BBC NEWS | Business | NTL seals $6bn Telewest takeover
The deal will create the UK's dominant cable TV company, enabling it to compete more effectively with market leading pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB.
Analysts have been expecting a tie-up between NTL and Telewest for some time.
Its taken time for me to comment on the takeover of Telewest by ntl. I was a little surprised to see that it was couched in terms of a takeover and that Simon Duffy will be CEO of the larger entity but not enitrely. From a business perspective I guess it makes perfect sense and, after ten years (plus?) un-does the stupidity that was the franchise idea of cable uk. The stupidity being that none of the smaller companies had the capacity to compete in the long run with BT (strangely missed from the BBC article) or the mighty BSkyB.
Comments from viewers actually get to grips with the more interesting questions of customer service and products. If able had been a single entity it would probably have been able to generate the kind of money necessary to break even in the medium term, but then again mis-management of the acquisition of smaller companies certainly hurt ntl and I suspect Telewest. The key factor in all of this isn't whether the technology will win out - cable generally is perceived as the better technology - but whether the investment will be there. If companies like Homechoice deliver viable IPTV (and I believe they do) what will happen as other operators start to give LLU services? Will they opt for IPTV (By this I mean Television via xDSL)? And how will a UK cable company keep the edge in a more competitive marketplace? Find a bigger backer is the only answer I can come up with, because that's the only way that product innovation and customer service can start to edge out the marketing muscle of the two biggies and the swiftness of the smallies.
Of course, some actual real, good engagement with customers might work. They can always pay me a bundle to start discussing how they might achieve that... I'm not holding my breath though.
Interested in hearing views on this, so drop me a comment and give me something to read other than spam :)
My feeling is despite
Posted by Paul Goodison at October 4, 2005 04:07 PM | TrackBackHi Paul,
As a relatively recent novice in the use of Broadband, I am now in the happy position of being able to review both BT and Telewest due to work/home locations and my early observations have been that Telewest's cable technology far outstrips it's BT rival with better speed, ease-of-use and more importantly customer service
How the recent merger impacts on this of course remains to be seen but I feel it is absolutely essential to have genuine competition if only to force the 'heavyweights' into a review of their customer service practices and overall market perception perhaps...?
Posted by: Ray at October 5, 2005 10:30 AMI think over time (and in fact right now) th difference for your average broadband user can be largely negligible. I use BT and have a 2Mb connection - would I notice the difference compared to cable? Doubtful.
Be have just announced 24mb broadband for £24/month - over xDSL. At that speed it all becomes irrelevant. I think the cable guys have some long term things to worry about with the potential of IPTV etc. Afterall - what percentage of us already have telephone lines and are simply out of reach of a cable copnnection...?
Posted by: Graham Keen at October 7, 2005 07:20 PMGood points.
Competition is generally seen as being necessary and I dare say few would be aware that ntl offered the first broadband services until BT started pushing the offering and other providers chipped in as well.
If cable can't reach those others then it has to look at other ways of increasing the reach. So Wimax might have been the way but its just sold off the broadcast business which held the towers (now arquiva?) so its a hard one.
24 MB what are you going to do with that? I don't think PCs can handle it at present, so its only use is to share around the home and I can forsee needing that bandwidth in a few years but now?
Posted by: Paul Goodison at October 8, 2005 03:31 PM