Review of Ofcom Telecoms Report Q4 2008

Ofcom have released their telecoms report for the fourth quarter, or last 3 months (October - December) in 2008. The report aims to highlight emerging trends in the UK telecoms sector, in order to generate a greater understanding of the sector amongst consumers and businesses alike. As stated on the Ofcom website, the main trends in fixed lines and calls, internet, and mobile phones, were as follows:

Fixed

• Total UK fixed voice call and access revenues continued to fall, by 0.9% during Q4 2008 to £2.20bn, with BT’s share falling by 0.3 percentage points to 59.7%.
• The total number of exchange lines decreased by 119,000 during Q4 2008, with BT reporting a 469,000 fall in its lines.
• Total fixed call volumes fell by 738 million minutes (2.1%) to 34.6 billion during the quarter, with a year-on-year fall of 3.4 billion minutes.

Internet

• By the end of Q4 2008 there were 17.3 million residential and small business UK broadband connections, an increase of 2.1% on Q3 2008.
• There was a year-on-year increase of 1.7 million connections (11%). BT’s retail market share of broadband connections fell by 0.1 percentage points during Q4 2008 to 26.3%, with Virgin Media’s share at 21.3%

Mobile

• Total revenue across the UK’s four largest mobile operators declined by 2% in Q4 2008 compared to the previous quarter, reflecting a 3% fall in revenue from calls and other charges and a 2% fall in messaging revenues. There was an overall year-on-year fall in revenue of 1%.
• Total call volumes across the four operators grew by 2% quarter-on-quarter, driven by a 3% growth in call volumes to UK numbers.
• Outgoing international call volumes increased by 6% compared to Q4 2007 (0.2%) while the number of calls made while roaming abroad increased by 10%.
• SMS and MMS volumes grew by 11% in Q4 2008, higher than any other quarter in 2008.
• The number of post-pay subscribers increased by 2% in Q4 2008, with the number of pre-pay subscribers remaining virtually unchanged (up 0.04%). Post-pay subscribers accounted for 48% of total subscribers in Q4 2008, compared to 45% in Q4 2007.

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Plum enhance their customer service through WLR3

Plum have improved their customer service offering by adopting WLR3. WLR3 (Wholesale Line Rental 3) is BT Openreach’s latest release of their system for the ordering and fault reporting of line rental services.

Initially the WLR3 service will be restricted to analogue lines and will be used for ordering temporary site lines and non-served premises (premium lines) but over time all lines including digital lines will be moved to the WLR3 service. There is no disruption to service when lines are changed from the existing WLR2 service to the new WLR3 service.

In addition all standard WLR analogue lines ordered and installed before 1 July 2009 will be charged at a special promotional rate of £75 plus VAT. This offer excludes premium lines.

For more information on WLR3 and the services that can be provided please call Plum Communications on 0161 622 3500

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Oldham will be one of the first cities to get super-fast broadband

BT’s local network business Openreach has today announced the first 29 locations where, from early 2010, substantial numbers of customers will have access to fibre-based super-fast broadband via BT’s network, bringing high speeds within reach of 500,000 homes and businesses. The announcement is the next stage in the UK's biggest ever investment programme, some £1.5 billion, in super-fast broadband. This super-fast broadband is to be piloted this summer in Muswell Hill, north London, and Whitchurch, South Wales, prior to the wider roll-out in 2010. Amongst the locations announced today, areas of Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Greater Manchester have all been chosen as the first set of customers. Most of these areas are urban, but two of them (Calder Valley, near Halifax, West Yorkshire, and Taffs Well, near Cardiff) are smaller so BT intend to learn lessons from deploying fibre technology in such environments.

6 out of the 29 locations are in Greater Manchester: Bury, Didsbury, Failsworth, Heaton Moor, Oldham, and Rusholme. This means that initial broadband speeds of up to 40Mbps will become available to more than 41,000 homes and businesses in Oldham, and more than 23,000 in Failsworth. Mike Blackburn, BT’s regional director for the North-West, said: “Super-fast broadband is essential to this region’s future, so it is great to announce this initial set of locations”. A full list of the 29 locations can be viewed by clicking here.

A further announcement regarding the next set of locations, which will serve a further million homes and businesses, will be announced in the autumn.

Plum are keeping tracks on the progress of super-fast broadband. Click here in order to sign up and find out when super-fast broadband comes available, please start yout message with SFB.

