot of us to check how much they have used up as it were. a Bandwidth program is of no use to me - im on a network, connected via a router so all traffic even to my other machines will rack up that number.. Is there any news of such a thing been put in? I cannot see how they can make people stick to this cap unless they provide some sort of Login- check your useage kinda thing !!

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

that's cos either you're on a water meter where you pay for what you consume and excrete or you pay water rates where you pay a fixed cost.

that's cos there is no different cost to sky if you want 0 hours a month or max out your connection and watch sky 24 hours a day.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Just wondering why have NTL decided to put the 2 and 3mb on the same cap level? Doesn't seem to make much sense seeing as the 3mb customers are paying a lot more than someone on 2mb, NTL I think are going to see a lot of people downgrading to the lower speeds - but then again when has good commercial business sense ever been part of NTL's vocab?

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

The Three Laws of NTL (or the NTL definition of commercial business sense)

1. the ability or werewithall to p*** off as many customers as possible without giving out any information (telephone ping-pong being a good example)
2. being able to make 'sound' (sic) business decisions whilst still adhering to point 1
3. ignoring any customer/staff feedback whilst still adhering to the previous two points

there could be many more but these spring to mind

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

OK people this thread has been reported for the amount of bickering going on - let's keep it calm please.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Just spotted this news on the PCPro site:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/69272/nt...nd-speeds.html

It appears to have been copied word for word from this site - even down to using the site's name - are they allowed to do this?

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

The definition of both ntl and Telewest at the moment:

Technology based companies owned and beholden to venture capitalists whose primary concern is as good a return as possible on their investments.

Now that Telewest's pre-bankruptcy upgrades have been pretty much used sorry to say that Telewest will be in the same kind of boat as ntl now.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

I can think of 3 good reasons. 33% extra gbs (40gbs not 30gbs). 50% more d/l speed (great if you are running a LAN, which many people do). 50% more u/l speed (great for hosting games like Halo 2 and for uploading data). All of which are reasons i will be upgrading to the top tier service.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

See plusnet are going to go with 8Mb broadband from April at £14.99, at least their caps are realistic, time dependant but useable on a monthly figure not a 1gb a day cap period.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/16/bt_plusnet/

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Agreed. We are dealing with Venture Capitalists where I work. They operate quite simply. You do what they demand (usually make as much money as possible). If you don't, then they pull their funding (which in the case of NTL is in the order of Billions) and you have to pay them back. If that happens, bye bye company.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Slightly different in ntl and Telewest's case - these people aren't funding, they actually own the company.

Figures below taken from a post regarding potential mergers:

NTL Inc

WR Huff Personal Holding 11,077,692 12.64%

WR Huff Asset Management Holding 10,448,530 11.92%

W R Huff total assets in NTL Inc = 21,526,222 shares = 24.56% of share capital.

FMR Corporation (Fidelity Management & Research Corp) 10,846,817 12.37%
Fidelity International Ltd (Bermuda) 2,169,814 2.48%

Fidelity Corp / Int Ltd NTL Inc holding = 13,016,631 shares, 14.85% of share capital

Franklin Resources, Inc 7,756,409 shares, 8.85% of share capital
Oaktree Capital Management, LLC 7,364,235 shares, 8.4% of share capital

Total Shares Outstanding 87,657,000

W R Huff, Fidelity, Franklin Resources and Oaktree Cap. Mgmt own 56.66% of NTL Inc.

Telewest Global Inc

HUFF, WILLIAM R. Personal Holding 45,022,199 18.38%
HUFF (W.R.) Asset Management Co., L.L.C. 42,772,619 17.46%

W R HUFF total holding in Telewest = 87,794,818 shares = 35.84% of share capital.

FMR Corporation (Fidelity Management & Research Corp) 29,830,504 12.18%
Fidelity International Ltd (Bermuda) 6,919,426 2.82%

Fidelity Corp / Int Ltd Telewest Global holding = 36,749,930 shares, 15.00% of share capital.

Franklin Resources, Inc 22,621,503 9.23 $262,861,857 30-Sep-04

Oaktree Capital Management, LLC 14,131,785 5.77 $164,211,337 30-Sep-04

Shares Outstanding 245,000,000

W R Huff and Fidelity just between the two of them own 50.84% of Telewest Global Inc.

Franklin and Oaktree Cap Mgmt's shares make this combined ownership 65.84%

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

So it's doubly important that NTL or Telewest keep them happy..

Modem Upgrade
 

I still have the old surfboard modem supplied by NTL must say it as served me well but getting on for four years old or more now. With all the new speed increases coming our way will it beable to cope ? Do NTL have any plans to upgrade this modem at any point or do I have to wait till it is fried befor I get a new one ? Anyone know the expected life span of this model ?

Re: Modem Upgrade
 

The surfboard will handle the new speeds, don't worry. There is no need to upgrade them until they fail.

Re: *ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please
 

Not a matter of keeping them happy, they own the companies so can keep themselves happy.