[Mr Angry]

I wouldn't assume that TUPE is inevitable. Certainly, yes, it is being considered but you have to weigh the "offsets" as far as NTL are concerned.

They are faced with two choices. Retain the existing staff under current contracts and offer redundancies to a number of those in order to streamline or outsource to a third party under TUPE and, subsequently, avoid the additional financial burden of redundancy payments.

Outsourcing to a third party under TUPE, whilst appearing to be a sound financial move initially, represents a potential nett financial loss to NTL which I don't think they can afford to absorb - or offset.

Put simply, existing customers are "contracted" to pay certain fees for certain tech / install services. Any transfer of undertakings to a third party in respect of tech / install services is outside the remit / terms of the existing consumer contract ie. NTL loses the money for service maintenance tech / install services on the part of existing customers.

The bean counters are, most likely, having a bit of a headscratch on the "workaround".