Videotron Westminster Telephone network

m419 · 09-10-2008, 16:35

In 1994, The Independent had a story about Videotron launching its phone service in Westminster.

It was to offer telephone service but no TV to Westminster and corporation of london areas, no tv due to competition reasons with BT's existing cable company which is now part of Virgin Media now anyway.

According to the story, Videotron was to offer high speed internet,Video on demand and cheap phone service down such telephone lines.

I know they have constructed a phone network,Mercury connected a large number of telephone kiosks to the network, but how comes internet and Video on demand was never launched and why won't NTL/Virgin Media use it if its possible instead of putting up with that crap which BT installed in the 1970's all over the borough.

Here is the link about this:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m..._/ai_n14858589

09-10-2008, 17:59

May Virgin dont have the contract to do it or see a postive customer base

Stuart · 09-10-2008, 18:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by m419

In 1994, The Independent had a story about Videotron launching its phone service in Westminster.

It was to offer telephone service but no TV to Westminster and corporation of london areas, no tv due to competition reasons with BT's existing cable company which is now part of Virgin Media now anyway.

According to the story, Videotron was to offer high speed internet,Video on demand and cheap phone service down such telephone lines.

I know they have constructed a phone network,Mercury connected a large number of telephone kiosks to the network, but how comes internet and Video on demand was never launched and why won't NTL/Virgin Media use it if its possible instead of putting up with that crap which BT installed in the 1970's all over the borough.

Here is the link about this:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m..._/ai_n14858589

There could be many reasons.

Purely of the top of my head, I can think of a couple of possible reasons.

To upgrade an area with as many residents and businesses as Westminster is going to cost a significant amount of money. Maybe Virgin don't have enough, or are not convinced they are going to get enough extra income to justify the expense.

Also, because of the amount of disruption such an upgrade would cause, the various local authorities (including TFL streets) may make it difficult and/or expensive for VM to upgrade the network.

Virgin did say (and I wrote a news item on this) that they had initiated a project to re-assess the viabiity of upgrading the network in each area for DTV, and, if the upgrade is found to be viable in an area, to perform the upgrade. However, that was a few months ago, and I have heard nothing since. Of course, the fact I have heard nothing doesn't mean much (they could still be assessing each area).

It is, however, unlikely (although not impossible) that Virgin will be offering VOD and broadband down the phone lines as they don't use LLU ADSL anywhere (needed for DTV), and they don't use any form of ADSL in cabled areas.

Now, you could argue that they could have some sort of IPTV based VOD, but this would be a significant investment, so, again, they may not be convinced they'll make enough to make it worth their while.