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Originally Posted by mcauslene
With the merger, do you think it is possible we will see roads being dug up again? I understood the reason for halting was lack of money.
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There's still a lack of money, all this takeover will achieve are some minimal economies of scale. Perhaps more substancial if they find a way of killing off staff, so to speak.
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However, if NTL/Telewest want to compete with Sky, surely they have to be able to reach as many people as possible.
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But cabling up more areas of the country with coax is just a daft idea - that's the reason both companies ended-up in massive debts!
The future is ADSL2+ - we're already hitting problems with the cable network as people are stuck on 38Mbps links (it's my belief that as speeds get higher, people won't be able to achieve full speeds on any platform; once they reach a certain stage, thankfully they won't care). Stick four new 10Mbps people on that link, and they'll (possibly) soon realise that they're 0.5Mbps short...
Anyway, I digress. The main cost - the backbone for ADSL2+ - is already there. I grant that those who can only get 1Mbps on ADSL might be a little stuffed for the time being, but the majority of people who can get max speeds will get 20Mbps+ on ADSL2+. I had a graph of it somewhere.
Think about it from the cable cos' point of view. You can make every urbanish town in the country 'triple play ready' without digging up one street, but you could dig up every street in the town you wish to service. What do you do?
Digging up the streets was a silly mid-90s progressive looking idea that wasn't, isn't really progressive. In the words of whoever that beer company are, "you can't rush these things". Or something like that. Other systems/ideas are also living proof of this. There must have been something in the air.