[merged] Price increase

If £3 month means the difference between you having money problems or not, then you appear to be living on a knife edge - food, petrol and many other things you spend cash on can fluctuate by more than this each month.

However you look at it - 1mb BB is a luxary - there is nothing pathetic about pointing out people should not buy what they cannot afford - it's basic common sense.

How on earth is it an attempt at making NTL sound good - and what has disagreeing with you got to do with being a mod - that is pathetic - what moderator power have I used here ?

Oh, and I'm off to football now so I won't be replying for a while.

[paulyoung666]

good grief , cant you both just agree to disagree and play with your toys nicely , pem , get your hand off the ban button

[LostintheNW]

Pem a lot of things in life are a luxary such as food is to someone who lives in Ethiopia.

And you merely did not point out that Kit cannot afford it your comments were well off mark - obviously not everyone can be as rich as you can they?

No one mentioned you had used your mod status - simply pointing out that you being made one seems to have gone to your head, get over yourself its the internet - you don't actually have any real power.

Back to the topic of price increases £3 more for the 1meg service is crap, adsl is coming down in price yet NTL is going up - marvellous business sense

[Charlie_Bubble]

Originally Posted by LostintheNW

Back to the topic of price increases £3 more for the 1meg service is crap, adsl is coming down in price yet NTL is going up - marvellous business sense

Well, it is if your network is creaking at the seams, you have no money to upgrade, your idea for a 1gig a day cap hasn't done jack to improve anything and you just want people to choose the lower tier again on purpose.

[Charlie_Bubble]

Originally Posted by Pem

If £3 month means the difference between you having money problems or not, then you appear to be living on a knife edge - food, petrol and many other things you spend cash on can fluctuate by more than this each month.

However you look at it - 1mb BB is a luxary - there is nothing pathetic about pointing out people should not buy what they cannot afford - it's basic common sense.

I don't think that Kits is saying that £3 is going to put the family on the streets, but for a lot of people an extra £3 onto an already uncompetititve price, when compared with similar ADSL packages, means it's just that little bit too much to justify. People want value for money and the 1Meg service is now very much the opposite. If you live in an area lucky enough to get 2Meg ADSL, you can get 2Meg for less than NTL's 1Meg now, so where does the extra value for NTL premium price come from? Customer service - nope, good newsgroups servers - nope, great email service - nope, smooth trouble-free surfing - nope!

Goalposts move too. A few years ago any connection to the internet was a luxury, then it was ISDN, then it was cable/adsl, now it's the speed of your service and with companies doing 2, 4, 6Meg packages now, 1Meg is no longer a big luxury, but fast becoming the norm.

[Chris W]

If prices were rising at the rate of inflation i could understand it, but that would mean that the 1mb service would be £35.48, 600k would be £25.33, and 150k would be £18.24.

I would understand if price changes were in line with inflation, but i don't see any other sensible business reasoning for doing it.

[paulyoung666]

its yet another badly thought ntl decision

[Neil]

Can I just remind everyone, that the basic discussion here is how ntl's 1 meg service is now very uncompetitive compared to the alternatives?

Thank you!

[LostintheNW]

Monkey those prices increased inline with inflation are acceptable - but NTL just charges what it feels, and seeing as the 1meg service is fast becoming one of the slowest speeds NTL are going to lose a lot of customers.

I agree with you Charlie, its just NTLs way of getting people on to the lowere speeds as they cannot cope with the demand on the network, but at the end of the day they shouldn't release products they cannot cope with. The network in Manchester used to be one of the best available, that is until NTL came along and fahked it all up - I love watching a badly streamed MPEG picture full of pixelation and jittery sound on my TV - reminds me of when I had dialup and watching streaming video.

For what we pay to NTL we can get double the channels on Sky, and ok they maybe mostly crap (but the ones on NTL are too!) but the fact is we still have the choice - even the 2nd subscription as come down, and even though you have to buy their digiboxes outright and pay for any maintenance after a year - still cheaper than NTL - we had one box when we had sky - I've had 6 from NTL since we upgraded to digital when it came in our area.

I for one hope this drives people away from NTL and on to another platform, be it sky or freeview - then when they crap company goes bust someone else can come along and do a better job, certainly can't do any worse

[Matth]

They only hold on to a lot of thier customers due to inertia.

The prices go up, the service doesn't improve, but the alternatives generally mean taking a hit of startup charges.

Some parts of the service are GOOD, I've forgotten the last time the broadband connection was seriously impaired, and as for speed/contention - "WHAT contention" - other than when there have been actual problems, my broadband speed has been 100% ... the quoted 50:1 contention of ADSL worries me, especially as cheaper providers are likely to be loading it hard!

[Charlie_Bubble]

Originally Posted by Matth

The prices go up, the service doesn't improve, but the alternatives generally mean taking a hit of startup charges.

Well, Sky install is £1 and BT normally have a free reactivation package, especially if you are coming back from a cable company. they have this at the moment, which I will be taking up. Ok, some ADSL ISPs still charge you something, but many don't, especially on certain packages they are trying to push. So, it could cost as little as £1 to change.

[testcard]

Maybe 1mb users cost ntl more than 600k users in a pro rata basis, a bit like a large lorry versus a van .
Therefore they need to return a higher profit on the 1mb service and charging more is an easy opition.

[Charlie_Bubble]

Originally Posted by testcard

Maybe 1mb users cost ntl more than 600k users in a pro rata basis, a bit like a large lorry versus a van .
Therefore they need to return a higher profit on the 1mb service and charging more is an easy opition.

There's no doubt that if a 1Meg user fully utilises their connection they will cost NTL more, but that's what the extra £10 a month is for (Soon to become £13, unlucky for some?). NTL are now making the 1Meg service so unattractive in comparison with ADSL that it will drive people who want 1Meg for a reasonable amount, away! This is going into the bounds of forcing people to choose either to leave NTL or be satisfied with 600k.

I could get Bulldog 2Meg PrimeTime for £29.99 including VAT. That's £8 less than NTL! Why bother with NTL then? According to www.adslguide.org.uk, at the moment there are 14 ISPs providing 1Meg connections for less than ntl. Add the extra £36 a year to the yearly cost and that makes another 7 cheaper than NTL. That's 21 ISPs cheaper than NTL at providing 1 Meg connections.

NTL are lucky that their 600k service gives people that extra 88k over ADSL packages, otherwise they'd lose people from that too. That makes the 600k just a little bit more attractive than 512k ADSL, even though there are 39 ISPs providing 512k for less than NTL.

[LostintheNW]

Maybe people on the 1meg service do cost NTL that little bit more, but you pay more for the service, but at this rate the 600k service and 150k service are going to cost them with the amount of people dropping their service level, the 1meg will not make them any money at all then.

I'd rather lose the 8k and switch to 512k adsl so I can get the 256k upload

[tkiely]

I had ntl 1 meg for a year, now on 512 with www.f2s.com.

NO cache means that browsing is FANTASTIC, totally instant all round.Of course ftp type downloads are slower but for most of what i do this service feels way faster, cant think what the 1 OR 2 meg service is like from these folks!

For general use, just get a 512 adsl. If kaza is your thing , go for the 1 meg (or more).

I gave ntl 3 years hard earned cash and loyalty, as the song once said, 'Don't believe the hype'