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Ofcom give a thumbs-up for super-fast broadband

Ofcom has announced it will not stand in the way of companies and organisations investing in super-fast broadband services for UK homes and businesses. For UK homes, this will mean that different members of a household will be able to access a variety of high-bandwidth services simultaneously, e.g. TV programmes, online games, music downloads. For UK business, this will mean that businesses will have improved data retrieval, remote access and video conferencing. The 2 main investors in super-fast broadband will be Virgin (who already offer a 50Mb broadband speed) and BT (who aim to offer a 100Mb broadband speed). This Ofcom video shows the benefits of super-fast broadband.



Ofcom’s CEO, Ed Richards, has said "We want to promote investment to support the widespread adoption of superfast broadband but we want to balance that with the need for competition," He added that this would be done in 3 steps:

1. provide the current conditions for investment in fibre
2. look at how to reach the areas not covered by this market-led approach
3. consider the evolution to even faster technologies

This Channel 4 video shows Richards and and Steve Robertson, CEO of BT Openreach, talk about their plans to roll out super-fast broadband across the UK.



Plum are keeping tracks on the progress of super-fast broadband. Click here in order to sign up and find out when super-fast broadband comes available, please start the message with SFB.

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Ofcom will not get in the way of BT’s ROI on 21CN broadband

BT will now not face any obstacles from Ofcom in its plan to spend £1.5 billion pounds on its super-fast broadband network, 21CN. BT’s superfast broadband offers a speed of up to 100Mbps, more than 30 times higher than the current UK average broadband speed of 3.6Mbps. Ofcom’s CEO Ed Richards, in an interview with the Financial Times, has said that Ofcom, “will not be a barrier to this kind of investment”. BT’s CEO Ian Livingston, said that BT was making a lot of progress with Ofcom on the principles of its planned regulatory regime. Still don’t understand what 21CN is? Click here for the answer.

On announcing their plans for 21CN last July, BT declared that it would only push ahead with its plan for their fibre optic broadband internet if Ofcom set terms that allowed it a decent ROI on the service, so with this now being the case BT has push on with their plans. There was some spectism over the issue as BT's investment case rested on the hope that it would be able to charge rival telecoms groups for using its superfast network. Some analysts believe that this investment is of a high risk as they question whether consumers will be willing to pay a premium on using superfast broadband.

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Anger over BT charges for a phone line which hasn’t been used

In yesterday’s Sunday Times, Hunter Davies wrote a short piece in which he questioned BT’s charges, after receiving a bill for £46.62 on a line which hadn’t been used in the previous 3 months. He discovered that £36.89 of this figure was actually a payment made in advance for the next 3 months, and £4.50 of the charge was for not paying by direct debit. This £4.50 charge has been challenged by many people in the past, such as John Slater, an Oldham pensioner mentioned in a previous blog entry. Davies wants to get his own back on BT, so he has calculated a scale of charges, where he calculates how much it would cost to pay a BT bill, which he intends to send to BT staff in Durham. He considered 5 different costs: Envelope and stamp (62p), writing out a cheque (£5), use of pen (£1), damages (£10) and time spent (£30) These costs add up to £46.62, the precise amount which BT are charging for Davies not to use his phone.

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Review of Ofcom Telecoms Report Q3 2008

Ofcom have released their telecoms report for the third quarter, or third 3 months (July - September) in 2008. The report aims to highlight emerging trends in the UK telecoms sector, in order to generate a greater understanding of the sector amongst consumers and businesses alike. As stated on the Ofcom website, the main trends in fixed lines and calls, internet, and mobile phones, were as follows:

Fixed

• BT’s market share of fixed calls and access revenues fell to 57.9% in Q3 2008, some 4.1% lower than it had been in Q3 2007.
• Total call volumes declined by 9% lower between Q3 2007 and Q3 2008, with total business call volumes falling by 5% in the same period.
• Total number of fixed lines and ISDN channels fell by 36,000 to 33.5m in Q3 2008.
• Total fixed calls and access revenues fell by 2% during the quarter to £2.3bn.

Internet

• The total number of residential and SME broadband connections increased by almost 322,000 to 16.9 million in Q3 2008, with LLU broadband connections increasing by 7% during the quarter to over 5 million for the first time.

