Windows 10 forced upgrade

[Gordon Smith 1Participant @gordonsmith1]

Here in sunny Bracknell the town was wired for cable TV back in the 1970's and operated by NTL. This was taken over by Virgin who run the fibre to cabinet. Interestingly when I moved here you wern't allowed to erect a TV aerial.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

It is annoying to see contractors putting in fibre but it sits there doing nothing, The boxes are there but not connected.

Where I worked they put up the boxes about 5 years ago but no further movement since then and you were lucky to get 2 Mbs sometimes. The same here where I live, boxes up, fibre in but not connected and Medway is one of the places selected for fast internet just recently. I doubt it means fibre to the houses but just to the boxes and then onto copper.

Roger i was quoting what the MD of Talktalk was saying on the news.She was moaning because they pay BT millions for a poor slow connection.

Clive

[Roger Provins 2Participant @rogerprovins2]

The fibre cabling was installed here in this part of Gloucester about 20 years ago and run by United Artists, then Blueyonder and now Virgin. Mine is fibre optic right to the modem and is never less than 100 Mbs.

Roger

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

Re BT, Openreach & TalkTalk (& others).

First, in the interests of openness, I am ex-BT. I started in 1959 as an apprentice when it was a division of the GPO and left 35 years later when it was a fully fledged plc. I accept that because of this I will be accused of being biased.

BT is on a hiding to nothing. It inherited the complete telephone structure of this country back whenever, including all the problems of it's predecessors. People will talk of having to wait months if not years for telephone service. They will remember the bad old days when it took anything up to 1/2 a minute for a STD call to connect. And that one could only have instruments provided by the one company (Post Office Telephones, Post Office Telecommunications etc) . BT also inherited the requirement to provide telephone service throughout the UK.

Now lets look at some of these things. For a start, when it was a division of the Post Office, it was a Crown office and as such its finances, specifically capital expenditure was tightly controlled by the Treasury. Which meant that in times of stringency, it was not allowed to spend money on new line plant or new exchanges hence the situation of having to wait months and years for telephone service. With the best will in the world, no company can quickly recover from that sort of legacy. Whats more, line plant costs money and if the ducts are full, then there are all sorts of access problems to increase capacity. And don't forget, the likes of Talk Talk have not had to provide their own line plant – they piggyback on the existing line plant.

It's also worth point out that BT (and it's predecessors) exchanges have gone through two or three stages in being updated – manual to Strowger, Strowger to modern analogue, modern analogue to digital – whilst at the same time converting inter-exchange links to a fully digital system. All during the last 40 or so years. At the same time, telephone ownership has soared, eg one exchange that I was intimately involved with had 10,000 lines in 1960, by 1994 when I left, it was up to at least 40,000 lines. Which in turn implies a dramatic increase in local loop provision. How has all that been paid for?

And whilst when BT was created, everything – line plant & exchanges – came under one umbrella heading of BTplc, today there is Openreach, BT Residential, BT Business – all separate businesses, all forcibly created by dictat in order to foster competition.

In respect of FTTC, it is necessary to provide an additional cabinet to hold the fibre termination equipment, and since BT no longer is a Crown department, it has to obtain planning permission etc. Ditto for the optical fibres themselves. (Interestingly, when it was Post Office Telephones and hence a Crown department, they could effectively do what they wanted without consulting the local council.)

I'm not going to say that BT is perfect because clearly it isn't, but I really don't think that Talk Talk etc have really thought things through. Or more likely they are fully aware of the problems, but choose just to highlight whatever they think will help their bottom line. BT Openreach, if spun off from BTplc, will still be a company in it's own right and will have to obtain the finance for these upgrades from somewhere. Openreach doesn't charge customers, the individual telephony suppliers do that. Openreach simply charges the individual suppliers the going rate for using Openreach's lines. And let's face it, no company is going to provide fibre access if no-one is going to use it.

