Re: Idnet offer ADSL2+ at same price as Max


"The Natural Philosopher" <tnp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:gvr1a6$oa1$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
George Weston wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" <tnp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:gvp30u$r4a$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
eps wrote:

I am not a socialist by any means but really the network building and
maintenance (effectively openreach) should be contracted out by the
government in the same way the goverment manages road building.
No! Please!

I remember the film on Britains First Motorway - the M1

"No motorway was ever constructed as cheaply before, or ever
again..within 5 years much of the road surface had to be renewed due to
traffic volumes and cracking"

The authorities that plan infrastructure must have a financial stake in
its overall cost effectiveness..governments have an incredibly poor
record of that.


There can't be many people now who don't want or couldn't use internet
access and that probably won't change in the future.
That's true, but also why should e.g. highlands and islands be
subsidised? It distorts natural market forces making these e.g. cheap low
bandwidth places for people who dislike the net?

The people who SHOULD be in charge of local networks are not the central
government. It should be local councils really. At one level, but the
problem there is the disconnect between the officials who make decisions,
and the result of those decisions.

This is where you want officially sanctioned corruption. Every time a
council officer makes a decision and awards a contract to a third party,
he should be required to take part of his pension in shares and the
company he awards them to required to fund that. The shares not for sale
for 20 years, in that company. If it goes bust, that's his problem. If it
fails to make a profit 10 years down the line, that's his problem.

Or something..

Or set up a not-for-profit, government-controlled firm to take over
Openreach, on the lines of (intentional pun) Network Rail?


The biggest problem in all these things is how to arrange rewards for
management that coincide with the long term quality and cost
effectiveness of what they manage.

In a reasonably competitive market, that's what privatisation should do.

However it falls down completely when there is a de facto monopoly, and
regulations is used to introduce artificial competition.

And nationalisation is no answer: then the decision makers have no
reward that has any relationship to the services they provide at all.

Its been made worse by the government's culture of the last ten years as
well: As long as boxes are ticked in the rulebook they make for
themselves, no one is to blame for anything that goes wrong..and if they
fail to put a box in marked 'has to work effectively for ten years' you
can be sure it wont. In fact the tendency is to have rule books that say
'the rule is that the only thing that matters is that you tick all these
boxes'.

I honestly don't know what the answer is. It pertains to most of the
countries infrastructure.

I had a long argument online about the USA's postal services versus
China's, and why we imported from china and not the USA: It boiled down
to this.

China and Japan realise that a fast efficient subsidised postal service
is vital for exporting small size high value goods. The USA regards
postal services as basically low rent competition to commercial
couriers. Therefore their postal service is inefficient, strapped for
cash, and demoralised. Parcels get smashed, get sent buy the cheapest
route (would you believe Colorado to Chicago, Chicago to Toronto after a
few weeks delay, Toronto to Stansted, Stansted..anyway 6 weeks to post a
small packet that arrives damaged is unacceptable. However the couriers
are a cartel. In business for profit. So would yiu believe $160 worth of
goods gets $40 courier charge, is then deliberately sent to customs so
they can charge another £30 handling fee, and then duty at customs, and
VAT on the handling charge..Net result, $250 total cost for $160 of goods.

Compare and contrast China, where goods arrive in 2-3days at $5 postage,
and seldom get custom's attentions.

The same thing pertains to Network Rail and the railway franchises: A
friend who is marketing director at a railway company explained that its
possible to buy a ticket from York to London, from between £250 return,
if you pick an agency that charges 10% commission, and a rail operator
who has had to PAY for a franchise, and is being stung for every
passenger they carry, versus buying direct from a 'regional' operator,
whose route goes elsewhere than the mainlines (but still used the
mainline for the York to London bit), and who is subsidised
irrespective of whether they carry passengers or not. THEIR charge is £30.

Essentially once governments get involved, the thing becomes insane..but
if they don't, half the time the thing is either a ripoff monopoly, or
the other half, it goes bust.

When they do, you get things like motorways being built to nowhere, and
congested roads falling apart, simply because the rules don't cover the
bases.

There are a few things that might help, like every new piece of duct
that takes high voltage grid, or water pipes MUST be equipped with fibre
optic ducting or something..that could help. And the same for any road
construction. Mandatory ducts and fibres laid at the same time. I
remember inspecting a new office block. And being shown the services
cupboard (we wanted to put fibre in)

"There's the water pipes coming in to the water meter, there's the
electricity three phase coming in, that duct is BT's and that one is
Cambridge Cables duct, and that one is British Gas, and that one is....'


Madness.

I met someone else once who was involved in planning new grid
infrastructure. About 40% of the cost, and 90% of the time was spent
getting permission and negotiating contracts with the literally hundreds
of landowners any stretch of cable had to pass over or under. Every one
of whom needed a legally binding watertight contract of wayleave or
whatever it is. All drawn up by lawyers, and duly signed, stamped and
registered.

You can see similar on many motorways. You go under bridges that have no
other purpose than to allow farmer Giles the ability to drive his cows
and tractors from one side of his farm to the other, that being the
price exacted for driving a motorway smack through his land..the
alternatives, compulsory purchase of maybe a few hundred houses, being
even more expensive.

As I say, I don't know the answers. I just feel that its important to
realise and understand the problems. It's all very well heaping scorn on
BT, but they are a commercial company, saddled with a massive pension
liability from pre privatised era, and a shitload of debt, that has a
monopoly position that it is not allowed to exploit. Any new
infrastructure that they roll out, has to be financed by more debt, or
more shareholder input, neither of which it will get if the prevailing
market view is that the moment it has done it, a an OFCOM will change
the rules and move the goalposts, and ensure that everyone else gets
access to it at a cheap price that won't cover the costs of the debt..

I couldn't disagree with the above tour-de-force in any way whatsoever!
To sum up, we're all going to hell in a handcart and it's a wonder anything
works at all....
:-(

George









.