NTL price increase and their reasons

[ian@huth]

There are probably a couple of possible reasons why the speed increases were announced at the same time by TW and NTL.

I would imagine that both companies know fairly well in advance what the other is going to do, from information gained by fair means or foul. TW having a less complex structure could gain an agvantage over NTL if they so wished.

With all the talk of an imminent merger of the two companies it makes sense for them to be offering roughly the same products prior to the merger.

Does it really matter who was first as long as customers get an improved service at the end of the day.

What you have to realise is that NTL (and all companies) have to juggle product enhancements and pricing in order not to just remain competitive but also to maximise revenue. This can mean that sometimes pricing may not appear competitive but the higher price being charged would generate more revenue even after allowing for customers leaving because of the price than a lower price would generate with no churn.

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by JustAnotherN00b

Nope again not interested in debate, Neil is suggesting that ntl decided on spur of moment the morning Telewest announced their speed increases that they would do the same. That's not the case.

As far as proof goes, could tell you but then I'd have to kill you

if the speed increase was something that NTL had been planning all along and just not a knee jerk reaction, then they would have announced the 1mb service price increase and the speed increase in a single press release.

[MetaWraith]

Originally Posted by etccarmageddon

if the speed increase was something that NTL had been planning all along and just not a knee jerk reaction, then they would have announced the 1mb service price increase and the speed increase in a single press release.

That assumes the price increase and speed increase were planned by the same department, which many not have the case. You know right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Teccie

Okay the price increase came into effect from today, 1st June, yet still no speed increase.

After a bit of searching i found the letter regarding the price increase and there reasons behind it. It was to keep inline with the competition, yet for some reason NTL in there infinite wisdom compared their service, a cable based BB service with 2 of bt's ADSL services, namely BT yahoo and BT Broadband. Why did they ignore the only other Cable based BB available, name Telewest. Indeed BT BB is more expensive than NTL and Telewest. But its not the same service, its ADSL not cable
.
Lets compare at todays price and speed, NTL with another cable BB service, Telewest.
Telewest's 1.5MB bb connection is £35 yet NTL's 1mb bb connection is £38. Okay so the speed is allegedly going to be 1.5mb, but when ? NTL say summer... lol, good going NTL, you know when its forcast
so why not tell us or better still why not put the price up when its released? k so at the minute we are paying £3 more for 50% less on our connection. Yet NTL have told us how the price increase was neccessary to keep in line with the competition. So why put the price way beyond the direct competition.

Okay then, if they insist on comparing with ADSL (a differnt service all together) then lets compare. Yes BT is the most expensive, but if u shop around, because u can with adsl, u'll find an equal service being offered, at the 1mbit barrier for £30 (eg: aol). So NTL are £8 dearer for the same 1mbit service. So to price inline with the competition NTL should infact decrease
their prices to £30 for 1mbit, oh and if u insist put it back to £35 inline with the competition (Telewest) once the 1.5mbit comes into effect.

NTL we are not fools, if u want to compare prices then do so properly, dont compare your service with the most expensive u can find. You aint fooling
anyone other than urselves.

tbh I think the price increase did have Telewest in mind, after all the price did rise to the exact price that TW were charging for their 1Mb service. NTL were undercutting TW for a long time and TW hadnt made any attempt to match it and I wouldnt be suprised if in fact someone at NTL went "we arent in compitition with TW so why are we undercutting them". So they decided to raise the price to TW's level they announced it only to get caught out by TW then reducing their price.

After all as you have stated they clearly arent bringing it inline with ADSL which is getting cheaper and cheaper so this to me does seem like the only viable reason.

[gooner4life]

Originally Posted by Teccie

Okay the price increase came into effect from today, 1st June, yet still no speed increase.

After a bit of searching i found the letter regarding the price increase and there reasons behind it. It was to keep inline with the competition, yet for some reason NTL in there infinite wisdom compared their service, a cable based BB service with 2 of bt's ADSL services, namely BT yahoo and BT Broadband. Why did they ignore the only other Cable based BB available, name Telewest. Indeed BT BB is more expensive than NTL and Telewest. But its not the same service, its ADSL not cable
.
.

Technically Telewest are not competition you dont have a choice between NTL and Telewest/Blueyonder its one or the other

[zovat]

Originally Posted by gooner4life

Technically Telewest are not competition you dont have a choice between NTL and Telewest/Blueyonder its one or the other

Exactly - NTL are not in the same areas as Telewest, and (if the rumours are true) will soon be working "very closely" with Telewest.
NTL compete with BT, AOL etc (all ADSL broadband), and as such, they were cheaper for the 1M service than their competitors.

NTL dropped the price from 50 to 35, the others did not drop as low as NTL, so they can afford to up the price and still be competetive.

