Where NTL failed

[themelon]

Originally Posted by JohnHorb

...and even the 'first month half price' offer only applies to packages at £19.50 and above!

They will never let you get away without Sky World either.........they will keep pestering you to you bow to submission.

Still each to their own

The only way I can see it be cheaper is if the landlord pays it.....which I would doubt.

When you consider you Have to have a phoneline with Sky to make use of the 'Free' Install and Box for 12 months anyway, and you the minimum you can pay BT regardless of whether you actually use your phone or if you use a much cheaper CPS or Indirect provider is £10.50, As a general rule it costs more.

Still if you cant live without hundreds of shopping channels and 'Bobs Artistic Toe Clippings' type channels for special interests fair enough.....the choice is yours.

Id rather have the quality channels and VOD than having to sift through acres of pointless junk.

[Chrysalis]

this isn't about money, I will be spending more, for the switch, increased rent, line installation, 39.99 on the net instead of 37.99. It is about quality of service and having what I want. Sky offered me £6.50 per month I got no idea of this is a special offer or not but it is the price I was quoted, but even at £13 per month I would take it, as right now I have analogue tv which is abysmal, I get regular interference and every year ntl reduce the channels I can no longer get premiership plus for example. Other problems I have had are the waiting for Leics resegmentation reducing my internet performance to poor level's and having to put up with india call centres. Some people may accept a poor service and put up with it whilst others wont, I am one of the ones who wont, if ntl wont change then I will.

[Toto]

Originally Posted by poolking

Sorry about that, I was feeling a little grumpy, so went for a walk to clear my head.

Not a problem, I'd imagine this time of year would make grumps out of the most placid of souls

Walking is good, I plan on doing more myself, really need to loose some weight

Sorry Mods, a tad off topic............so here we go, ntl, telewest, ntl, telewest

[themelon]

Sky and BT both have nice call centres in Bangalore too. I really wouldnt count on their service being better or anything special.

The £13.50 package on Sky is a huge waste of money look at the channels:

http://www.sky.com/ordersky/channelpackages/valuepack

I would prefer Analogue or Freeview and Top Up TV!

The Family Pack is the the first worthwhile package and that is £19.50

http://www.sky.com/ordersky/channelpackages/familypack

[Escapee]

In the ideal world the merged company would use the good bits from each company and throw away the bad bits, Unfortunately we have ego and politics to consider!

I can only comment on one division of ntl, thats the Home division and the part dealing with headends, switches and networks that supply services to the customers. I think this is the core part of the home division, and it's never focused on. Whilst Sales, retentions, customer care, tech support, billing etc all pat themselves on the back these guys in the front line are always overlooked.

When you go a bit further up the ladder in the original ntl areas and their central/corporate support roles, you used to find quite a few ex-Telewest employees. I know of one such a person who is currently and quite rightly a very concerned person, he was disposed of by Telewest because he wasn't seen as being upto the job. He moved into a position with ntl and has flourished in the companies alternative "engineering focus" to the one in Telewest. His old boss who disposed of him at Telewest, has also flourished into a very senior position so it's obvious the guy is quite rightly worried.

Purely looking at things from a technical/engineering angle, I think the merger could be the time when some people are "found out" It would be good for the company if politics and looking after friends were put to one side, and when the disposals start and the music stops decisions on who stays and who goes out of each company are made on merit.

Oh to live in an ideal world.

[BBKing]

thats the Home division and the part dealing with headends, switches and networks

Trifling flaw here - those parts are run by ntl:networks.

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by BBKing

Trifling flaw here - those parts are run by ntl:networks.

I was thinking about regional, wind the clock on a number of months and they will probably be back under home again!

Regional networks were not networks (see if that makes any sense) when I left ntl. Someone decided that the guys looking after networks couldn't be called networks! It made very little sense but was all part of someones empire building/strenghtening.

All ntl organisational information has historically been very much out of date within the average 18 month re-org period. if "some" of the management put as much effort into making improvements as they do building empires and barriers, ntl would be a far better company for employee and customer.

[BBKing]

I was thinking about regional, wind the clock on a number of months and they will probably be back under home again!

Would be nice if they were, tbh. But they aren't, strangely enough someone decided that being in charge of a network they should be under networks. Hey, ho, it doesn't matter where they are as long as they're under management who a) understand the nature of HFC networks and b) have a dependable wodge of cash for routine maintenance. IMHO judgement is reserved on this question. I'm surprised you hadn't heard about the change though, it was nearly a year ago, and Our Mutual Friends in South Wales certainly know about it.

[poolking]

NTL = No Technology Lately

[eshaq786]

I read somewhere that Telewest are implementing DOCSIS 2. Are NTL doing the same i wonder. I doubt it since NTL are struggling to keep their network up while Telewest are constantly improving their network with the implementation of DOCSIS 2 which will allow for better speeds and better service all round.

[BBKing]

I read somewhere that Telewest are implementing DOCSIS 2.

Really? I hadn't heard that, but a bit of googling threw up this, which isn't exactly conclusive:
http://www.unitedforums.co.uk/vb/arc...hp/t-5624.html

TW aren't even able to use EuroDOCSIS, owing to a lot of their modems being DOCSIS only - 1/3 of ntl's UBRs are ED (the other 2/3 being that large partly because they're DOCSIS only).

Implementing DOCSIS 2.0 isn't an easy option, but a fair chunk of ntl's equipment is *already* DOCSIS 2.0 compliant, all the latest Ambits are, for instance. Also DOCSIS 1.1 kit is available in higher capacities and that *is* being rolled out now (in fact there's loads of it about now).

