Dual recordings

[seaneeboy]

Originally Posted by SMHarman

Slipping off topic, but recruitment, so you mean an improvement in the customer service experience.

Marketing - where - I turn on the radio and hear BlueYonder adverts. The most I see NTL mentioned in adverts is those for AOL BB. NTL BB is rarely advertised, at least where I loook anyway.

Mods - if i'm going way off topic or owt here please feel free to split this topic out

Hiya, Marketing is an odd creature, and who you're aiming to recruit aren't necessarily best found through certain routes. What I imagine has happened is research has been carried out to see which demographics sign up for NTL most readily, and the methods of media they're most suceptable to... I see and hear telewest ads all over the place, but then again I'm a 24 year old professional... I go to train stations, supermarkets, etc and everywhere you get NTL face to face recruiters. these are the places packed with families or executives with disposable income...

Of course, this is only just a very vague overview of how I've seen recruitment - a national campaign is a very difficult thing to co-ordinate, especially when you may have quite specific target audiences.

One problem with this that springs to mind is the necessarily restricted market for such a service. Sky potentially has access to every household in the UK, and something like 7 million existing subscribers to target advertising at. I suspect neither NTL nor Telewest have access to a large enough subscriber base to make such a service viable. The fewer 'NTL+' boxes they are likely to sell, the higher the unit price for each box would need to be, to cover development and other costs.

I think if you want such a service, best option is simply to endure the hassle and switch to someone who already provides it.

[jeffbodkin]

Originally Posted by towny

One problem with this that springs to mind is the necessarily restricted market for such a service. Sky potentially has access to every household in the UK, and something like 7 million existing subscribers to target advertising at. I suspect neither NTL nor Telewest have access to a large enough subscriber base to make such a service viable. The fewer 'NTL+' boxes they are likely to sell, the higher the unit price for each box would need to be, to cover development and other costs.

I think if you want such a service, best option is simply to endure the hassle and switch to someone who already provides it.

This goes back to the first post and why the customer left NTL. He was unhappy with the product and saw a future with SKY. The NTL network covers enough of the country to be in competition with SKY but the DTV product is inferior. Customers want a reliable, affordable system.

Originally Posted by jeffbodkin

This goes back to the first post and why the customer left NTL. He was unhappy with the product and saw a future with SKY. The NTL network covers enough of the country to be in competition with SKY but the DTV product is inferior. Customers want a reliable, affordable system.

There are all kinds of reasons why NTL can't compete with Sky on a like-for-like basis. Some of them I can think of, in no particular order, are the available bandwidth for suppying channels (Sky's is vastly greater), the fact that the big channels are owned by Sky (Sky One, Sky Sports, Sky Movies...) and therefore Sky doesn't charge itself for the privilege of carrying those channels on its platform, and as I said earlier, Sky's potential subscriber base is every household in the UK (35 million?) whereas NTL's is restricted to cabled streets in limited areas of the UK.

If Sky can reach 35 million homes, and its research shows that (for the sake of argument; I don't know the right figures) 10% of the UK population are interested enough in TV on demand to buy Sky+ within 2 years, that's 3.5 million subscribers. The cost of developing the service is therefore split 3.5 million ways and the unit cost of each STB is reasonable.

NTL, on the other hand, has 'marketable' access to just 7.6 million homes for its digital services. (source). Assuming again that 10% of the UK population are interested in TV on demand, and that all of them who could take it from NTL were to do so within 2 years, then by 2006 NTL could have a little over 750,000 'NTL+' subscribers.

You don't have to be a boffin to work out that if Sky can sell 3.5 million Sky+ boxes, and NTL can sell only 750,000 NTL+ boxes, the unit cost of an NTL box is necessarily going to be higher.

Now I don't know any of this for certain, but I do believe it's reasonable to assume that this is a big disincentive for NTL to bother developing such a service. Of course, you could then say this is another reason why NTL and Telewest should merge, in order to increase their potential market and make a wider range of services more viable.

[SMHarman]

But... NTL and Telewest are both moving down a path that takes them to the same basic platform. This would mean that between them they have access to potentially 40-50% of the sky plus customer base. That and falling prices leading to this becoming standard technology.

The cable box is already availible in the US market.
http://www.scientificatlanta.com/pro.../Exp8000HD.htm

Proppin (i think - being as I have been getting Debsy Incog and Kink mixed up I would not bet on this) has pointed out this would need tweaking for a EU market, power supply, Pal vs NTSC and probably the biggest stumbling block the software, which seems to be a problem with NTL in general.

I've used the cable future on Time Warner Cable and its fab. Time Warner Cable also let other ISPs use their local loop, like BT do with DSL. What a clever idea!

