Interesting acquisition

[Rik]

The BBC reports that set-top box manufacturer, Pce, is to buy 2-Wire.

That might just lead to the mass marketing of 2-Wire routers here.

[Simon]

Could be good news, but I bet they won't be under a tenner! 

[DorsetBoy]

Hope they are more reliable than some of the set top boxes.

[kinmel]

As long as BT keep throwing them at new customers we will be ok  

[Polchraine]

With the number of PACE box failures that I hear of, I hope they don't influence 2Wire production too much.     If they do, BT will be doubling their order and plenty will appear on ebay as "for spares"!

[Rik]

To be fair to Pace, they used to make good boxes, until Sky and Chinese manufacturing cut in. They ended up cutting corners to survive.

[Niall]

Speaking of acquisitions I noticed in the news that rather worryingly, Talk Talk and Vodafone are teaming up. There will be a LOT of unhappy people using Vodafones services now.

[Rik]

Oh dear.

[Glenn]

Details are here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/talktalk-to-launch-its-ownbrand-mobile-services-after-deal-with-vodafone-2040078.html

[Rik]

It seems to me that Vodafone are reacting to the Orange/T-Mobile market, looking to increase market share by strategic alliances, eg TomTom, Amazon and now TT.

[Glenn]

They had 25% market share back in 2008, I wouldn't have thought it will have changed too much since then.


http://www.telecomsmarketresearch.com/resources/UK_Mobile_Operator_Subscriber_Statistics.shtml

[Rik]

Yes, but the Orange/T-Mobile tie up makes them a very big player.

[Glenn]

A few hundred thousand subscribers won't change it by much though. Soon, 3/T-Mobile will have the largest 3G network in the UK, so it may make the T-Mobile/Orange share even larger, as more people use smartphones.

[Niall]

The one thing I will NEVER understand about Vodafone is that they are supposedly the biggest player in the market, and yet they have the poorest coverage on their network out of the top three (meaning 3, O2 and them - might not actually be the big three, but I think they are ).

If they have all this money, backing and infrastructure, why on earth do they not invest in better coverage? They'd get far more people going with them. Apart from their cr*p support, the phones they supply are generally ones that are well known to have few, if any hardware problems (I remember them refusing to sell an LG phone due to hardware issues) so they should in theory be the supplier of choice, but they let themselves down. A good example is Friday night I was in town with my mate, sitting in a pub. I had no signal at all, and he had 3 bars on a 3G signal with 3 (I use vodafone in case this isn't clear). On the bright side, I found an unsecured wireless network, and used that to entertain myself on the net while I waited for our mates to turn up

{edit}  I just saw that pie chart. I didn't think 3 has such a tiny market considering everyone I know or hear talking about phone providers, mentions 3 over Orange every time!

[Rik]

I was surprised that T-Mobile was bigger than Orange.

[pctech]

In order to get any traction in the market at all 3 had to drop its prices dramatically as its supposed 'killer app' that it launched with was video calling which noone really uses (particularly not at 50ppm)

So first it went for the voice market by bundling more minutes than any of the others and then it went for data by doing the same.

Three don't have a bad network at all but what keeps people away now (me included) is the dire customer service.

I was a mod on a forum which I've mentioned here before that dealt with the mobile hardware and the networks themselves, while people complained about all of the networks Three seems to have the lions share of complaints, from billing mistakes that people have had to escalate to their executive office as they could not get anywhere with the outsourced Customer Service to being made promises that were not delivered upon to persuade them to stay along with 2 to 3 hour long conversations where they are treated like total cr*p to get a Port Authorisation Code to transfer their number away and of course they have been featured many times on Watchdog.

[Rik]

I shall steer clear, Mitch.

[pctech]

When a colleague wanted an iPhone (when the 3G came out) he was on the phone for two hours straight to get his PAC after telling them straight he was moving as he wanted an iPhone.

[Rik]

I've felt that way talking to Sky.

[Glenn]

They do have the best network, but do indeed have a very poor customer service, unless you can get through to the Glasgow contact centre.

[pctech]

I'd be reluctatnt to move from O2 now as the network seems to just work round here and I've always had a good service from their Customer Services although I should point out it is their prepay rather than contract Customer Services as I have no need for any advanced services so there is little need for a contract.

[Den]

When we went to Herefordshire a few weeks ago I took two phones. My business phone is on Vodafone and my private one on O2. The plan was to leave the O2 phone on all the while so I could be contacted by family and the employee in charge while I was away and I would lift messages a couple of times a day on the business phone in case there were call outs.

This plan went out of the window as soon as we arrived at the cottage as I could not get a O2 reception in most places that we visited so I had to switch the Vodafone mobile on whenever I needed to make a call as the reception was superb. 

[pctech]

Vodafone and O2 are now starting to colocate their equipment so thats likely to improve I think.

[Rik]

When we were homesitting in 2006, I had to buy a Vodafone PAYG for one job, as no other network reached it. I'd really like to see the UK networks have roaming according to signal availability, but I can see why they might not find that too attractive.

[Den]

Just Looked up Vodafone & O2 and came up with this

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/23/o2-vodafone-mobile-networks

If this is happening it will be quite a breakthrough. 

[Rik]

It's the way things need to go, Den. We could have Openreach running the network for them. 

[Glenn]

Three and T-Mobile have been working on combining their network coverage for the past 2 years with thier joint company MBNL, it is due to go live on 10 October 2010, thier goal is 97.5% coverage of the UK by population.

[Glenn]

The strange thing with the companies is, Ericsson manage the transmission networks for Three, T-Mobile, & Vodafone, I'm not sure if Orange and O2 have outsourced their networks.

[pctech]

O2's network uses Nokia Siemens Networks kit in the main I gather, not sure whether management and maintenance is outsourced to them though.

Thought Orange was mostly Ericsson based.