First homes connected to Fujitsu fibre broadband network

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Chris

Virgin Media was not formed in 2006. A pre-existing company simply changed its name. Companies House will confirm that that company records for the entity that calls itself Virgin Media go back far earlier than 2006. It was, and will ever be, a re-branding exercise. It uses the Virgin brand under licence. Underneath it is a company formed from the merger of NTL and Telewest.

Companies do not often cease to exist - you will find, if you were to look hard enough, that most if not all of the legacy companies still exist as subsidiaries. Furthermore the company we now call Virgin Media is legally liable for the historical activities of those subsidiaries.

Virgin - or rather, NTL and Telewest, many of whose senior staff are still around AFAIK - did run out of money. NTL in particular was in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection in the USA not so many years ago. They ran out of money because they were liable for the massive debts of the telcos they bought up.

Virgin media is a company made up of NTL/Telewest and Virgin Mobile.

In their history NTL and Telewest both have been through Chapter 11, this was because they financed the acquisition of the cable companies through junk bonds during the dot.com bubble. When the bubble burst so did their line of credit.

Virgin still owes millions but it's now healthy company with manageable debts at sensible rates.

[Tim Deegan]

Originally Posted by Chris

Virgin Media was not formed in 2006. A pre-existing company simply changed its name. Companies House will confirm that that company records for the entity that calls itself Virgin Media go back far earlier than 2006. It was, and will ever be, a re-branding exercise. It uses the Virgin brand under licence. Underneath it is a company formed from the merger of NTL and Telewest.

Companies do not often cease to exist - you will find, if you were to look hard enough, that most if not all of the legacy companies still exist as subsidiaries. Furthermore the company we now call Virgin Media is legally liable for the historical activities of those subsidiaries.

Virgin - or rather, NTL and Telewest, many of whose senior staff are still around AFAIK - did run out of money. NTL in particular was in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection in the USA not so many years ago. They ran out of money because they were liable for the massive debts of the telcos they bought up.

Thanks Chris...You obviously know far more detail than I do, and have explained it far better detail.

My post that some people jumped on and started nit picking was based on what I was actually told by VM staff when I enquired about cable to one of my offices in an area that they don't cover.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

Thanks Chris...You obviously know far more detail than I do, and have explained it far better detail.

My post that some people jumped on and started nit picking was based on what I was actually told by VM staff when I enquired about cable to one of my offices in an area that they don't cover.

You call it nick picking i call it debating.

[papa smurf]

Originally Posted by Chris

Virgin Media was not formed in 2006. A pre-existing company simply changed its name. Companies House will confirm that that company records for the entity that calls itself Virgin Media go back far earlier than 2006. It was, and will ever be, a re-branding exercise. It uses the Virgin brand under licence. Underneath it is a company formed from the merger of NTL and Telewest.

Companies do not often cease to exist - you will find, if you were to look hard enough, that most if not all of the legacy companies still exist as subsidiaries. Furthermore the company we now call Virgin Media is legally liable for the historical activities of those subsidiaries.

Virgin - or rather, NTL and Telewest, many of whose senior staff are still around AFAIK - did run out of money. NTL in particular was in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection in the USA not so many years ago. They ran out of money because they were liable for the massive debts of the telcos they bought up.

this was the dawn of a massive change
i got 5 new shirts
new stickers for my van
and business as usual the next day

[Tim Deegan]

Originally Posted by Sirius

You call it nick picking i call it debating.

Picking faults with exact wording is nit picking. I also think it's a good idea to make sure you know your facts before you start debating something.

[kwikbreaks]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Virgin still owes millions

Yes - it's several thousand millions - around 6Bn give or take

http://investors.virginmedia.com/Deb...nding-999.aspx

[Tim Deegan]

Originally Posted by kwikbreaks

Yes - it's several thousand millions - around 6Bn give or take

http://investors.virginmedia.com/Deb...nding-999.aspx

Ouch!!!!

Yep ... Hence the bankruptcy protection measures put in place while those debts were restructured and made manageable. NTL started making an operating profit about 6 or 7 years ago IIRC, but of course it was all buried deep beneath that debt mountain, caused in part by rapid expansion of the legacy operators but also, according to Pierre's very interesting post above, by the highly risky means NTL employed to finance its acquisition of those operators. That side of things is not something you hear senior managers at VM talking about, naturally enough.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Tim Deegan

Picking faults with exact wording is nit picking. I also think it's a good idea to make sure you know your facts before you start debating something.

Oh i do know what facts are

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Sirius

Oh i do

I did find that comment rather amusing oddly enough and for the life of me I cannot think why.
















I do really.












This may help though http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Media

[Tim Deegan]

Originally Posted by Sirius

Oh i do know what facts are

Really??

You must have just typed them in wrong then

[thamesvalley]

Originally Posted by MrIca

There are Virgin Media street cabinets around the housing estate (a large one and a few small ones), manhole covers (NYNEX)... the works. But you cannot order cable and not one house has it installed. What's going on? Did they never turn it on there or something?

