~ I am continuing this discussion from OFCOM - FUTURE OF 0870 NUMBERS - CONSULTATION as it is not really relevant to that thread.


wrote on Oct 15^th, 2005 at 6:14pm:

BT are greatly extending the limit at which you can get a 256k service and 512k broadband service on all exchanges.

I've just read that; that the 6km limit. Bear in mind that the limit is (from a technical point of view) because the longer the line, the slower you can go. It's up to BT whether it allows broadband connections to lines of a certain length. If it chooses not to, it doesn't mean that it's not technically possible, it's because of BT's decision. Of course, BT could use this to make it look (to those who aren't aware of these technical limitations) as though BT have waved a magic wand to make ADSL work over a longer distance.


Quote:

On Forest Green exchange next to me in prosperous commuter Surrey and not far from the M25 the homes are all in range of the exchange but its just that BT doesn't want to pay the £50,000 upgrade fee itself for a new fibre optic cable to the exchange and the DSLAM as it only serves 230 lines.  But these 230 lines raise over £30,000 per year for BT in line rental, which I highly doubt they will use up in an engineer making perhaps 2 or 3 visits a month to the exchange.

But BT is a privatised company which makes decisions based on what its return will be. NGM, you are looking at this 'problem' as a "needs must" scenario. I quite agree that broadband should be rolled out everywhere, however, the two objectives are conflicting/opposing are they not. Your answer appears to be, "Oh well, BT have pots of cash."


wrote on Oct 15^th, 2005 at 6:34pm:

... and at the same time is limited in terms of how cheap it can be (if it wanted) because of fear of undercutting their rivals which they are pretty much prohibited from doing so.

But BT must charge the same price for a line in the Scottish Highlands where it (presumably) has no real competition and a buzzing urban area where cable is available.

wrote on Oct 15^th, 2005 at 6:34pm:

I used to have an 0800 and an 0845 dialup ISPs and they both changed the phone number a couple of times by sending an email and explaining how to do it in Dial Up Connection settings.  They sent an email address to the address you had to give to sign up

Same here for us ages ago.  We all know it can be done but Ofcom are agreeing with them that it can't be done.

Remember that if they send the notice via email to all their customers then this would cost them (ISPs) practically nothing in expenses and a little bit of time.  As I said earlier I realise that this wouldn't reach every customer but this will always be the case - whether by email or even by letter and they've done it in the past without incident.

Ofcom on the other hand state that it still can't be done without great expense for the ISPs concerned.  To me it seems yet another excuse.

** the above post I moved from the NTS Consultation thread due to it becoming off-topic **

wrote on Oct 15^th, 2005 at 6:44pm:

But BT is a privatised company which makes decisions based on what its return will be. NGM, you are looking at this 'problem' as a "needs must" scenario. I quite agree that broadband should be rolled out everywhere, however, the two objectives are conflicting/opposing are they not. Your answer appears to be, "Oh well, BT have pots of cash."

I agree.  BT just like NTL/Telewest make business decisions based on their expected income/profit from it.  Now that BT is privatised it can also decide what it wants to do or not.  It was different when funded by the government.  I'm also of the opinion that broadband should be available to everyone as like I said in a previous post, compared to dial-up its cheaper for what you get.  This I can only assume is that it's more expensive to run/maintain, etc a dial-up account than a broadband account.  I again assume this is possibly due to routing of traffic and the charges incurred for routing, etc.