Virgin Media urges Sky to raise broadband prices

[Chad]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...nd-prices.html

"Cable operator Virgin Media has risked a regulatory backlash by urging rivals to raise their broadband prices, arguing that consumers and businesses should pay more to fund investment in Britain’s internet infrastructure."

Dana Strong said: ": “I find it completely paradoxical and ironic that this is the sector where we’re promoting and advertising the notion of free broadband access. It’s creating an impression in our consumers’ minds, in businesses and government that broadband should be free."

"Virgin Media’s call for broadband prices to increase risks provoking the regulator, Ofcom, which touts the intense rivalry in the broadband market and reduction in prices in recent years as one its major successes. According to Ofcom figures, the average price of a broadband package was cut by nearly half between 2004 and 2012, partly as a result of regulatory intervention such as forcing BT to allow rivals to control its lines into homes and businesses."

[Taf]

THat sounds like a call to form a cartel. OFCOM won't like that, but what will they do? Bugger all I suspect.

[johnathome]

Originally Posted by Taf

THat sounds like a call to form a cartel. OFCOM won't like that, but what will they do? Bugger all I suspect.

I thought it was collusion anyway the way they all charge about the same.

VM, who own their own cables, could easily drop the line rental to £10-£13 a month and blow the competition out of the water.

[denphone]

Sadly that old trait called greed takes over long before that idea enter their brains John.

[muppetman11]

Didn't someone say "Sky's broadband was lousy" and "When someone offers you something for free, generally most customers are smart enough and realise they are paying for it somewhere else."

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Taf

THat sounds like a call to form a cartel. OFCOM won't like that, but what will they do? Bugger all I suspect.

Because it's not their role so they can't. Though I'm sure it would have been checked by Virgin's lawyers before. For the record, the organisation concerned with competition is the Competition & Markets Authority.

The headline is rather mis leading though, she did'nt mention Sky in the speech, she said rivals?

Its all smoke and mirrors - Sky's line rental was £11 in 2008 and its now £16.40 nothing has changed on a phone line apart from the internet being available on it - so thats where the "free internet" charges are.

In my opinion we should be able to have the Internet at a discount if we dont take a voice product, I appreciate VM offer that but its still expensive

[Ignitionnet]

I agree 100% with this. For too long investment has been choked off by the race to the bottom to supply the bare minimum for the lowest price possible, and hide the actual costs in line rental.

Sky and TalkTalk are the major offenders in this, and this approach has been pretty harmful to ultrafast broadband in the UK. They are clinging on to their obsolete LLU ADSL networks and trying their utmost to wring what they can from that investment.

We should be having robust competition with Openreach/BT obsoleting copper loops and replacing them with fibre but this is impossible due to regulations requiring the copper to deliver to Sky and TalkTalk.

[Mr K]

Is this the same Dana Strong who said the average price rise is 5.9% ? He/she/it talks out of he/she/its backside.

If they want to invest more in broadband maybe they should take it out of the 20% increase in share price Liberty Global have made in the the last year, rather than fleecing customers more.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Mr K

If they want to invest more in broadband maybe they should take it out of the 20% increase in share price Liberty Global have made in the the last year, rather than fleecing customers more.

The share price rising doesn't actually give the company any extra cash to use building networks.

Their network equipment suppliers, staff and contractors want paying with cash, not share price increases.

Anyone who feels fleeced can obviously take their business elsewhere.

---------- Post added at 20:46 ---------- Previous post was at 20:43 ----------

What could be done, however, is for the parent company to not start buying its own shares back in order to prop up the share price and instead invest in infrastructure.

However, share buybacks seem to be the in thing at the moment. They may knacker companies in the longer term as they aren't investing as they should be in plant, R&D, etc, but hey it makes shareholders happy in the short term.

[sollp]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

The share price rising doesn't actually give the company any extra cash to use building networks.

Their network equipment suppliers, staff and contractors want paying with cash, not share price increases.

Anyone who feels fleeced can obviously take their business elsewhere.

---------- Post added at 20:46 ---------- Previous post was at 20:43 ----------

What could be done, however, is for the parent company to not start buying its own shares back in order to prop up the share price and instead invest in infrastructure.

However, share buybacks seem to be the in thing at the moment. They may knacker companies in the longer term as they aren't investing as they should be in plant, R&D, etc, but hey it makes shareholders happy in the short term.

Over the next few years they are investing heavily in the network. As basically it needs it to,"Keep Up".

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by sollp

Over the next few years they are investing heavily in the network. As basically it needs it to,"Keep Up".

Yeah I'm aware that there are a ton of plans in progress for Virgin. I'm thinking more of other territories where their idea of increasing capacity for new upgraded tiers is to flick a switch and see how many complaints they get.

[japitts]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Yeah I'm aware that there are a ton of plans in progress for Virgin. I'm thinking more of other territories where their idea of increasing capacity for new upgraded tiers is to flick a switch and see how many complaints they get.

I'm struck at the moment, by how many - no doubt highly localised - congestion issues seem to be creeping through. Mainly on the TiVo (DOCSIS-1) side, but a few "big" ones on broadband-proper. (From reading the VM forum).

In my experience, they've fixed one longstanding local problem on DOCSIS-1 only to be caught out on DOCSIS-3

[tvtimes]

Congestion is a major issue where I live. I have tried every wireless channel and they're all over subscribed. I'm supposed to achieve 100mbps and I get 8.

[japitts]

Originally Posted by tvtimes

Congestion is a major issue where I live. I have tried every wireless channel and they're all over subscribed. I'm supposed to achieve 100mbps and I get 8.

But isn't that WiFi congestion, rather than broadband specifically?