That is not to say those of us currently on the 1M service are not understandably peeved that the price is going up, when the general trend is down, just that from a purely business viewpoint, NTL can get £3 per moth more from N customers, without losing the ability to draw in more.

Yes, they may well lose customers to the 600k tier (especially when it goes to 750), but from NTLs point of view, that is not a huge problem, as this will free up some bandwidth for others..

As always - Just my 2c

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by zovat

NTL dropped the price from 50 to 35, the others did not drop as low as NTL, so they can afford to up the price and still be competetive.

the 1mb price ISNT competitive when you compare it to ADSL 1mb offered from AOL at £30 a month or the bulldog 2mb service which is around the same price at the NTL 1mb!!!

[Smilie]

i just think NTL is camparing their price to BTs
as BT is the main broadband supplier

[Neil]

Originally Posted by etccarmageddon

the 1mb price ISNT competitive when you compare it to ADSL 1mb offered from AOL at £30 a month or the bulldog 2mb service which is around the same price at the NTL 1mb!!!

Not forgetting Central Point who offer 2MB DSL for the same price as ntl's 1MB BB!

Not only that, but there are no caps/"guidelines" in place, & no 12 month contract.

http://www.cpbb.co.uk/index.htm

[th'engineer]

Originally Posted by JustAnotherN00b

Nope again not interested in debate, Neil is suggesting that ntl decided on spur of moment the morning Telewest announced their speed increases that they would do the same.

So no other view then surprised at you not like you to bow out from a debate if you think someone is incorrect

[ian@huth]

I would imagine NTL could fairly easily write a program that searches their database of customers and fairly accurately identifies what xDSL service each customer may be able to get. That would give them an indication of possible loss of customers to xDSL on each service level and the degree of competitaveness (is that a word?) required.

[th'engineer]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

I would imagine NTL could fairly easily write a program that searches their database of customers and fairly accurately identifies what xDSL service each customer may be able to get. That would give them an indication of possible loss of customers to xDSL on each service level and the degree of competitaveness (is that a word?) required.

Now then you know NTL would they look that far forward, they must have had a large churn rate on BB. Its only money the directors are interested in remember Bill "THE CAP" Goodland tapes. "Customers to thick" "save money on bandwidth".

[zovat]

Originally Posted by etccarmageddon

the 1mb price ISNT competitive when you compare it to ADSL 1mb offered from AOL at £30 a month or the bulldog 2mb service which is around the same price at the NTL 1mb!!!

Fair comment, I didn't realise that AOL was that cheap...
Do remember that Bulldog is only 512 during the day, and 2M off peak.

[[BorgMaster]]

Originally Posted by Neil

Not forgetting Central Point who offer 2MB DSL for the same price as ntl's 1MB BB!

Not only that, but there are no caps/"guidelines" in place, & no 12 month contract.

http://www.cpbb.co.uk/index.htm

The pricing is no doubt competitive, and the service they are advertising is also competitive.

However I think people posted on this thread are looking too much at cost. Simply because you pay less doesnt mean your anywhere near likely to get 'that' level of service.

We'll take CP as an example - they're a datastream provider and as such can not provide pings less than 50 - a major downfall for competitive gamers.

So I expect someone to tell me - they're not a gamer, they dont worry about pings. Ok fair point, but dont for one minute expect to get your full 2mbps download rates consistently, datastream is well known for its contention at a local level, so instead of 15,000 users contending on 1 155mbps pipe, you end up contending with 50 people on 2mbps with only 1 1mbps pipe. Same contention ratio, however the odds of you actually experiencing contention just went up 100 fold.

Something everyone on any forum discussing broadband or any product should bare in mind is that you pay for what you get, bar a few companies who are extortionate for the services they provide you must find a balance between the amount of money you pay and the service levels you receive. NTL generally is quite good at that (in its areas that dont suffer from major contention on upstreams and the alike)

I would just like to point out that ADSL is not the holy grail people make it out to be. Just because some of the providers are cheaper - it most certainly does not mean they're worth signing up for - not if you expect to see a decent service. ADSL is a great deal harder to understand as there are also so many variants of it: IPstream, Datastream, LLU, etc. All of which operate at different levels.

Oh and at risk of offending you Neil, I do have to point out Pipex's mail servers are probably just as reliable (or not in this case) as NTL's). Sorry, but it is within the theme of my post, and the original topic

[[BorgMaster]]

Originally Posted by zovat

Fair comment, I didn't realise that AOL was that cheap...
Do remember that Bulldog is only 512 during the day, and 2M off peak.

I'm afraid not, some of their services do work like this. Primetime as its termed, but their normal Alltime services run at 2mbps all the time, and they are more expensive as you might expect.

ADSL broadband is more like mobile phone companies, and their various forms of tarriffs reflecting what kind of service you want, what kind of additional services you want applied to your connection, and how fast you want it to go. This can make it very confusing.