This to me would explain why those particular streets in Greasby were chosen by Virgin and Fujitsu for this trial.

Hi, all good healthy debating about company history etc but back to answering this question...
Apparently the estate was owned originally by the RAF and the roads were much wider than they are now. When the council were asked to adopt the highways after the RAF left, they would only do this if the roads were modified to a standard width. This involved the extension of the front gardens and footpaths.

Somone at the time had to the foresight to have the local cable company (NyNex) install their ducts, cabinets etc whilst the road was being modified in case the cable network was expanded out from Birkenhead as far as this estate. Unfortunately it never did as (as many people have stated previously) all expansion came to a halt after the dotcom boom bubble burst. This orphaned piece of network was inheritted by VM and is about a mile away from the live network and end of the duct route. It's completely empty.

Whilst it would appear to make sense for Fujitsu (or even VM) to use this spare duct etc, that's not what this trial is about - it's merely coincidental that it's there.

This trial is about using BT's exisiting infrastructure and processes for 3rd Parties to deliver NGA networks and the findings will feed in to a much larger UK wide rollout plan - so lessons learned here will need to scale up to other non-cabled rural areas that definately wont have the luxury of some spare duct.
Hope that helps!

[MrIca]

Originally Posted by thamesvalley

Hi, all good healthy debating about company history etc but back to answering this question...
Apparently the estate was owned originally by the RAF and the roads were much wider than they are now. When the council were asked to adopt the highways after the RAF left, they would only do this if the roads were modified to a standard width. This involved the extension of the front gardens and footpaths.

Somone at the time had to the foresight to have the local cable company (NyNex) install their ducts, cabinets etc whilst the road was being modified in case the cable network was expanded out from Birkenhead as far as this estate. Unfortunately it never did as (as many people have stated previously) all expansion came to a halt after the dotcom boom bubble burst. This orphaned piece of network was inheritted by VM and is about a mile away from the live network and end of the duct route. It's completely empty.

Whilst it would appear to make sense for Fujitsu (or even VM) to use this spare duct etc, that's not what this trial is about - it's merely coincidental that it's there.

This trial is about using BT's exisiting infrastructure and processes for 3rd Parties to deliver NGA networks and the findings will feed in to a much larger UK wide rollout plan - so lessons learned here will need to scale up to other non-cabled rural areas that definately wont have the luxury of some spare duct.
Hope that helps!

Very interesting! How do you know this information? The closest the network goes to then would actually be Upton which as you say is about a mile away. The spare duct will definitely come in handy for Fujitsu in this case. Shame the VM network in Greasby is currently going to waste.

[m419]

Originally Posted by Chris

A bit of both, I think. NTL/Cabletel lashed out a lot of money on it's own cable but it also lashed out a lot on buying companies in other areas, and those companies were also heavily in debt because of their own cabling works.

There was many many companies around the UK and to be honest if it stayed that way, then there wouldn't be so many problems with revenue, NTL and Telewest kept spending money on acquiring other cable companies instead of spending the money it had on its exisiting areas and new builds in those areas.

Cable London (Joint venture between Telewest and Comcast)
Birmingham Cable (Joint venture between Telewest and Comcast)
General Cable (Acquired by Telewest)
North West Cable (Acquired by Telewest)
Yorkshire Cable (Acquired by General Cable later Telewest)
Eurobell (Acquired by Telewest)
BT Cable Television (Acquired by NTL)
Westminster Cable Television( Acquired by NTL from BT)
Encom (Acquired by BellCable Media later NTL)
Cable Corporation (Acquired by Telewest)
East Coast Cable (Acquired by NTL)
Telecential (Acquired by Comtel then NTL)
Comtel (Acquired by NTL
Comcast shares in Cable London and BC (Acquired by NTL)
Aberdeen Cable (Acquired by Atlantic Telecom) now dissolved
Videotron (acquired by Bellcable Media)
Nynex (Merged with Bellcable Media)
BellCable Media (Acquired by Cable and Wireless)

And before that many companies which existed that went belly up before even services began were around like Bolton Cablevision which formed Nynex.

They just can't keep spending money they haven't got!

Aberdeen Cable if NTL had any money left at the time, it probably would have been part of a similar deal as the Westminster and Milton Keynes situation as I think Aberdeen cable ran along BT ducts and cabling.

And not only that, NTL and Telewest bought all franchises that were no where near ready for Digital let alone broadband, and therefore had to spend millions on upgrading.

It was actually Bell Cablemedia*, not BellCable Media, and it was formed by the merger/takeover of Jones Cable** in Leeds (inc Harrogate/York) and Watford, some cable company in Peterborough and Norwich whose name I can't remember (even though I had to sort out their billing system), Encom in Docklands, US Cable in Wearside, and then took over Videotron in Hammersmith.

Then BCm was taken over by Cable & Wireless Comms, the residential arm of Cable & Wireless, which then sold them on to NTL in 2000.

*which was a company in Bell Canada Enterprises' (BC) Bell Canada International subsidiary.

**which was part of Jones Intercable.