*ALL* Speed Upgrade Discussion In Here Please

[Mauldor]

Talking about on topic...I thought the Cap thread was like ---> Over there somewhere? Anyhow Ian post there mentioned Telepohone etc - well id like to reply to this if I may.

Water and Sewerage - i dont montior that very much, dont egt some letter telling me ive used too much. Sky - again, pay and watch as much or as little as I require. Telephones, I have a online web page where i can check my Bill and so forth to see how much it has been hammered of late. End of the day ist called progress, remember when cars could only reach astaggering 30mph?? now they can like do over 200. I would laso like to pull out the old Dial up card if i may - if the price was cheap enough per month, then there is no reason why a Lot of people (the general masses then) could not survive month after month on that but the companies are pricing the dial up close to a broadband connection to try and force people onto it - simple why cos it must cost a lot more for racks of 56k Modems then it does to provide a ADSl/CM connetion.

My last and final point if I may be so kind - Unless NTL (or BT for that matter, hell anyone) provide some way for the end user to check there useage, then its gonna be hard for a lot of us to check how much they have used up as it were. a Bandwidth program is of no use to me - im on a network, connected via a router so all traffic even to my other machines will rack up that number.. Is there any news of such a thing been put in? I cannot see how they can make people stick to this cap unless they provide some sort of Login- check your useage kinda thing !!

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by Mauldor

Water and Sewerage - i dont montior that very much, dont egt some letter telling me ive used too much.

that's cos either you're on a water meter where you pay for what you consume and excrete or you pay water rates where you pay a fixed cost.

Sky - again, pay and watch as much or as little as I require.

that's cos there is no different cost to sky if you want 0 hours a month or max out your connection and watch sky 24 hours a day.

[LostintheNW]

Just wondering why have NTL decided to put the 2 and 3mb on the same cap level? Doesn't seem to make much sense seeing as the 3mb customers are paying a lot more than someone on 2mb, NTL I think are going to see a lot of people downgrading to the lower speeds - but then again when has good commercial business sense ever been part of NTL's vocab?

[daxx]

Originally Posted by LostintheNW

- but then again when has good commercial business sense ever been part of NTL's vocab?

The Three Laws of NTL (or the NTL definition of commercial business sense)

1. the ability or werewithall to p*** off as many customers as possible without giving out any information (telephone ping-pong being a good example)
2. being able to make 'sound' (sic) business decisions whilst still adhering to point 1
3. ignoring any customer/staff feedback whilst still adhering to the previous two points

there could be many more but these spring to mind

[Russ]

OK people this thread has been reported for the amount of bickering going on - let's keep it calm please.

[bob_builder]

Just spotted this news on the PCPro site:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/69272/nt...nd-speeds.html

Originally Posted by PCPro

NTL plans to double cable broadband speeds 10:57AM
NTL is planning to double or even treble the speed of all its cable broadband users' connections over the next four weeks.

Cable Forum has learned that 300Kbps users will be upgraded to 1Mbps, 750Kbps to 2Mbps and 1.5Mbps to 3Mbps

The increases will be free, but as some 300Kbps customers may not be prepared to take the 3GB monthly data limit that comes with the new speed, they will have the option of upgrading. Downstream traffic on the new 2Mbps and 3Mbps connections will be capped at 30Gb and 40GB respectively.

Cable forum believes, but has not had it confirmed, that users exceeding their limit will have their speed restricted to 56Kbps, the same as dial-up.
Simon Aughton

It appears to have been copied word for word from this site - even down to using the site's name - are they allowed to do this?

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by daxx

The Three Laws of NTL (or the NTL definition of commercial business sense)

The definition of both ntl and Telewest at the moment:

Technology based companies owned and beholden to venture capitalists whose primary concern is as good a return as possible on their investments.

Now that Telewest's pre-bankruptcy upgrades have been pretty much used sorry to say that Telewest will be in the same kind of boat as ntl now.

[Downloads]

Originally Posted by fire

I really cant see the point in anyone paying £37.99 a month for the same usage allowance when they can pay £25 a month a still download a gig in just over an hour.The cap should be at around 47 gig a month when comparing services.

