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Originally Posted by Chrysalis
because both companies are guilty of buying franchises and not cabling the areas, they shouldnt be allowed to spend money on a merger when they have contracts to honour.
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As stated, the contracts only state a % of the area has to be servicable. Thing is, people complain about lack of service and demand that Technology should be upgraded, then others complain about no-cabled area branding it should be "illegal" to merge when there are unservicable areas within each franchise.
Which do you want? Unfortunatally you cannot have both, given the cash flow situation of the company. People seem to forget that ntl have $billions of debt that it both incured itself and also took on when taking over other cable companies (C&W etc) due to the original cost of cabling (and that was over 10 yrs ago). Unlike BT this money wasn't from a goverment pot and the backers will not spend another $billion?? or so which quite frankly would set the company back another 10-15 yrs!
Merger seems a clever option (and yes will make shareholders/directors alike a big payout) and, if they keep their jobs you'd have thought they would have rejected the money and insist it goes back into the company although I doubt that will happen, and us "lower" ntl employees will have to hit extended targets to make the money up.
Simple thing is though, I can't see it being a merger and looks more likey thaty ntl is trying to find cashflow from everywhere (extended targets/cost reduction exercises) to
buy telewest out with the promise to give more shareholing to the banks etc in return for some cash.
That's how I feel on the matter anyway, call me cynical but it WILL happen but not for another couple of years.
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