Huge network investment

Had been hearing rumours that Liberty were going to invest huge amounts on VMs network for a couple of weeks. VMs CEO has now confirmed the news.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/city-n...kridge-3704765

[Qtx]

Tom Mockbridge has made a huge arse of himself with the things said in that article. Don't think anyway will be able to take him seriously again lol.

Criticising a competitor happens but to claim a service is lousy because it's free, when they are identical to the paid broadband connections, is plain wrong. It's obvious VM are scared of losing customers but to come out with these kind of blatant lies just shows how low VM will go.

This comment made me laugh as most of VM's business has been based on fooling the public with it's advertising:

Most people see through the marketing.

Mr Mockridge said predecessor, fellow Kiwi Neil Berkett, stabilised the business after it was hit by shoddy customer service.

Virgin Media's customer service and support is still terrible. Customers dread having to contact VM lol. From everything I have heard it's not got any better since I left them.

“A lot of the investment in the past five years has been about improving that customer service,” he said.

Doesn't appear to have worked. Philippine call centre is just the same.

“We’re not perfect but we have got a lot better than we were.”

My fibre broadband while with VM spent much of it's time much much worse than an adsl connection. Says a lot when VM's fibre is worst than lousy. I would say they are far from perfect.

This article is as misleading as all of VM's adverts that get banned by the advertising standards for....being misleading

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by Qtx

From everything I have heard it's not got any better since I left them.

It's significantly better than when I joined ntl in Customer Services almost 9 years ago. Some of the stuff I came across then was shocking, and the call queues to some areas could be literally over an hour.

[1andrew1]

I think the satisfaction surveys indicate VM's customer service has been turned around.
I'm not sure why VM needed Liberty's backing to launch a quad-play package as Virgin Media included Virgin Mobile from its launch as Virgin Media in 2007. But I agree it was not cross-sold very effectively as several friends on mine on VM said Virgin Mobile was a separate company (in the way that the gyms and airline are separate companies) and there were no discounts for VM customers.
I would be more interested to read about where and what the £bn is being spent on to boost VM's network rather than Mockridge criticising his competitors. But I appreciate the newspaper is after a story and what is reported is probably a fraction of what he said.

[Qtx]

Had someone at Virgin mobile tell me they were a different company a few years back when I asked if a contract would be put on my other VM bill, even though they could check and give a discount for being a VM customer. So it seems they were a different company for billing and possibly tax reasons before. The quad play just put it all on one bill.

Probably find the billion will get invested in tv adverts and hiring celebs to appear in them

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

I think the satisfaction surveys indicate VM's customer service has been turned around.
I'm not sure why VM needed Liberty's backing to launch a quad-play package as Virgin Media included Virgin Mobile from its launch as Virgin Media in 2007. But I agree it was not cross-sold very effectively as several friends on mine on VM said Virgin Mobile was a separate company (in the way that the gyms and airline are separate companies) and there were no discounts for VM customers.
I would be more interested to read about where and what the £bn is being spent on to boost VM's network rather than Mockridge criticising his competitors. But I appreciate the newspaper is after a story and what is reported is probably a fraction of what he said.

Agree, we could post numerous links to the customer service awards they have won in the last 6 months alone, however this story was about the huge investment Liberty are about to make not the views of an ex customer who has no idea about the company's service offering of today.

---------- Post added at 12:34 ---------- Previous post was at 12:29 ----------

Originally Posted by Qtx

Had someone at Virgin mobile tell me they were a different company a few years back when I asked if a contract would be put on my other VM bill, even though they could check and give a discount for being a VM customer. So it seems they were a different company for billing and possibly tax reasons before. The quad play just put it all on one bill.

Probably find the billion will get invested in tv adverts and hiring celebs to appear in them

He specifically talks about network investment. Am surprised by your comments as you have been quite well behaved over the last 3 months, just goes to show that a leopard never changes it's spots.

This is a good news story for VM customers as a significant amount of investment will be made in the network which should eradicate some of the much publicised congestion issues.

Originally Posted by BenMcr

It's significantly better than when I joined ntl in Customer Services almost 9 years ago. Some of the stuff I came across then was shocking, and the call queues to some areas could be literally over an hour.

That was the reason I first joined this website. Phoning CS really was a last resort back in the day.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Top banana

This is a good news story for VM customers as a significant amount of investment will be made in the network which should eradicate some of the much publicised congestion issues.

Have you seen any more details on this? Is there a split between growing the network and repairing/upgrading the current network? £1bn a year sounds a very healthy budget.

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

Have you seen any more details on this? Is there a split between growing the network and repairing/upgrading the current network? £1bn a year sounds a very healthy budget.

