RE: BTInternet does it again !!!

["Mark Harrison" <Mark.Harrison@xxxxxxx>]

Lee,

Good points, however...

BT is not quite like the other telcos, in that it inherited (from the
taxpayer) a large asset base in the local loop. 

While the flotation raised a significant sum for the public purse, it was,
nonetheless, cheap compared to the installation cost of installing a
nationwide local loop.

The "quid pro quo" for the shareholders receiving this
"freeby" from the UK public, was twofold:

- firstly, that the UK public should receive a "fairly priced"
service
- secondly, that BT should open up its infrastructure to competition

Now, on the first, I actually believe that BT has done a good job. Phone
usage prices (in real terms, let alone compared to average incomes) have
fallen tremendously.

On the second, however, BT have steadfastly tried to block competition, in
some cases illegally (see the Oftel site), and overall put barriers into
the path of firstly, any domestic Internet usage, and secondly Broadband
Internet usage. Compare rates in the US to those here... and _those_
companies had to pay for their own infrastructure!

Regards,

Mark




-----Original Message-----
From: Lee Varga [mailto:lee@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 15 May 2002 23:28
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] BTInternet does it again !!!


>I am not getting into a discussion about whether people should
leave
>their PCs connected for more than 12 hours a day or whatever but it
is
>the very use of "To make things fairer for everybody, we've
changed the
>daily internet use limit for Anytime and SurfTime  customers from
16
>hours to 12 hours of 'unmetered' access in any 24-hour period."
... It
>almost screams "We make money until you use more than 12 hours a
day and
>so we'll allow you to use phone time until that point and if you
use
>less then we're laughing."

I don't want to start an arguement here but...

<dons asbestos suit>
I'm not defending BT for 1 second, but let's be realistic here, the
telephone voice network is meant for voice calls that (generally) don't
last
too long.

There are a finite (and generally very small) number of sockets at each
exchange, and if all the unmetered crowd are using the sockets 24x7 then
the
1p/min crowd will never get a look-in.

Contrary to what most people believe, the internet is not 'free'. BT have
to
pay for the fat pipes to carry your data up/down the country and over
to
Europe and the US. This does not come cheap, and must be paid for
ultimately
by the endusers.

BT are a company, and like all conpanies, are there solely to generate
profit for shareholders.
If BT offered unlimited voice calls for ?12/month it wouldn't be in
business
for long.

When everyone paid 1p/min, the ISP and BT and Colt/Energis/etc. would
all
making a profit.
I regularly paid ?70/month in internet call charges alone, and I was a
lightweight, I had friends who paid ?150+/month for net access.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the profit margin from
?20-?30
(never mind ?70-?150) is a serious step down, and BT (and most other
telcos)
have huge debt mountains to sort out.

Ultimately, unmetered access is just that, access that is not metered by
the
second like a standard voice call. If people used net access like they
did
when it was 1p/min then it would still be ?9.99/month. but there are an
increasing number of the ?12/month crowd who are downloading
P2P/newsgroup
warez by the gigabyte 24x7 with their PCs on autopilot, this a pushed
the
backbone bandwidth required thru the roof, which costs, so something has
got
to give. Hence the reducing number of hours.
If you're complaining 12 hours isn't enough, would it be fair to said
you're
one of ones causing the problem?

Spreading even more doom and gloom, I can see this going in the other
direction too, to the ADSL crowd.
I can see BT/Ignite starting to impose quantity limits, just like in the
US
and Oz. Where you may have a 512K line, but you're only allow to
download
(for example) 5GB/month. Anymore and you are charged by the GB. May not be
a
problem, for most, but downloading movie trailers @ 20MB a pop and
listening
to internet radio stations and it all soon goes...

Oh, the joy of being in the digital age... :

<climbs out of hot asbestos suit>









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