[merged] Price increase

[Florence]

Originally Posted by raging bull

Likewise I contacted CS to reduce from 1meg to 600K.

Just done speed check 550/570K O'K for me.
Brian

I am only getting 440K not looking good

Originally Posted by erol

The cost to NTL for cable modems has fallen (as has the upstream kit too UBRs etc), the cost to NTL of servers and storage has fallen, the cost to NTL for external bandwidth has fallen, the cost to NTL for interest payments has fallen (post chapter 11), the cost of support staff has fallen (presumably with redunacies and outsourcing). Is it not reasonable then to expect the cost of service to the customer to also fall?

I assume you have evidence of all these claims ?

[erol]

Originally Posted by Pem

I assume you have evidence of all these claims ?

Which of them do you doubt? Tell me and I will try and find some evidence for you.

[kronas]

apparently hardware doesent get any cheaper.......i mean remember the pentium 4's when they first came out they were £120 werent they

[DrAwesome]

Originally Posted by erol

Which of them do you doubt? Tell me and I will try and find some evidence for you.

Pem paste quoted all of them.

[Defiant]

Originally Posted by kronas

apparently hardware doesent get any cheaper.......i mean remember the pentium 4's when they first came out they were £120 werent they

But then other's do and come out cheaper too like AMD

[Graham F]

Originally Posted by erol

No I expect the price to fall, as the cost of provision falls - year on year.

The cost to NTL for cable modems has fallen (as has the upstream kit too UBRs etc), the cost to NTL of servers and storage has fallen, the cost to NTL for external bandwidth has fallen, the cost to NTL for interest payments has fallen (post chapter 11), the cost of support staff has fallen (presumably with redunacies and outsourcing). Is it not reasonable then to expect the cost of service to the customer to also fall?

Erol, what you fail to of taken into account is that ntl are still making a loss at the moment, as with any company they need to make money!

[erol]

Originally Posted by Scooby

Erol, what you fail to of taken into account is that ntl are still making a loss at the moment, as with any company they need to make money!

I am perfectly aware that NTL have yet failed to make a penny in profit. My post was in response to pems line

"You cannot expect something to stay at the same price forever."

I was pointing out that MY expectations in digital arenas, is the revesre of this statement (if the statement means 'you cant expect the price of anything to not go up forever')

I expect to get more GB of storage from a HD bought this year, than one bought last year at the same price.

I expect to get more MHz of processing power for a CPU bought this year, than one bought last year at the same price.

I expect to get more MB's of memory for a memory chip bought this year than one bought last year at the same price.

I expect to get more resolution and inches of screen space for a monitor bought this year than one bought last year at the same price.

I expect to get more resolution and pages per minute from a printer bought this year than one bought last year

I expect to get more resolution and storage from a digital camera bought this year than one bought last year at the same price.

I expect to get more fps from a graphics card bought this year than one bought lats year at the same price. etc etc etc

Yet according to pem I should not expect this with regard to my BB service. Well sorry to disapoint you but I do expect to get more, year on year from my BB service at the same price.

If BB was mined from the ground as BB ore and then processed into BB in a refinary then perhaps I would not expect to get more each year for the same price. BB / bandwidth is a 'digital' resource not a physical one. EVERY other digital resource is falling year on year. Thus my expectation for BB is the same.

[erol]

Originally Posted by DrAwesome

Pem paste quoted all of them.

OK

I guess I am struggling here because I find it hard to believe that the statements I made are not 'self evident'.

Does anyone here really doubt that the cost of cable modems, networking equipment and computer hardware has not fallen over say the last 5 years?

Does anyone here really doubt that NTL's interest payments have not reduced massively since comming out of bankrupcy?

As to the cost of bandwidth I could produce endless studies of the falling cost of bandwith. Here is just one that I found by searching 'cost of bandwidth' on google. I do not know it's providence but the graph it shows is in line with everything I understood so far from people than know and from 6+ years of doing my best to understand these things.

http://www.thebusinessedge.com/rerun...hol/sld006.htm

As to staff costs I did put in a presumably. I guess someone could if they could be botherd dig out company accounts and see what the staff costs are for say last 5 years. It seems unlikely to me however, in absense of such research, that staff costs are going up, against a background of continual redundancies and outsourcing, but I guess I could be wrong on this one and would be happy to reconsider if anyone wants to produce evidence to the contrary.

[Florence]

The cable modems are only cheap that is what I have been told due to the number they buy at one time. The cables how often do they completely replace them. some havent been replaced in years hence they have already been paid for.