The bottom line is that it is going cost money, a lot of money, to provide FTTC throughout the country. Can Openreach afford it? I don't know, but I could certainly see a situation whereby Openreach ends up increasing their charges in order to fund FTTC nationally. And would Talk Talk be prepared to financially assist? I doubt it very much.

Regards,

Peter G. Shaw

[DodParticipant @dod]

Call me naive but surely BT charging £15.99 per month per customer surely equals a lot of money to run a service.

[NJHParticipant @njh]

Dodd (naive ! &#128521

Well £16 per month …….. What is the standing charge for your water , your electricity, your gas , your vehicle road tax etc. ? In all these cases ( and arguably especially in the case of the telephone) there is a huge investment in the network (infrastructure) needed to provide service to customers. That standing charge gives you the facility to pick up your phone and connect to anyone anywhere in the world and for anyone to call you. The "addition" you pay for making the call is dependant on the time you spend but the network needs to be there first .! You could,of course, have a system where the standing charge was funded from general taxation……!

Norman

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

We got fed up with BT years ago, bad line, slow internet , sometimes no service, etc. and all for £80 per quarter plus charges. Now got a mobile phone and satelite broadband for about £35 per month. No contest, big plus is no cold calls.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Reported this morning that BT suffered another power failure affecting several other internet providers. This one in the Docklands area, BT say they are re-directing internet through other circuits. meanwhile engineers are on site fixing it seems the unfixable!

I do remember many years ago with the advent of communication satellites that we were promised, 'Free' telephone calls forever, literally pie in the sky it seems.

Clive

Edited By Clive Hartland on 21/07/2016 10:59:26

[HowiParticipant @howi]

BT will never give up it's network, it has too much money invested. It matters not who you are with unless on Virgin as all the infrastructure belongs to BT. Unless TalkTalk and others are willing to stump up billions to buy a proportion of the network ( highly unlikely) it will be status quo.

There is also the problem of security of the network and exchanges. Unless you have worked for BT in an engineering capacity you will have no idea of the scale of the underground network or the complexity of the modern digital exchange and it's data requirements. To let third parties have access when they are only interested in profit would put the whole of the network in jeopardy. The access (if any) they have at present is very low and well controlled.

BT are allways being harangued for not investing enough in the network, but what about the hangers on, TalkTalk, Sky etc?

Just to clarify MY position, I worked for BT for 34 years, my phone line and fibre broadband are NOT with BT.

And yes! I wish it was cheaper too

Edited By Howi on 21/07/2016 11:25:24

[Jon GibbsParticipant @jongibbs59756]

+1 for Howi's comments.

I've never worked for BT but do work in Telecoms.

I'd say that the denationalization "experiment" of the 80's has pretty much completely failed for all of our essential services. IMHO, the fixed line network, along with water, gas an electricity distribution could and should be not-for-profit organisations with income from bills balanced by appropriate maintenance and investment. It's basic arithmetic that if you're paying shareholders along with paying to maintain infrastructure and run a service it will be more expensive to consumers.

Government subsidies for OpenReach are fine but at the same time BT is paying shareholders larger and larger dividends… **LINK**

I know it's often argued that commercial companies are better run and more efficient but IMHO it's a fallacy. These companies all have to be overseen by regulators to make sure they play fair and do the job safely which is another un-costed level of bureaucracy that wasn't there before and that is also another cost ultimately borne by the taxpayer or bill-payer.

Jon

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

I am as critical of BT as anyone, but in this part of the north of Scotland they have one saving grace, and that is a fast repair service when things go wrong. The local newspaper of which I was editor until retirement ten years ago tried pretty well every cheaper alternative and found them all wanting. One left us with no phones or internet connection for three days. We soon went back to BT.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

My personal moan. Our cabinet has about 25 houses and three sizeable businesses attached to it. They won't upgrade it as it is ~2 miles from the exchange.

Interestingly, a great deal of effort has been spent on connecting the cabinet (and other services) to a massive business park development going up on the other side of the busy dual carriageway.

