Sunday Times Broadband Article

Buceph

Anyone read the article in the Sunday Times about the state of broadband in Britain. Pretty damning, I can't imagine what they'd say about Ireland's broadband.

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Buceph wrote:

Anyone read the article in the Sunday Times about the state of broadband in Britain. Pretty damning, I can't imagine what they'd say about Ireland's broadband.

Wise up! Rupert Murdoch controls the Sunday Times rag. Following declining interest in pay / advertising funded rubbish TV around the world Rupee is going into the broadband business. US TV audiences fell to an all-time low over the past few months and GB is following suit. The writing is on the wall and Rupert's TV empire is in trouble. BT is probably going to copy France Telecom and its main competitors such as free.fr and go bigtime into the TV distribution business via ADSL2+.

The BBC broke free of his system for satellite TV distribution a few years ago and many people there no longer subscribe to Sky because they can get all the TV they want without paying Sky fees.

RTE is still stuck with the bastard apparently because Irish politicians seem to be scared of what “the murdoch media” might say about them coming up to an election if RTE dumped Sky and used www.astra.lu or www.eutelsat.fr directly. No other self-respecting country in Europe uses a neighbouring country’s satellite TV bouquet to deliver their TV services to their national audience. Neither does RTE have a national DTT network.

Methinks this “scandal story” is just an in-house advertorial job to soften people up and ready them for a Sky BB blitz! The real scandal is how one can’t get a decent TV picture on RTE in most parts of Ireland without paying monthly fees to Sky or an American cable company, on top of the TV license fee. I suspect Rupert won’t be writing about that topic anytime soon…

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2103-2330140,00.html

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mike65

The above is a rant.

Here is quote from the article which points a finger right at SKY

Del Boy would be proud of the spiel unleashed this year for services bundled like buy-one-get-one-free promotions. The ISP TalkTalk offers “free” high-speed broadband — once you’ve signed up for one of its telephone plans. Orange offers a “free” broadband connection — to its lucrative mobile-phone subscribers. Sky’s recently launched Base broadband service is “free” — if you subscribe to one of its television packages.

Mike.

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Sky’s recently launched Base broadband service is “free” — if you subscribe to one of its television packages.

It looks to me like a not so subtle advertorial promo. Aimed at existing Sky TV subscribers. To keep them away from BT broadband (because BT will be offering DSL TV).

And keep them away from Orange. Because Orange is France Telecom and what France Telecom is doing today in France (ie TV), they will be doing in Britain shortly to leverage their Orange brand name (many/most Brits think Orange is a British company).

Nobody is going to sign up for Sky TV to get “free” broadband. It is solely a defensive strategy by Murdoch.

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damien

Yeah because mySpace was a fluke by Murdoch and he can't see the future of communications at all.

mike65

Probe, Its unlikely that a Murdoch paper would associate another arm of the Empire with the following

Del Boy would be proud of the spiel...

If the article was a snow job.

Mike.

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mike65 wrote:

Probe, Its unlikely that a Murdoch paper would associate another arm of the Empire with the following
If the article was a snow job.

The British gutter press (which includes the Times since Murdoch got his hands on it) are notoriously flexible in their use of the English language when it comes to serving the interests of their proprietor…..

Mr Murdoch is also well practiced at giving out his products “for free”. Look back just over a decade or so ago when he was giving “The Times” away free in Ireland in a naïve attempt to break the Irish national newspaper media (ie force one or more of them to sell out to him). Fortunately he miscalculated the value of “free” in the Irish marketplace of the time and the vast majority of newspaper readers continued to pay for their Irish newspapers – rather than take “free” copies of his London rag as an alternative.

One wonders if the same would happen today after a decade or so of exposure to his tabloid trash television has contributed to the degradation of the value system of a significant percentage of the Irish population?

Of course he had a lot of help from Alfie Kane / eircom and latterly RTE to push his set top boxes and put an “Irish imprimatur” on his culturally degenerate product – which was going nowhere in the Irish marketplace prior to their intervention.

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(A non-shareholder in eircom. Never a single share – for anyone who might be thinking that one might have an axe to grind in that quarter)

mike65

Okay you have "issues" so debate is pointless.

Mike.