[Marge]

Kitty, I've just ran a speed test on my new modem and got this

Fri, 16 Apr 2004 22:06:35 UTC
1st 128K took 1823 ms = 71899 Bytes/sec = approx 598 kbits/sec
2nd 128K took 1813 ms = 72296 Bytes/sec = approx 602 kbits/sec
3rd 128K took 1822 ms = 71939 Bytes/sec = approx 599 kbits/sec
4th 128K took 1823 ms = 71899 Bytes/sec = approx 598 kbits/sec

so my speed does seem ok

[erol]

Originally Posted by Kits

The cable modems are only cheap that is what I have been told due to the number they buy at one time. The cables how often do they completely replace them. some havent been replaced in years hence they have already been paid for.

Volumes do not matter. The point is 100,000 cable modems purchased today cost considerably less than 100,000 bought five years ago, just as one bought today costs considerably less than one bought five years ago. The ADSL modem I was given by BT when on the original BT DSL trial in 96 cost well over a £1000. You can buy the equivalent today in dixons for about £50

As for replacing the cables - the short answer is they do not replace the cables (unless they are cut or something). They put them in once and thats it. End of story. Just as you do not replace the cat5 cables in your office when you upgrade from 10mbs to 100mbs or to 1gbs. Some of the copper pairs used by BT for telephony were put in 50-80 and even 100 years ago and still work fine.

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by kronas

apparently hardware doesent get any cheaper.......i mean remember the pentium 4's when they first came out they were £120 werent they

For several years I managed a computer company and during that time the average cost of a system dropped every year but the power of the systems increased dramatically. It is only ten years ago that we were selling 32Mb Fast Page memory for £800. Every item of computer hardware has reduced in price over the years and increased in power.

I was paying several hundred pounds per month for 28k dial-up internet access some ten years ago and would never have dreamt then that you could get todays speeds and at the price they are today.

Not only are computing prices falling every year but they are also getting more powerful. If prices stayed the same they would in reality be cheaper as average wages rise year on year.

[Mauldor]

I think you maybe forgot something else to factor in (though maybe this has been said - dont know) - The initial cost of making any item is great at the start, thus why the latest CPU etc cost more but as the costs are made back over a period of time the costs drop.

The more people they sign up equals more money to pay for the backlink, equipment and so forth. Now ive had CM for easily 4 years i think and always been on either 600 or 1 meg - combine that with the fact that the cable in the street are also used to carry telephone and TV stuff - so not like they put a special cable purley for Broadband. Now on the other end of the line they need to buy equipment and pay for lines to various suppliers but this cost a certain amount for the year regardless if they have one person of 10,000 people using it.

The other factor is pay for the staff which in a company like NTL is wide and far reaching (call Centre etc). Now after a certain number have joined up and pay each month - over the years some costs will have gone as the equipment is paid for in full (unless they leased the equipment which would be madness). So you would expect to happen (as in ADSL for example) that for the price we pay now - we would have more features or greater speeds.

Take for example one service providor - they offer for £29 a month (and your not locking in for a year - if you want to get out you pay £59 - fair enough to me) a fixed IP, 1mbit / 256, 50mb webspace, on the said web space have PHP, Perl etc and so forth. There is even a mention that the connection has NO CAP at all - they offer a cheaper package with a cap but the price reflects this - so if your a light user - ideal you buy the very cheap indeed package and live with a lower level of service.

At the end of the day - as in everything in life - its about competetion - you either compete with a good price or a good package or you will soon find yourself out of the market. NTL at the moment are not in a doomed position as a lot of people cannot get ADSL but the number of exchanges that are enabled are growing by the day.

Im not saying ADSL is 10x better than cable but it would be daft to pay £37.99 for 1mbit with email not working etc when i can fork out £29 a month and have the same speeds and stuff that actually works.

When i went back to BT (phone) it was like a breath of fresh air - yes i never thought i would say that about BT but wait - my overall bill per month is cheaper and when i had downtime they gave me back £20 - this for 4 days when my line was out of action.

At the end of the day - my plan is rather simple - i will call up on monday and cancel my BB - unless they offer me a deal - then its definate that my line one month from now will cease to be - and remember - getting those customers back is HARD indeed - as i dont think i will ever come back to NTL as it seems to be getting worse and worse to me since i have been with them.

The Customer Reps on here who might chuck there 2p worth in - think about this - as more people leave might mean more jobs going - not your fault that ntl put the prices up but as always it is you guys and girls who will feel the backlash at the end of the day..

[Nikko]

There are some very valid points made here.

My local Council pride themselves on being state of the art - ( they have an e-mail addy) Given the hardware/connection charges/bandwidth/software charges for this have (allegedly, according to contributions above) reduced, why then is my council tax demand above the rate of inflation?