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Originally Posted by Chrysalis
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6 - The big question still unanswered, why cant NTL provide the same quality of service as telewest and yet they have more money to spend. They have a bigger network which is an "advantage" since contention is less visible on bigger pipes.
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Some thoughts on "the big question"
Quality of Service is quite different to what speeds are available and whether there is capping or not. NTL may have an higher QOS than Telewest, I don't know and guess that you don't either.
NTL will look at market conditions and infrastructure capabilities when deciding what speeds to offer and at what price. They will take an informed decision on the effects of capping or not capping on their business. They do not compete with Telewest and what Telewest do is less important to their decisions than other factors.
Who knows how much money NTL or Telewest have to spend or what they are actually spending at the moment. The banks and bondholders will have a very big say in that. I think that most broadband users will agree that their service has improved considerably over the pasy year or so and that is due to money being invested in the infrastructure by NTL
Contention on cable is felt most at UBR card level and no matter how big the network is or how fat the pipes are after that. It is what users on a specific UBR card do that affects service most and several 24/7 leechers on the same card can be a big problem. The solution would be to add extra UBRs which are very expensive or to cap the heavy users. Why should an ISP spend thousands of pounds on upgrading just so that a very small minority of customers can continue to download the entire internet 24/7.