Mobile

• Total mobile revenue across the four mobile operators increased by 1.5% compared to the previous quarter, driven by an increases in revenue of 2.3% from calls and other charges, whereas revenue from SMS and MMS dropped by 2%.
• The number of total subscribers grew by 1.2% in Q3 2008 to 68.2 million, with contract subscriptions equating to 85% of network connections during Q3 2008.
• At 596 million minutes, the volume of international roaming calls in Q2 2008 was some 11% higher than in Q2 2007, with the volume of outgoing international call minutes increasing by 14% to just under 450 million minutes.
• UK call volumes across the four largest mobile operators feel by 0.05%, in comparison to Q2 2008, the first quarter-on-quarter fall since Q1 2005.

In relation to business users:

• The total number of fixed business lines and ISDN channels has fallen by 1.2% between Q3 2008 and Q3 2007, with BT’s market share declining by 5% in this period.
• The total volume of business calls has fallen by 5.1% between Q3 2008 and Q3 2007, with BT’s market share declining by 4.8% in this period.
• The total revenue of business calls has fallen by 2.8% between Q3 2008 and Q2 2008, and by 10.9% compared to Q3 2007. BT’s market share has dropped 4.9% in the last year.

Click on the following links to view the Q1 and Q2 2008 Ofcom telecoms reports

Q1 2008 Q2 2008

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BT Openreach engineering work delayed by recent heavy snowfall

Bt Openreach has published the following declaration on their website regarding the recent heavy snowfall and the effects it has had on their engineering works:

″This MBORC declaration, due to aspects of recent severe weather, is issued as a special alert to all Communications Providers.

Following heavy snow fall Openreach is now declaring a matter beyond our reasonable control (MBORC) / force majeure event in some areas.The declaration is effective from 09:00 am on Monday 2nd February 2009. It applies to all provision and repair activities caused by the severe weather conditions in the specified areas.

The recent heavy snowfall has impacted Openreach in two main ways. Firstly, the reduced mobility of our engineering workforce and, secondly, the reduced numbers of Openreach people able to get to our control centres. This resulted in a number of missed jobs and appointments where, whilst every effort was made to contact those end users, this was not always successful.
We have increased our engineering resource capability for the rest of this week, especially in those areas worst affected, and put our control centre contingency plans into operation. The impact on service, on a regional basis, is as follows and is based upon the current seven day weather forecast.

· Scotland - impact seen in East of Scotland. We are working normally and full recovery is expected by 9th February 2009.
· Northern England - impact seen in the Pennines, Tees Valley, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Full recovery is expected by 9th February 2009.
· Midlands & Wales - impact seen in East & Central Midlands. Full recovery is expected by 9th February 2009.
· London Home Counties - impact seen in London and the Thames Valley areas. Full recovery is expected by 10th February 2009. We have declared MBORC in the following areas: Basingstoke, City, Docklands, Guildford, Heathrow, Southbank, Wembley, Westend and Westminster.
· South West - impact seen in Solent. Full recovery is expected by 10th February 2009.
· South East - impact seen in Sussex, Kent North and South London. Full recovery is expected by 10th February 2009. We have declared MBORC in the following areas: Chelmsford, Crayford, Croydon, Edmonton, Esher, Greenwich, Lea Valley, Richmond, Romford, St Albans and Watford.

We will review this situation on a day-by-day basis and will lift the MBORC in each area as soon as service returns to normal. In addition, we continue to watch the weather and its impact and will advise should we need to declare MBORC in any other areas, or if our recovery times are extended as a result.”

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Review of Ofcom Telecoms Report Q2 2008

Ofcom have released their telecoms report for the second 3 months (April - June) in 2008. The report aims to highlight emerging trends in the UK telecoms sector, in order to generate a greater understanding of the sector amongst consumers and businesses alike. As stated on the Ofcom website, the main trends in fixed lines and calls, internet, and mobile phones, were as follows:<

Fixed

• BT’s market share of fixed calls and access revenues stayed at 59.7% in Q2 2008.
• Total call volumes declined by 3% down to 37 billion minutes during the period, some 9% lower that at the same stage in 2007.
• Total number of fixed lines and ISDN channels fell by 63,000 in Q2 2008.

Internet

• The total number of residential and SME broadband connections increased by almost 400,000 to 16.6 million in Q1 2008, with LLU connections account for most of this increase and BT’s retail market share being unchanged at 26.5%

Mobile

• Total mobile revenue across the four mobile operators declined by 1.6% during the quarter, driven by a fall in revenue from calls and other charges.
• Total volume of SMS and MMS messages increased by 4.8% during the quarter; but revenue in this area fell by 1.7% over this same period.
• Contract subscribers grew by 545,000 in Q2 2008 and there was also an increase of 65,000 in prepay subscribers.
• At 506 million minutes, international roaming call volumes in Q2 2008, some 7.7% higher than the 470 million minutes in Q2 2007.

