SAP eyes up BT's biz ahead of £550m EE integration Software biz SAP is eyeing up BT's business following its acquisition of the firm's existing customer EE for £12.5bn last year, with the former state monopoly having already set aside £550m for integration costs. Speaking to The Register at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Stephen Gatien, global head of telecommunications …
Is also capable of full separation of Openreach, given the current Ofcom/BT impasse.
BT accepting/agreeing a non enforced but in principle 30Mbps USO rather than 10Mbps, with a softer 2020-2 completion date, similar to the House of Lords amendment, might just prevent that. ;)
Hopefully they thought ahead and the new system...Is also capable of full separation of Openreach
I would imagine that the corporate twats at BT plc have indeed thought ahead, and intentionally have created arrangement that make it expensive and difficult to demerge Openreach. That way they can plead to Ofcom and greasy politicians that demerging Openreach will inflict unreasonable costs on BT's shareholders and/or customers.
USO effectively on the BT group isn't the answer, full legal separation is. If BT plc wish to remain the owner of Openreach that should be fine, but at arms length, ring-fenced and regulated. And then put the USO onto the transparently financed and managed Openreach.
Anybody who bothered to follow what actually happened with the original Ofcom/BT agreement with would know that functional separation of OR IT operational systems was part of the exercise. They will use common technologies and software stacks, as to do otherwise would waste money for all concerned, but the systems are functionally separate and it was defined that they had to be for equivalence of inputs. That means all customers (including BT internal customers) have to use the same interfaces.
However, there are some costs that would still occur with separation, and it would include issues such as software suppliers renegotiating licenses, duplication of support and much else. There will also be non-functional systems, like payroll and HR which will be shared as they form no part of the functional software stack. However, any IT separation costs will be very minor compared to the vastly more complex issues involving untangling of legacy pension liabilities (which will, due to historical employment patterns hit Openreach hard) along with whatever the pension trustees will insist on. It's likely they will insist on the huge pension deficit being covered much faster and in ways which would have massive effects on investment.
So if people spent a bit more time investigating and rather less making random assumption which suit their prejudices, the Internet would be a rather more informed place.
"And then put the USO onto the transparently financed and managed Openreach."
Openreach aren't allowed to have end customers, so I'm not sure how that could work. They don't sell the full set of components required for a telephone or Internet service. Your proposal could only work if you took other parts of BT and made them Openreach too, and practically that would mean reverting to the situation that existed before Openreach was created.
This may be a joke in every geek-pub amongst my friends and peers across that Atlantic thing, and I'm just without a clue...but...
That shot of that BT tower immediately brought to mind B.O.B. (plucky little robot from the movie The Black Hole http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/B.O.B. ) ... Just me, then.
Ok.
Ask anyone at BT what their experience of Oracle — in particular barely-a-beta Fusion — has been, and then ask them if they want to go through that all over again? On the other hand, there will be plenty happy to see it chucked in a skip at the first opportunity. And you can imagine how keen all those new EE colleagues are to ditch something that works well for something that's been a bloody disaster. Meanwhile, Larry Page is on a yacht somewhere pissing himself laughing.
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