Deal sees BT customers move to Vodafone

bealtine

http://www.rte.ie/business/2009/0722/vodafone.html

Deal sees BT customers move to Vodafone
Wednesday, 22 July 2009 10:39

BT Ireland is to transfer its consumer and small business broadband customers, as well as its voice telephone customers, to Vodafone under an agreement between the two telecoms companies.

The deal covers 84,000 customers and 3,000 small businesses. Vodafone says the deal, which is subject to Competition Authority approval, will make it the number two player in the Irish fixed line broadband market after Eircom.

BT will also provide Vodafone with access to its network for a seven-year period, and also says it will make a 'significant investment' in upgrading its infrastructure and improving broadband speeds. BT says it will now focus its business on providing networked IT services to bigger companies and the public sector in Ireland.
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The companies say the value of the business being transferred is €4.8m. They say a 'small number' of BT Ireland workers will transfer to Vodafone as part of the agreement.

trekkypj

Probably a good thing, IMHO.

At least they're not just pulling the plug and forcing people back to Eircom whether they want to go or not.

watty

Big thread here already:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055628321

Fake competition of reselling LLU or Bitstream does not make real money (except for eircom) and does nothing to increase our broadband infrastructure.

This makes no real difference to anyone on broadband. It does mean a very little something for Vodafone Mobile users perhaps. But Vodafone would have been buying BT (CIE-ESAT) fibre capacity anyway.

...

It's no secret that BT have wanted out of the residential market for a while now.
All BT are doing is off loading it's low/no profit customers to Vodafone and throwing in fibre access to sweeten the deal.
No benefit to consumers or broadband in general.

What does it say about the current value of Smart?

thebman

Well wasn't BT's billing system a mess anyway. I'd say they are just glad to be rid of all the complaints. Hopefully Vodafone will move the customers to their own billing system which I presume works.

watty

I think they bought BT Billing. It would cost a lot and need new DD opened to move customers.

They still use same Perlico one for Perlico.

Some BT staff are to move to Vodafone the news items says.

Tom Young

So Vodafone are now technically second largest in Ireland!?

Wonder how much was paid over for the customer base and ledger! 1/3 of existing base plus ledger would be about right, which means it would be a good deal for BT Ireland.

Hopefully Voda will now chuck some resources into ComReg and finally get some LLU and WLR traction.

Tom

bealtine

Tom Young wrote: »

Hopefully Voda will now chuck some resources into ComReg and finally get some LLU and WLR traction.

Tom

"He who pays the piper calls the tune"

drunkmonkey

how many customers have each? eircom versus voda

watty

All Vodafone's fixed line are eircom wholesale's customers. (perlico, BT-retail, Voda at home etc).

even LLU currently is much more profitable for eircom than anyone else. This why people have done leveraged byouts of eircom and saddled it with so much debt. That big revenue stream.

Fixed line competition is an illusion.

The real eircom/Meteor competitors are

• The other three Mobile Operators on their Mobile Business (3, O2, Vodafone) .
• UPC (Chorus/NTL)
• Imagine (IBB) on Wireless only.
• Digiweb on Wireless, Satellite and fibre
• Magnet and Smart only fibre (a small number of people)
• Smaller regional W.ISPs (Wireless) such as Permanet, Westnet etc
• Casey and Crossan regional Cable BB companies.
• Various smaller 2 way satellite resellers.

The mobile is largest (120% penetration of users for voice) and 30% of the data market by subscribers. The rest is small.

The phone call/linerental reselling, Bitstream reselling and LLU is not real competition at all and adds no real infrastructure. Since most of the profit in it is swallowed by eircom's debt repayments and leaves the country instead of being available partly for investment.

watty

By John Kennedy

Thursday July 30 2009

LAST week, two global telcos, BT and Vodafone, with a significant presence in the Irish market forged a joint venture on broadband. The question is: will it advance Ireland's so far poor performance in the realm of local loop unbundling (LLU)?

LLU effectively means an operator gains access to a local exchange and by being able to put in their own equipment they can offer higher speeds and newer services such as TV via broadband.

However, after more than 10 years since deregulation of the Irish telecoms market began, LLU can be seen as a market failure, with 96pc of copper DSL lines sold in Ireland originating with incumbent operator Eircom either directly or as 'resold' services.

Maybe one of John's better articles.

http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/a-new-beginning-for-irelands-lastmile-broadband-hopes-1846223.html

Kellett [CEO Magnet] points out that the new prices ComReg proposes, while welcome, could still be challenged by Eircom. He says what's really needed is a similar agreement to that of BT and Ofcom in 2005 where BT agreed not to compete with bitstream until the UK had 1.5 billion LLU subscribers.

"If you were to do that on an Irish scale, you would be allowing the market to grow to 150,000 full LLU subscribers. At present, Ireland has only 16,500 LLU subscribers despite the millions invested by Smart, Magnet and BT. Aggressive competition has so far destroyed the incentive to invest in LLU.

"The Irish broadband market is four years behind the US and three years behind the UK. Ireland is playing catch-up and subscribers will want better and more innovative services," Kellett concludes.

© Silicon Republic Ltd

- John Kennedy

watty

I'd disagree with Magnet. I think LLU is almost irrelevant. You still have to rent space in the exchange, pay for access, rent the copper pair etc, get backhaul. It too, just on a different level to Bitstream is an illusion of competition. In reality it does not create any new last mile infrastructure and only duplicates encumbent's exchange/backhaul/core.

I don't think there is any "Innovation" to do on LLU any more. The only addition to Broadband is IPTV, which is limited to 10% to 20% of lines and poor at best compared to cable. Maybe 10 years ago there was the promise of it.

Even Magnet really only promotes IPTV on fibre now. They have 12,000 fibre customers.


hard to beat Physics:

Green line is BT/Magnet/Smart LLU or newer eircom ADSL2+ exchanges.

Blue Line is original eircom ADSL exchanges and original bitstream.

The Green line is generally much worse due to pair cross talk or less than perfect lines. All graphs of ADSL2+ speed show the best possible scenario.
Clear graph here
http://www.internode.on.net/residential/broadband/adsl/extreme/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.DMT
This good too
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,12770014

Line distance roughly converts to attenuation (and vice versa)

In practice there is no advantage to ADSL2+ more than 3km (45dB to 50dB) or VDSL more than 800m. The Average line length is slightly under 3km and only 15% are more than 6km (too long). However pairgains or poor line or bad connections can make a line fail. A multipair cable only 500m can be half as fast as the graph if there are a lot of DSL customers which increases cross talk. Increasing Interleaving (higher latency) reduces crosstalk and helps maintain a higher speed. ADSL2+ has slightly less crosstalk issue than original ADSL.

Fibre, Fixed Wireless or Coax is not really limited by distance in this way