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Ok, I take your point but Business and Home are the divisions that dragged it all down, Broadcast has not borrowed beyond it's means to build networks, they already hada national network before CableTel bought them.
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It's a bit of a non-argument. All divisions are part of ntl. Buying the numerous companies that now form ntl:Home/business may have got the company in mountains of debt. But the revenues they now produce is what will get the company out of debt eventually. The revenues Broadcast produce could not do it.
Yes ntl had a national network and that is why cabletel bought them. However, the national network then was mainly an STM-1 Microwave network between the many masts ntl owned. They had very little in the way of fibre. In fact they only had a couple of rings and a leg down to Lands End. Cabletels money heped finance the building of approx 65% of the Core Network including the two sub-sea crossings to Ireland.
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I agree they are advertising jobs, but take a look at the jobs advertised. Most are either callcentre where the industry has a constant turnover and a poor pay reputation, or they are office type jobs. ntl are not advertising any technical positions for people to get their hands dirty and sort out the problems, regions are crying out for more engineers and the guys at the top are advertising office based positions for csr's, tech support, fault management and teh odd project manager.
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Go onto Thus's, Energis's, Fibernets, Global Crossings, Colts, job sites they are all advertising for Sales, Accounts Managers, Customer Reps.
Building and maintaining networks is expensive, all telcos at the moment are focused on gaining and retaining customers. Without the revenues they cannot invest or maintain.
It may come back to bite them later but maintenance is has been reduced to essential items only. As long as service continues then that is all that matters.
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Theres nothing changing at the sharp end, and the sharp end is the guys visiting customers not the ones talking to them on the phone!
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It's an old argument, they are all needed to make it work. The guys in the field need the guys in the office and vice versa. The company would not function if staffed totally by engineers or by CSRs.
When the company was building there were more engineers and field staff than customer staff. The company hasn't been building for years so it is enevitable that the amount of Customer staff will rise as that is where the company is focused.