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Telecoms Industry Giants Cut Thousands of Jobs

Last week BT announced that they were to cut 10,000 jobs worldwide, with 7,000 to be cut in the UK. This news shortly after BT announced a shock £80 million drop in profits, and UK unemployment levels were reported to be as high as 1.83 million. BT is the 4th large telecoms company to announce job losses in the past week; Virgin Media plans to cut 2,200 jobs over the next three years, yellow pages group Yell is cutting 1,300 posts this year, and Vodafone wants to reduce costs by £1bn a year with an unspecified number of job losses.

BT’s Chief Executive, Ian Livingston, explained that BT’s cuts were part on an ongoing efficiency programme: 'This reflects the fact that our prices have been falling every year for several years now,' he said. 'Since that is the case we have to deliver costs savings every year. But we also anticipated reasonably early on that economic conditions were worsening.”

With these large companies cutting jobs, what effect will this have on small and medium-sized companies? At Plum we feel that we can adapt to the current market forces and are bullish about the future. We have recently hired business graduate Rhodri Lloyd to help us improve our customers’ experience.

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Oldham Pensioner Makes a Stand Over £4.50 BT charge

The front page of today's Oldham Evening Chronicle showed a story about John Slater, a 75-year old pensioner from Failsworth, Oldham, who has been fined £13.50 by BT, because he has refused to pay a charge of £4.50 on his last 3 bills he has received through the post. If he had made payments through a direct debit, such costs wouldn't have arisen. Despite being consequently cut off for this non-payment, Mr Slater has vowed to take BT to court over these charges. BT don't look set to back down, stating that their charge for non direct debit customers is already lower than other companies. Read the full article here.

Is such a charge necessary? As a company we do not make such charges. In the case of a pensioner, who suffers from diabetes and arthritis, should BT just let bygones be bygones and not dish out such fines?

Channel 4 have already reported on a similar case back in March, where a customer took BT to court over charges. Similarly, in March 2007, a group of 35 MPs, led by Midlothian Labour MP David Hamilton, signed a Commons motion in protest against the charges. Some people however believe they have got round this problem by simply deducting £4.50 from the bill themselves.

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Review of Ofcom Telecoms Report Q1 2008

Ofcom have released their telecoms report for the first 3 months in 2008. The report aims to highlight emerging trends in the UK telecoms sector, in order to generate a greater understanding of the sector amongst consumers and businesses alike. As stated on the Ofcom website, the main trends in fixed lines and calls, internet, and mobile phones, were as follows:

Fixed

• BT’s market share of fixed calls and access revenues fell to under 60% for the first time in Q1 2008.
• Total call volumes were unchanged at 38 billion minutes during the period as a result of growth in call volumes from indirect operators offsetting a decline in call volumes from other operators.

Internet

• The total number of residential and SME broadband connections increased by almost 600,000 to 16.2 million in Q1 2008, with BT’s retail market share being unchanged at 26.5%.
• The number of people using mobile broadband, via 3G mobile USB modems or ‘dongles’, has increased. Around 6% of all UK internet access is done through mobile broadband.

Mobile

• Total mobile revenue across the four mobile operators declined by 1.6% in during the quarter, due to a fall in revenue from calls and other charges.
• Total mobile call volumes declined slightly (0.23%) during the quarter while messaging volumes increased by 8%.
• Contract subscribers grew by 1.9% in Q1 2008 compared to a 1.3% decline in prepay subscribers.

In relation to business users:

• The total telecoms revenue from UK businesses increased by 6% during 2007, but fixed voice business services declined by 3%, and SMEs are tending to use residential internet connections rather than business.
• The total volume of fixed line business calls fell by 6% in 2007, some 26% lower than in 2002, with many businesses using mobile phones and VoIP instead.
• The total number of fixed business lines and ISDN channels increased in 2007, due to more larger businesses using ISDN 30 channels to route voice calls.

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Ofcom Announce De-Regulation of BT Lines

The Ofcom announcement of the De-regulation of BT Lines did not receive much publicity but is being supported by an advertising campaign funded by BT and Ofcom. BT have already announced selective price rises and Ofcom have advised businesses to be proactive in looking for an alternative telephone supplier as there are other suppliers besides BT. If you are not already a Plum Communications customer send your BT bill to Plum Communications and receive a free analysis of your telephone spend and potential savings.

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