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Originally Posted by Gareth
ian@huth, you made some good points. I think you're right that if they levied the installation charge they would lose a lot of customers to Sky's free installation package. So the mandatory phone line rental is really a cover-up to hide the installation fee that NTL don't charge - is that what you're saying? Any thoughts on how Sky can afford to offer free installation yet NTL can't? Surely getting satellites up into space is just as costly as digging up a few roads to put some cables underground?
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Both Sky and NTL have had massive costs involved in setting up their networks. NTL costs mainly centred around digging up roads, Sky in putting up satellites. Actually Sky do not put up satellites but rent transponder space on them but that means that Sky realistically have to pay for the satellite, getting it into orbit, maintaining it and giving the owners a profit.
The main difference in customer installation is that Sky have to install and align a dish together with cabling from the dish to the digibox whilst NTL have to run a cable from the nearest green box to a connection box on the property and then cable from this box to the STB. Not a massive difference in costs between the two.
Sky gives out free digiboxes which are free due to the subsidy from Marketing Contributions Limited for rights to the interactive services. Maintenance of the digibox is only free for the first twelve months after which the customer bears the cost (unless the customer is an adept negotiator
). NTL have to pay for the STB's and continuing maintenance after the initial 12 month contract period. It is therefore costing NTL much more than Sky to provide the DTV service.
Sky then make money out of all their subscribers and also out of NTL subscribers who are taking Sky channels via cable.
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Originally Posted by Angua
As I understand things you must have a telephone to have sky. Thus sky are forcing you to have a landline whether you want one or not. With services such as Talk Talk is this fair either?
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You only need a telephone line if you are taking advantage of the free digibox subsidised by Marketing Contributions Limited, and then only for the first 12 months. You also need the phone line if you take advantage of the multi-room discount. It doesn't matter who supplies the phone line where it is required.