Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[niemand]

As WWWombat suggests there are are least two advantages for Virgin:

- HMG guarantees that the capital and interest will be repaid to investors in full if Virgin don't pay; and

- Virgin effectively benefits from HMG's credit rating borrowing money at the same (very low) rate that HMG does than paying a much higher commercial interest rate which would more accurately reflect the real risk of lending to such a company.

VM were pre-approved but haven't actually used it, at least yet.

Their most recent borrowings were at between 5.0% and 5.375%.

[niemand]

Again, I would humbly suggest that take-up of these sooper-dooper high speed products, will be minimal ..... compared to the larger market.

I work (as you all know by now) on FTTC on a daily basis, and my own findings are that the 40/2 and 40/10 products are by far and away the biggest seller.

I do take Ronski's (I think it was he ??) point, that by the time the service gets to the EU they may only have 15/20 meg etc etc, but I still maintain cash is king in this sector ..... the amount of people willing to fork out extra dosh for 330, or 1G speeds will probably fall into the 10-15% of total consumers ...... with most of that being businesses.

Let the willy-waving continue though .....

You're quite correct, though I'd point out this is a business product.

Given Ofcom, with the ASA either following suit or pre-empting, seem set on changing the advertising regime from what the top 10% can get to what the top 51% can get I strongly suspect that we're in for a few changes. CPs will be climbing all over Openreach alongside changing how they handle orders to mitigate this.

From that point of view the willy-waving should push Openreach to invest more. BT Group investors have told BT Group management they would be willing to accept higher CapEx, as in actually spending more than the planned budget on copper anyway, in return for regulatory certainty and better optics. The change by Ofcom / ASA would certainly tick both of those boxes.

As I understand it there is some confusion as to why Openreach are happy to keep hiring engineers to work on the copper network, increasing ongoing operational expenditure, rather than trying to come to an accommodation with Ofcom to replace with fibre, in return for a strong VULA package, and have a one-time hit in terms of CapEx with lower OpEx, and hence higher profits, going forward, especially given how cheap commercial borrowing remains.

The 51% thing is basically a done deal. The debate now is between whether it'll be 51% across the entire 24 hours or during the peak period only.

[Black Sheep]

You'll get no argument from me here re: willy-waving/investing ...... in whatever form that is (Cu or Fibre ??), I'm all for it.

The reason as I see it, as to the mass-explosion of engineering staff is two-fold ...... 1) To meet the constant pressure of commitment times  laid out by Ofcom ....... and 2) To ensure the roll-out of G.fast is met.

I will openly admit that at this moment in time, in my personal opinion, we seem to be a dis-jointed business at the minute. Again, this is just my personal opinion ... but meeting stats (Both industry set and home-grown ones), has crucified this once great company.
Don't get me going on the lower management tiers.     

[Chrysalis]

good news on the 51% first i heard of it, the 10% was nonsensical

it really should be peak times imo.

[niemand]

G.fast rollout can be done almost entirely by contractors and needs fewer resources than the original FTTC deployment. No surveying for a fibre path, no search for power, no survey for where to put a new cabinet.

FTTC didn't need more engineering staff, additional cabinets didn't, deploying a G.fast pod is less work than a new FTTC cabinet.

This will be why the business is okay with it, how cheap it is while ticking at least some of the political boxes.

Of course there's the minor issue that due to taking such economies reach will be dicey and a move to 51% advertising will harm the business case.

Ultrafast being set at 300Mb rather than 100Mb will mess up the optics of the ultrafast count too.

Might lead to some serious CapEx. Stranger things have happened.

[Black Sheep]

I should have elaborated further ......... by G.fast, I meant the FTTn (DP), which will likely be ramped up at some point in the very near future, I would imagine ??

[niemand]

Last I heard it was all pods on PCPs until at least 2020, no deeper fibre at all apart from some FTTP that'll be mostly confined to commercial areas and new build.

I welcome correction, Sir.

[niemand]

Just wondering if there was anything more on G.fast from distribution points that could be shared?

Certainly zero announcements have been made in public or to CPs regarding deploying FTTdp. Some AIOs for VDSL intercepting copper deeper into the network but nothing even close to distribution point level.

Openreach certainly have no need to deploy fibre deeper into the network to hit their target. It would be very unlike them to spend any more than absolutely necessary intentionally.