Poor old BT. Now that it’s reached a settlement with OfCom that allows it to keep retail and wholesale arms under one, some would say, severely stretched umbrella, commentators emerge from cover and say it might be better if it’d spit into two (or more) parts. The cost of Openreach has been put at £70m so far and in terms of efficiency in the UK telecoms market this could well be an ongoing sore.
BT has announced an IPTV offer for the retail market that some say offers too little too late. Early adopters of Digital TV are, in the main, already committed to Sky, who will look to rapidly integrate an Easynet download capability in an attempt to beat off the challenges from BT and a combined resurgent UK cable monolith formed by Telewest and NTL. The remnants of the consumer markets’ move to digital TV that BT will attract, are likely to be those less inclined to convert to a pay TV proposition, and they’re likely to be operating with tighter disposable incomes than those who have already left analogue TV behind.
Sky’s upcoming purchase of Easynet adds considerably to the pressure on BT.
Major Telcos in Europe have, by and large, a coherent mobile strategy and BT’s deal with Vodaphone is viewed as little more than a stop gap.
Where does this leave BT?
Interestingly enough, Telefonica’s bid valuation of O2 put the value of the former Cellnet constituent of BT above that of the remainder of the UK’s juggernaut Telco- perhaps BT Group could be of interest to another global suitor?
At present there’s a danger that not only will wholesale be delivering utility-style performance but that retail may be moving into a period of decline and could it be that the future of BT is again up for a re-evaluation by it’s major stakeholders?
A project starting early next year in East London hopes to bridge the digital divide by broadband-enabling a number of housing estates.
Happily, this project is focused on the original residents, not the ones who live in the £1/2m flats – sorry, apartments.
Additional services include a Health channel allowing patients to book GP appointments, provide virtual consultations and on-line health and diagnosis information; a Consumer Channel, allowing on-line group buying of common services such as gas, electricity and mobile phone tariffs; and an Employment Channel, providing on-line NVQ courses, local jobs Websites and virtual interview mentoring.
The wires are hot with rumours that BSkyB is contemplating a bout of wad waving in the direction of the video-on-demand, broadband and telephone company Homechoice, which is reportedly finding things tres tricky in the increasingly competitive TV broadband market.
Homechoice currently provides a broadband Internet and telephone service, with on-demand programmes covering comedy, drama, music soaps, pay-per-view movies and home shopping.
City analysts, however, suspect that Sky could snap up the company as part of its plans for video-on-demand and broadband.
The futuristic vision of a connected home with content moving seamlessly from our TV to our PC and on to our mobile device is still a long way off, according to key speakers at The Connected Home conference in London today.
It took Dimitri Van Kets (pictured left), from Belgian telco, Belgacom, to voice what many were thinking by announcing that the networked home was “little more than a mass of standards” and “too confusing” for the average consumer. Unless the service providers get together and educate customers, he said, true home connectivity was never going to happen.
Paul Szucs of Sony said that service providers should “try not to lose the plot with content protection”, adding that “consumers simply want their devices to work together and share content.”
BT is planning to turbo-boost broadband connectivity by quadrupling basic connectivity speeds to 8mbps nationwide and giving the service a snappy name, “ADSL Broadband Max”.
The 8mbps service will see BT reaching the theoretical top ADSL speeds it announced when the broadband service first launched in 2000.
With the industry rapidly consolidating, BT is coming under increasing pressure from newly merged uber-telecos like Telewest/NTL and Sky/Easynet, with the former already offering speeds of more than 8mbps for no extra charge on existing broadband subscriptions.
Elsewhere, BT has started trialling optical fibre broadband services in Wales, connecting business to ultra-high-bandwidth services using strands of blown fibre run along using existing telegraph poles.
As we reported last week, Easynet has been bought by Sky – as long as they get shareholder approval, but since Sky have offered a premium on Easynet’s shares, this should be a done deal.
Even though Sky are buying into LLU, Easynet only cover around 250 exchanges and currently all the voice goes to BT (Easynet use the shared metallic path LLU option), while Sky are likely to want to take the phone service as well (they already have a SkyTalk package using CPS provided by THUS). Sky will need to invest to make this a reality as well as increasing Easynet’s coverage. They have said they want to go into around 1000 exchanges, so that’s a build out of around 750 – which won’t be cheap (probably another £100m’ish at least).
If all the LLU players aggregated infrastructure and competed on services, they could build a 21CN of their own now. LLU competition is going to be fiercely competitive with Wanadoo, AOL, Sky and even Be offering a triple-play – all competing for the same customers. – as well as BT (who will have nationwide coverage) and not ignoring NTL/Telewest who are also going into LLU.
Sky will gain income from broadband subscription and possibly entice further subscribers to their TV service taking them to their stated aim of 10m. Far more important is a new channel to deliver content through – one they have total control over. They like that.
Wi-Fly
Is it a bird, is it a plane…
Oooh Aaargh, ‘cos we’re pirates!
Figures just out from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), report 137m broadband subscribers throughout the OECD countries and that’s up 18m since the last figures, six months ago.
The ‘other technologies’ have enjoyed the the highest percentage growth in the past six months, growing 13%.
There still seems to be plenty of cash slopping around the broadband sector, as PIPEX has just waved its weighty wad in the direction of Freedom to Surf (F2S) and bought the company for £10m.
It’s uncertain whether existing Freedom2Surf customers already using LLU via the EasyNet LLUStream range will stay where they are or be shunted on to a PIPEX LLU product.
Peter Dubens, Chairman of PIPEX, said: “In the light of our recent decision to unbundle an initial 60 exchanges, we are very pleased to add F2S to the PIPEX group, which will further increase the density of customers around each exchange, thus improving the return on capital and enabling us to offer higher speeds to a greater number of our customers. F2S’s customers will be able to benefit from our extensive network and the broad range of services we provide.”