No but now it's been mentioned I assume more detail will be outlined in the common weeks. From what I can gather they completely rebuilt the network in Southern Ireland as part of investment there

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Top banana

Had been hearing rumours that Liberty were going to invest huge amounts on VMs network for a couple of weeks. VMs CEO has now confirmed the news.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/city-n...kridge-3704765

Really?

He says they are investing that amount, present tense. Last quarter they spent about 65mln on network upgrades, this was down on the same period in 2013.

Scalable infrastructure
41.2 44.5
Upgrade / rebuild
23.6 23.5

Looks to me like he's including all capital expenditure, including CPE and leased property, in his numbers.

---------- Post added at 13:36 ---------- Previous post was at 13:34 ----------

Originally Posted by Top banana

No but now it's been mentioned I assume more detail will be outlined in the common weeks. From what I can gather they completely rebuilt the network in Southern Ireland as part of investment there

They had to. A lot of it was one-way only, amps dangling off the side of houses, it looked more like the Rediffusion cable build than a modern HFC network and had no fibre in most of it at all. The business case was to be able to sell digital TV, 2-way services and telephony. There is no business case to spend as much on VM's network.

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by Top banana

Am surprised by your comments as you have been quite well behaved over the last 3 months

Who the hell do you think you are? Condescending idiot.

The whole article was about attacking a competitor, nothing to do with investment except a single sentence or two. Not dissimilar to a VM employee creating a post yesterday just to attack Sky hardware with no actual real reason. Must not say a bad word about virgin eh? Educated people like to hear both sides of the coin, not just those with monetary interests in one company doing well so only post the good side...

Originally Posted by Top banana

This is a good news story for VM customers as a significant amount of investment will be made in the network which should eradicate some of the much publicised congestion issues.

Depends if it's 'coming soon' or not, as most things VM say take that long to materialise. Reminds me, whats happening with the Sony PS4 partnership that VM made a big noise over last year and since gone quiet?

---------- Post added at 15:36 ---------- Previous post was at 15:32 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Looks to me like he's including all capital expenditure, including CPE and leased property, in his numbers.

If he is, that would be quite misleading, but something we have come to expect from VM.

The problem is sometimes you can spend money just to keep the network running, without actually giving a visible improvement to customers, although there is one.

Originally Posted by Qtx

Who the hell do you think you are?

The whole article was about attacking a competitor, nothing to do with investment except a single sentence or two. Not dissimilar to a VM employee creating a post yesterday just to attack Sky hardware with no actual real reason. Must not say a bad word about virgin eh? Educated people like to hear both sides of the coin, not just those with monetary interests in one company doing well so only post the good side...



Depends if it's 'coming soon' or not, as most things VM say take that long to materialise. Reminds me, whats happening with the Sony PS4 partnership that VM made a big noise over last year and since gone quiet?

---------- Post added at 15:36 ---------- Previous post was at 15:32 ----------



If he is, that would be quite misleading, but something we have come to expect from VM.

The problem is sometimes you can spend money just to keep the network running, without actually giving a visible improvement to customers, although there is one.

Look at the headline, I was drawing attention to the fact that the CEO of Virgin Media has said that their will be significant investment in their network. Nothing more nothing less. When I posted this I thought VM customers would find this interesting.

You and only you took the thread down a completely different route with your typical diatribe about how poor VMs customer service is. If that's your view fine, I have no issue with that but why try and derail the point to my post?

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by Top banana

but why try and derail the point to my post?

I came to this thread expecting there to be an article about VM investment. There was not one, just a link to the mirror with VM slagging off Sky and a single sentence about investment with no actual information beyond the investment being one billion, which turns out may be misleading

[muppetman11]

Seems Mr Mockridge is a little rattled by the offers of BT Sport included with Broadband and free broadband with Sky Sports as he seems to be critical of both Sky and BT , he shouldn't have anything to fear with the best network and the fact he keeps telling us about everyone's hunger for super fast connections.

Mr Mockridge said: “When someone offers you something for free, generally most customers are smart enough and realise they are paying for it somewhere else.

VM have never done this before have they ? Free HD channels anyone , later changed to included.

Mr Mockridge is critical of BT’s broadband network which, because it partly relies ageing copper wires, has limitations.

BT’s network is also used by other internet providers, including Sky.

Hybrid fibre-coaxial , Hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) is a telecommunications industry term for a broadband network that combines optical fiber and coaxial cable. Copper or no copper ?

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

Hybrid fibre-coaxial , Hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) is a telecommunications industry term for a broadband network that combines optical fiber and coaxial cable. Copper or no copper ?

Oh, you naughty naughty boy!