I did email the developers pointing out that their multi-million development may struggle to attract top end businesses without a decent internet connection…

Curiously, they did not reply to my email.

Neil

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

It's a little known fact these days but Maggie put the kibosh on BT when they planned to implement the "high speed digital highway", back in 1990. She was worried about damaging the BBC. So much for the free market.

Move forward to today and we are spending taxpayers' money telling ourselves to get super high speed broadband. And her modern day descendants have it in for the BBC.

Difficult to imagine how things would have panned out if we'd had fast internet back in the 90s….

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

I think one bad aspect of the denat is how the internet cabling is handled. Essentially anyone who wanted to could install what they like but only on local networks. The main trunks were left for BT. After all when things are denat'd they have to offer something that guarantees a profit and the prices usually go up before and after. This seems to be going on with Royal Mail at the moment. Pre sale increases, plus the investment of course. Wonder who is paying for that.

It's left me in an odd situation. Birmingham Cable was set up so they installed the usual boxes all over the place. Later some one bought them out, Virgin. So now if I want fibre optic I can only have it via Virgin. It's co ax from the boxes of course. The BT exchange is pretty close to us. Id' day about 500 yds. They have been laying new phone lines in the last 12 months. Seems the joints are more water resistant than the old ones we had. I doubt if laying fibre would have cost any more. BT gives me the we are exploring solutions reply to a check on availability. Plus if sufficient people were interested they would look into it. There clearly is sufficient interest otherwise Virgin would have ditched the lines and BC not installed in the first place.

The cable to the house failed when I used BC. They had no interest what so ever in even looking at what a repair would mean. I pestered them and a lady told me that if I upgraded the service and paid more it would be fixed very quickly.

I feel the denat thing is really a form of asset stripping really and is also hoped to get round the usual problem with nat'd enterprises. Gov's generally don't spend money on improvement unless they have absolutely no choice and profit levels aren't set to a level that allow for later improvements. They are also not well known for running positive bank balances. They are also inclined to use prices and the number of people employed to help get votes. Selling publicly owned buildings and businesses etc also gives them some cash.

Dividends have their odd aspects. When Lucas was around in it's original form it often paid higher dividends than it's profits would suggest. This was done because many pension funds owned them and they didn't want the share price to drop which is what would happen if they were sold large scale. This is what BT may be playing at. 9.6p on shares that were probably bought at more like £4 isn't much of a return and there share prices are going down. That works out at about 2.5% and still not much better at their current value. Their profits are well up due to price increases. Share prices down. These days more money is made buying and selling shares and I suspect the majority of pension type investments are probably in commercial property. They tended to get moved that way a long time ago. That market is currently frozen. A lot of private individuals may own BT shares and 2.5% is better currently than many other options other than property who's bubble always bursts now and again. If the numbers are looked at against real inflation the dividend probably balances out losses to some extent. Pity ISA's don't as well.

Argggggggggg – free markets – more like free monopolies but sometimes formed between separate companies.

I also got sent on several business finance courses. Pretty heavy ones at times so that I could appreciate a bean counters views.

John

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[Anthony KendallParticipant @anthonykendall53479]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 21/07/2016 12:43:23:

My personal moan. Our cabinet has about 25 houses and three sizeable businesses attached to it. They won't upgrade it as it is ~2 miles from the exchange.

Interestingly, a great deal of effort has been spent on connecting the cabinet (and other services) to a massive business park development going up on the other side of the busy dual carriageway.

I did email the developers pointing out that their multi-million development may struggle to attract top end businesses without a decent internet connection…

Curiously, they did not reply to my email. Neil

What did you expect them to say Neil – "Thanks very much, we hadn't realised that – we'll sell up and go somewhere else"

[Anthony KendallParticipant @anthonykendall53479]

Posted by Muzzer on 21/07/2016 15:41:20:

It's a little known fact these days but Maggie put the kibosh on BT when they planned to implement the "high speed digital highway", back in 1990. She was worried about damaging the BBC. So much for the free market.Move forward to today and we are spending taxpayers' money telling ourselves to get super high speed broadband. And her modern day descendants have it in for the BBC.Difficult to imagine how things would have panned out if we'd had fast internet back in the 90s….

