Virgin Media boss urges UK watchdogs not to pick wrong BT battle

Virgin Media CEO Tom Mockridge was – just like his peers in the ISP game – preoccupied with regulatory policy during a keynote speech at the Broadband World Forum on Tuesday. In a carefully worded speech, the Kiwi said that the "attack" on BT from rival UK telco bosses, who have called for the company's Openreach division to …

[Anonymous Coward]

Well he would say that wouldn't he!

Feather his companies own nest.

How about upgrading that 25yr old coax that runs past my house? 50Mbit Broadband? Yeah right.

The one that makes internet use between 3pm and midnight about as fast as 28.8Kb Dialup was?

Then there are the price rises for no improvement in service

DNS? {no need to say any more}

No. All he cares about is embiggggggggening his own empire.

Would you trust this man with organising a .... in a brewery?

Answers on a pinhead please. I am sure there will be pleanty of room.

This post brought to you via a 3 4G Dongle.

[websey]

Re: Well he would say that wouldn't he!

So you are a virgin media customer ?

Or are you bitching because as a virgin ceo he is not saying BT to lay cable to you ?

No one gets broadband from virgin or are you moaning that you believe the cable is out of date and you would move to virgin if it was better ?

Your rant makes no sense as you have not alluded to the side that you are on.

If you are a BT customer nothing he can do.

If you are a virgin media customer why haven't you spoke to them

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Well he would say that wouldn't he!

I was a VM customer until Contrsctors laying new water pipe cut the cable about a month ago. VM said that they couldn't fix it for days. I told them to ***** it nd cancelled my contract there and then. Then they said that I had to keep their bits of kit in case I mode house and the buyer wants to use VM.

I wrote a letter to them stating that unless they collected their 'bits of kit' within 30 days I would send it to Recycling. That time is up next monday.

VM are the PITS as far as I'm concerned. Now I'm landlineless (almost). I look after Next Door's PC so I piggback (with their permission) on their PlusNet connection from time to time.

[Danny 14]

Re: Well he would say that wouldn't he!

VM might not be great for consumers but for business ive had no issues. Granted we have only had them for just over a year but our 50/50 with them has had zero downtime and performs at the level sold.

[Jediben]

Re: Well he would say that wouldn't he!

So you are bitching about a third party damaging the connection (which VM will have to investigate and identify at a cost of X - which is far more than income Y you provide them) and you give them 'days' to fix it, followed by 30 more days to collect the toys you are throwing out the pram? Big baby.

[Roland6]

Re: Well he would say that wouldn't he! @AC

>This post brought to you via a 3 4G Dongle.

>I was a VM customer until Contrsctors laying new water pipe cut the cable about a month ago...

I see events finally forced you to upgrade broadband, I used a 3 dongle (with external antenna and attached to a D100 and located so as to get the best reception) as my primary internet connection for many years, until FTTC finally arrived earlier this year. Now it serves as my backup.

However, I do think you made a mistake, if you hadn't been in such a hurry to cancel your VM contract, VM would be paying for the dongle and the data... PS. Having two SIMs with their first of the month, two weeks apart is very helpful for those heavy months, as is calling up 3 and setting a hard cap on your usage.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite. Virgin really hate the idea of an independent Openreach that's able to provide more efficient competition.

[TheManCalledStan]

I don´t see that request for wayleaves as unreasonable... just that VM would have to have the same obligations as Openreach... Wholesale, equivalency of access/price and USO obligations...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right on most of those, except the USO. They can't force VM to lay nationwide cable. But they could realistically force them to offer wholesale access and arms-length pricing. Interestingly that's coming to water companies before the sleepy headed cretins at OFCOM manage to dish it out to VM, but my guess is that for VM it is only a matter of time. Likewise Openreach - they could stay as part of BT - but as a separately accounted, discrete legal entity under a proper regulatory framework.

[BoldMan]

Would be nice if VM would lay new cable to properties that have been built since the late 90s when most of the cable they use was installed. My house is 10 metres from the VM cable but they won't lay that last little bit but STILL bombard me with awful marketing shit through the letterbox!

[Steve 53]

Re: New???

They've already started their infill project. Basically connecting up all of these houses.

Thing is after the great fibre rollout of the 90's, the need for workforce to do this was was basically gone, and they were all laid off. Now they've got to re-employ and re-train.