Easily bored - Stop reading now!
In the UK there are only two BTw based "unlimited" ISPs in Zen and AOL. How long these two can absorb the massively increased delivery costs of unlimited broadband provision is anyones guess but I think they're probably holding out for a very unlikely lifeline in the form of ADSLMax, WiFiMax or LLU investment costs to drop sharply and very rapidly.
For those who don't know why the UK broadband delivery climate suddenly deteriorated last year, the old adage is true - There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Remember that "free" upgrade to 2M that virtually every BTw based customer received? Well, it depended on BTw changing their pricing model from UBC (Unit Based Charging) to CBC (Capacity Based Charging). What this meant was that the ISP had to fill his centrals to very maximum capacity in order to maintain pre change returns. During off peak periods and "normal" users bursty usage, a reasonable profit can be made while customers remain largely unaware of any changes.
However, at peak times, when every man and his dog wants to get online, the forced congestion issues become glaringly apparent in the form of slow connections etc. In an effort to counter this effect, ISPs started to discourage and then pariah the so called "heavy" (Read P2P) users of multiple and/or continuous 2 way connections.
Myself and many others railed against the introduction of the CBC model long before it's introduction but the "greed for speed" of the average uninformed punter won out and even greedier private shareholders knew that it would.
Now many customers of ISPs who ran networks on tight budgets with very little redundancy (Tiscali is a prime example) found themselves in an intolerable situation where downloads would complete in a flash - But, they weren't allowed to download anything!
No-one at the business end seemed to care about the inevitable effects that CBC would have - The more likely scenario was that the attitude that the customer doesn't matter won over the bean counters. The customer is only a cash cow after all and his options are severely limited and will become ever more so as CBC bites across the industry.
The outcomes of the pricing change scam were as predicted:
Contention issues over an ever expanding "peak time" period
The attempted abolition of "heavy" useage services like P2P at a time when the customer has been educated into expecting more, not less from his connection
The upward pressure on lesser prepared ISPs to reduce financial outgoings as, generally, staffing levels were reduced and "outsourcing" became the buzzword. As experienced front line staff were dispensed with from all areas of the business, the networks and associated services such as support began to show serious problems.
To counter this, vaguely worded contracts were suddenly rigidly enforced and then exaggerated until these called heavy users were forced to move on. Many couldn't move on because they were tied to annual contracts. They had to to pay what were comparatively very high costs for minimal services.
Those that are able to move on do so putting even more pressure on the ISPs finances. Rumblings of legal threats by customers permeate forums etc and the ISP reacts by silently letting the most vociferous off their contracts without penalty, thereby incurring further income losses. To counter this, the ISP starts massive advertising campaigns to draw in new green recruits who are unwittingly tied into grossly unfair contracts. Joe Bloggs never reads the small print!
After the temporary relief from the new influx of customers, it's not long before the scenario repeats. Every time this happens, a new momentum is gathered.
Now, those customers who did escape the clutches of ISP1 now suddenly flooded the next "unlimited" ISP and the saga repeated itself with ISP2 and on down the line. The result was a domino effect that gathered a momentum of it's own as it swept through the industry. Soon, ISPs who were hitherto regarded as "responsible" and "customer focused" were becoming severely affected and their reputations damaged.
The industrys safety cushion (LLU etc) was by now looking more like a bed of nails as internal problems compounded, external factors created a downturn in the overall economy and investors became wary.
As the smaller players started to flounder, the sharks started circling and buying out the weakened competition resulting in even less choice for customers and putting even more pressure on the ever dwindling number of remaining reasonable options.
As these "consolidations" (Read liquidations for the most part) continue and accelerate we are starting to see the shark eating sharks sliding out from under their rocks; Murdoch and his ilk forcing UK internet provision down the road of TV programming provision. (In the words of RW - I got 40 channels... Of s**t on my TV to choose from...).
Emerging services such as VoIP, TVoIP, HDTV, the massive integration of the computer into the home and other content rich and therefore bandwidth hungry services will put even more pressure on an industry that is already so overstretched it must now be near the very point of disintegrating completely.
I hope I'm wrong, but I see bleak times ahead.
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