It might be me, but I can't see what this has to do with the BBC.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Anthony Kendall on 21/07/2016 16:04:05:

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 21/07/2016 12:43:23:

My personal moan. Our cabinet has about 25 houses and three sizeable businesses attached to it. They won't upgrade it as it is ~2 miles from the exchange.

Interestingly, a great deal of effort has been spent on connecting the cabinet (and other services) to a massive business park development going up on the other side of the busy dual carriageway.

I did email the developers pointing out that their multi-million development may struggle to attract top end businesses without a decent internet connection…

Curiously, they did not reply to my email. Neil

What did you expect them to say Neil – "Thanks very much, we hadn't realised that – we'll sell up and go somewhere else"

I am hoping that when it dawns on someone suitably high up (or customers start asking awkard questions) they will stump up the £25K or so it will cost to get a line put in :-/

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Just saying, funny how things turn around. First paragraph, impeding broadband, sympathetic to BBC interests. Second paragraph promoting broadband and antagonistic to BBC. Capiche?

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

Simple solution,

Openreach raises its prices to fund the FULL rollout and charges the hangers on like Talk Talk a further premium, then wait for all the squeals.

As for BT Profits, which "Insurance" company/Fund Manager is your pension with? That's where a lot of the profits go. Decapitate BT and guess who will be suffering?

Edited By KWIL on 21/07/2016 16:39:36

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Posted by Anthony Kendall on 21/07/2016 16:11:59:

Posted by Muzzer on 21/07/2016 15:41:20:

It's a little known fact these days but Maggie put the kibosh on BT when they planned to implement the "high speed digital highway", back in 1990. She was worried about damaging the BBC. So much for the free market.Move forward to today and we are spending taxpayers' money telling ourselves to get super high speed broadband. And her modern day descendants have it in for the BBC.Difficult to imagine how things would have panned out if we'd had fast internet back in the 90s….

It might be me, but I can't see what this has to do with the BBC.

I can't see that the BBC had anything to do with it either especially as they wanted US companies to do it and they provided TV including none UK sourced. Just so called anti competitive aspects as no one else could do or rather would do it on the same scale. Having had early TV I can also state that the transmission standard was crap. When the cable broke I plugged the aerial back into the TV – I was pretty gob smacked by the improvement in quality.

Also just an extension of the same sort of thing that finished TSR II and a number of other things especially in the high tech electronics area.

The competitive aspects of broadband in the UK are pretty disgusting under a free market anyway. Long term customers paying for cheap introductory rates and none offer a sensible switch over policy. I've been using the internet for longer than most. Being in B'ham helped, 2nd to get not long after London. For mail I used MSN. When I switched they carried on providing my mail service for over 6 months.

John

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[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

I see they have now started a countdown timer on the WIN10 page, some 3 days and 8 hrs or so to go.

Are they trying to intimidate us?

Clive

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Be afraid… be ve-ry afraid….

woooooooooooo…..

[mechman48Participant @mechman48]

Well I've done the dirty deed; finally succumbed to installing W10 on Monday. spent Mon/ Tues. evening, moving things around, switching off useless apps as per Computer Active / Web User mags' suggestions ( usual disclaimer ) so far so good… then all of a sudden I've got music playing in the background, had to switch browser off to clear it, must be some ad music, is this the sign of things to come… has anyone else who has installed W10 had this situation crop up, & resolved it?

George

[Andy HoldawayParticipant @andyholdaway]

I had the music in the background a few times. It appears to be the new media player included with W10, which keeps playing tunes to get you to have a look at the new 'features'.

I finally opened it and disabled everything I could find and have not had it happen again.

Andy

[Mark P.Participant @markp]

What has W10 got to offer over W7?
Mark P.

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