I will be downgrading to the £25 service saves £13 a month which can be spent elsewhere.

I can think of 3 good reasons. 33% extra gbs (40gbs not 30gbs). 50% more d/l speed (great if you are running a LAN, which many people do). 50% more u/l speed (great for hosting games like Halo 2 and for uploading data). All of which are reasons i will be upgrading to the top tier service.

[Kevin]

See plusnet are going to go with 8Mb broadband from April at £14.99, at least their caps are realistic, time dependant but useable on a monthly figure not a 1gb a day cap period.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/16/bt_plusnet/

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Ignition

The definition of both ntl and Telewest at the moment:

Technology based companies owned and beholden to venture capitalists whose primary concern is as good a return as possible on their investments.

Now that Telewest's pre-bankruptcy upgrades have been pretty much used sorry to say that Telewest will be in the same kind of boat as ntl now.

Agreed. We are dealing with Venture Capitalists where I work. They operate quite simply. You do what they demand (usually make as much money as possible). If you don't, then they pull their funding (which in the case of NTL is in the order of Billions) and you have to pay them back. If that happens, bye bye company.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by scastle

Agreed. We are dealing with Venture Capitalists where I work. They operate quite simply. You do what they demand (usually make as much money as possible). If you don't, then they pull their funding (which in the case of NTL is in the order of Billions) and you have to pay them back. If that happens, bye bye company.

Slightly different in ntl and Telewest's case - these people aren't funding, they actually own the company.

Figures below taken from a post regarding potential mergers:

NTL Inc

WR Huff Personal Holding 11,077,692 12.64%

WR Huff Asset Management Holding 10,448,530 11.92%

W R Huff total assets in NTL Inc = 21,526,222 shares = 24.56% of share capital.

FMR Corporation (Fidelity Management & Research Corp) 10,846,817 12.37%
Fidelity International Ltd (Bermuda) 2,169,814 2.48%

Fidelity Corp / Int Ltd NTL Inc holding = 13,016,631 shares, 14.85% of share capital

Franklin Resources, Inc 7,756,409 shares, 8.85% of share capital
Oaktree Capital Management, LLC 7,364,235 shares, 8.4% of share capital

Total Shares Outstanding 87,657,000

W R Huff, Fidelity, Franklin Resources and Oaktree Cap. Mgmt own 56.66% of NTL Inc.

Telewest Global Inc

HUFF, WILLIAM R. Personal Holding 45,022,199 18.38%
HUFF (W.R.) Asset Management Co., L.L.C. 42,772,619 17.46%

W R HUFF total holding in Telewest = 87,794,818 shares = 35.84% of share capital.

FMR Corporation (Fidelity Management & Research Corp) 29,830,504 12.18%
Fidelity International Ltd (Bermuda) 6,919,426 2.82%

Fidelity Corp / Int Ltd Telewest Global holding = 36,749,930 shares, 15.00% of share capital.

Franklin Resources, Inc 22,621,503 9.23 $262,861,857 30-Sep-04

Oaktree Capital Management, LLC 14,131,785 5.77 $164,211,337 30-Sep-04

Shares Outstanding 245,000,000

W R Huff and Fidelity just between the two of them own 50.84% of Telewest Global Inc.

Franklin and Oaktree Cap Mgmt's shares make this combined ownership 65.84%

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Ignition

Slightly different in ntl and Telewest's case - these people aren't funding, they actually own the company.

So it's doubly important that NTL or Telewest keep them happy..

[bywater]

I still have the old surfboard modem supplied by NTL must say it as served me well but getting on for four years old or more now. With all the new speed increases coming our way will it beable to cope ? Do NTL have any plans to upgrade this modem at any point or do I have to wait till it is fried befor I get a new one ? Anyone know the expected life span of this model ?

[ian@huth]

The surfboard will handle the new speeds, don't worry. There is no need to upgrade them until they fail.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by scastle

So it's doubly important that NTL or Telewest keep them happy..

Not a matter of keeping them happy, they own the companies so can keep themselves happy.