[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by Gareth

I'd disagree that it's TW who 'copied' NTL's idea... although this purely my opinion as I don't have any insider information nor do I work for either company. Looking at TW's announcement, there is far more detail to their offering - concrete details that couldn't have been calculated within the time that NTL made their announcement and TW's press release. Also, TW will be rolling-out their implementation by the end of next month... if they were 'copying' NTL, I'd expect to see them have this ready sometime in 2007 and not September 2005 (remember that NTL have only committed themselves to having this ready nationally for all customers by December 2006). Too much detail from TW to suggest they've cobbled together something in a couple of days after being taken by surprise by NT:'s announcement. If anything, I'd say NTL had their hand forced by TW's announcement being made today, and therefore NTL had to go public when they did, despite not having sufficient details about timescales, pricing, upload speeds, caps, etc... - all things that TW have categorically answered today in their press release.

Just my interpretation of the events as I see them. I'm not privy to specific information, unlike certain people here that claim to be. Feel free to ignore it if you want.

It only takes a few minutes to knock up a press statement containing the "facts" that the TW statement has. It doesn't take that long to write a config file for the new speeds. Whether they can deliver an acceptable level of service in the time frame they have stated is another matter. Probably for most TW customers the increased speeds available will not put too much pressure on their network. They will occupy a much greater portion of the pipe they are on but it will be for a much shorter time freeing up the space for someone else. The connection caners will be the problem and a lot depends on the distribution of those within the network. They may experience problems which other users don't.