NTL = No Technology Lately

Drop in at my desk sometime and sign an NDA and I'll tell you

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by BBKing

Would be nice if they were, tbh. But they aren't, strangely enough someone decided that being in charge of a network they should be under networks. Hey, ho, it doesn't matter where they are as long as they're under management who a) understand the nature of HFC networks and b) have a dependable wodge of cash for routine maintenance. IMHO judgement is reserved on this question. I'm surprised you hadn't heard about the change though, it was nearly a year ago, and Our Mutual Friends in South Wales certainly know about it.

I agree that it doesn't matter who's running the show, as long as they understand. There has to be a dividing line between responsibilities because things are obviously too big for one department to look after things.
There are big pros and cons whoever look after the HFC networks, the "network" type managers are generally technical and apart from the ex-SDH type understand the need for maintenance, these type are genarally not 100% customer focused though.
The Home/CS type are generally 100% customer focused but have little regard for maintenance and the affect of taking network technicians off the network to run around after individual customer faults, These individual faults are often larger faults affecting a larger area.

Our mutual friends in South Wales mention a lot of things about goings on in ntl, they probably did mention the change. I tend not to ask about organisational changes as things are changing on a weekly basis, I know regions have changed and the South Wales guys are back under one of the other regions that they were attached to a few years ago, this change happened a number of months ago.

They were telling me last week about tracking serious fraud problems, problems where someone from corporate engineering has been to oversee level adjustment for US and caused distortion by overdriving equipment with the wrong levels. (Apparently stems from the senior corporate engineers who don't know how to measure QPSK)

They were also mentioning the current problems with receiving and booking faults for the network, apparently there was huge problems after the last re-org and just as things were settling down they now have to deal with a different set of people to process the faults. Engineers now have about six different phone numbers to call depending on what they want to process. An engineer could be working on Res faults or Network, to add compliactions there are different numbers for clearing off faults, requesting faults, and referring faults to networks. I was told it took one of my friends nearly an hour to make 4 phone calls to book off faults, refer a fault and get his afternoon calls.

I guess they will get over these problems in time, and when they get the system functioning correctly we all know what they will do.

Change it!

[eshaq786]

Originally Posted by BBKing

Really? I hadn't heard that, but a bit of googling threw up this, which isn't exactly conclusive:
http://www.unitedforums.co.uk/vb/arc...hp/t-5624.html

TW aren't even able to use EuroDOCSIS, owing to a lot of their modems being DOCSIS only - 1/3 of ntl's UBRs are ED (the other 2/3 being that large partly because they're DOCSIS only).

Implementing DOCSIS 2.0 isn't an easy option, but a fair chunk of ntl's equipment is *already* DOCSIS 2.0 compliant, all the latest Ambits are, for instance. Also DOCSIS 1.1 kit is available in higher capacities and that *is* being rolled out now (in fact there's loads of it about now).

Nearly all the modems NTL and Telewest supply are Docsis 2 compliant as they can be flashed to docsis 2 if they havent already been done. Its a matter of network being upgraded. you say that NTL have already DOCSIS 2 compliant equipment. Do u mean equipment as in the modems or the network as a whole? I dont think NTL have yet to implement DOCSIS 2 other than in the modems which Telewest are doing anyway. The only difference is that Telewest dont have as many problems as NTL so in my opinion NTL will be deploying DOCSIS 2 much later than Telewest since NTL must first sort out their current problems before they move on.

[BBKing]

Do u mean equipment as in the modems or the network as a whole?

The modems. AFAIK neither TW nor ntl are installing DOCSIS 2.0 capable CMTS, but that's in many respects the easy bit, it's replacing hundreds of thousands of CPE that costs, which is why Telewest and original ntl has only DOCSIS levels of speed, while the ex-C&W areas of ntl where we had the foresight to specify dual-standards can accomodate both.

Are you saying that the TW modems such as the Scientific Atlanta Webstar my Mum has is capable of DOCSIS 2.0 operation with a simple firmware upgrade? I don't.

I believe Mum has a DPX100 or DPX110 (installed mid-2003), but the first SA modem capable of DOCSIS 2.0 is the EPC2100 (certified December 2003 and AFAIK not deployed on BY yet, they certainly only have USB drivers for the 100 and 110 on their website). I'd be surprised if BY has the installed user base of DOCSIS 2.0 compliant modems ntl has had since the introduction of the Ambit 200 over a year ago. So I'll stick my neck out and say ntl has more DOCSIS 2.0 compliant devices than BY as of now.

Remember DOCSIS 2.0 requires both enough compliant modems and the head-end equipment replaced, which isn't a trivial job for either firm. BY may get there first owing to having a smaller network and thus less work to do (60% of the size, roughly), but ntl are probably ahead on DOCSIS 2.0 compliance.

[eshaq786]

Blueyonder use Motorola Surfboard modems which are DOCSIS 2.0 compliant. I have sitting in front of me a SB5100 and i know for certain thats DOCSIS 2.0 compliant. Those old modems may have not been DOCSIS 2.0 compliant but any new modem Blueyonder install certainly is. Ive had BLueyonder installed at two homes. The first one of mines was installed 2 years ago and they installed a SB4200 which is DOCSIS 1 but now they are installing DOCSIS 2.0 modems. A few friends of mines have also signed up to blueyonder and have got DOCSIS 2.0 compliant modems. I havent heard as yet to whether NTL are doing this for certain so i don't see how NTL could be ahead of Blueyonder in terms of DOCSIS 2.0 deployment.