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by towny

One problem with this that springs to mind is the necessarily restricted market for such a service. Sky potentially has access to every household in the UK, and something like 7 million existing subscribers to target advertising at. I suspect neither NTL nor Telewest have access to a large enough subscriber base to make such a service viable. The fewer 'NTL+' boxes they are likely to sell, the higher the unit price for each box would need to be, to cover development and other costs.

I think if you want such a service, best option is simply to endure the hassle and switch to someone who already provides it.

When you look at something that your competitors have that you don't have, you have to think beyond the cost of providing it but also at the cost of NOT providing it. If you take the view that it is not economically viable you risk the chance of losing a lot of customers to the opposition thereby cutting your own revenue and increasing the oppositions. The opposition, by having gained many more customers for the product recovers the cost of R & D sooner and goes on to other projects that take it even further ahead. Unit prices for the oppositions products also decreases with the larger number of takers so they win again.

Originally Posted by ianathuth

When you look at something that your competitors have that you don't have, you have to think beyond the cost of providing it but also at the cost of NOT providing it. If you take the view that it is not economically viable you risk the chance of losing a lot of customers to the opposition thereby cutting your own revenue and increasing the oppositions. The opposition, by having gained many more customers for the product recovers the cost of R & D sooner and goes on to other projects that take it even further ahead. Unit prices for the oppositions products also decreases with the larger number of takers so they win again.

I think this neatly sums up the critical weakness of the original cable TV proposition in the UK (a large number of small providers). NTL and Telewest need to merge and work on a single, coherent and cost-effective answer to the challenges from Sky (and to a lesser extent, Freeview) which have the entire country to market to.

The 'cost of not doing it' is unlikely to impress the banks at the moment, who have a huge amount of cash tied up in the two companies and will be wanting to take profits to pay that off before contemplating any big R&D.

Originally Posted by towny

I think if you want such a service, best option is simply to endure the hassle and switch to someone who already provides it.

Which is fine if you have that option, but not everyone does. Unless planning laws have changed recently, and I`m not aware that they have, technically there can only be one satellite dish per block of building if it is a block of flats. If someone else in the block has a Sky dish up and you then add a second one, technically speaking the council can order you to take it down. In practice this does not seem to happen, but would you be happy after paying out for a Sky+ box to be told that you have to take your dish down.

Of course, it is time that this planning rule was changed given the ubiquity of digital broadcast services these days, but that's a topic for another thread.

[Bizarre]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

I don't doubt what you say OB but churn is a long term issue and how much is churn reduced by offering incentives to customers thinking of leaving...

I was amazed at the ease with which ntl allowed me to jump ship a month ago without a fight. I was offered no incentives of any kind; the only reaction I got when I explained why I was thinking of leaving to move to Sky+ was, "Oh"!! I know that other former ntl subscribers have experienced the same.

No particular interest in reducing churn rates there.

[seaneeboy]

To be fair if they *did* offer various incentives to anyone that phoned up saying they wanted to leave, they could be in trouble for holding customers against their will - that and the fact that it would cost them a fortune in benefits for anyone who wanted it...

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Bizarre

I was amazed at the ease with which ntl allowed me to jump ship a month ago without a fight. I was offered no incentives of any kind; the only reaction I got when I explained why I was thinking of leaving to move to Sky+ was, "Oh"!! I know that other former ntl subscribers have experienced the same.

No particular interest in reducing churn rates there.

But your "leaving for sky+" meant that you were leaving for a product that NTL does not offer so cannot compete on.

If you were leaving for plain ol sky and DSL then they can try to make a play to keep you.

[altis]

Have a peek at some of these boxes...
http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/2003/0803/ID1_08.pdf

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by altis

Have a peek at some of these boxes...
http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/2003/0803/ID1_08.pdf

Mother in Laws Set Top Box costs USD650

http://twcny.com/services/DVR/index....nkYou=One#cost

and all for only an additional $9.95 (currently $6.95) a month

The standard stbs cost aout $300 so the PVR one is an additional $350 giving a 36 month payback period.

[BigBadJimmy]

Just a note about boxes over-heating...
I have an old Pace 1000 box (have had it for 3 or 4 years), and it's not terribly well ventilated, but it never gets too hot.
Could it be related to putting the box in 'standby' when it's not in use? All of my friends seem to leave their boxes permanently 'on', and the boxes are constantly hot. Whereas, I always put it on standby.

Just a thought...?

[seaneeboy]

shouldn't really make a difference, standby only shuts off the output signal (except to the VHS SCART socket) which doesn't make that much heat as you'd notice a difference...