BT Group Announcements

[idpickering]

New Openreach fibre broadband pricing structure

Openreach has today announced a new, supplementary wholesale discount structure for fibre broadband in return for volume commitments.

Openreach is offering long-term discounts which go beyond Ofcom's pricing controls on its superfast broadband products. The new wholesale prices will be available to all of Openreach's Communication Provider (CP) customers from 21 August, giving greater certainty on prices for a period of three or five years. The discounts are available to any business - including small CPs - that grows its Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) and Fibre-to-the-Premises1 (FTTP) customer base on Openreach's superfast or ultrafast network by an agreed proportion over a three or five year period. Details of the pricing tiers can be found here.

https://www.investegate.co.uk/bt-group- ... 01015131V/

Openreach discounts to upgrade Britain's broadband

Openreach delivers wholesale broadband discounts
to help Britain upgrade its broadband

· Proposals incentivise Communications Providers to upgrade their customers onto superfast and ultrafast broadband connections over the next three to five years

· More than 17.5 million homes and businesses could order a better broadband service today over the Openreach network

· Greater adoption will see Openreach deliver more money back to publically subsidised broadband projects

https://www.investegate.co.uk/bt-group- ... 00095126V/

[idpickering]

Yet more bad news for BT. How on Earth are they to keep the pensions scheme solvent if they don't monetise their best asset? They are unable to keep the regulator from eliminating any chance of a useful profit.

If I were a BT active pension scheme member I would be worried as the scheme liabilities appear to be overwhelming, and the supporting business is simply woeful, stricken and pursuing a strategy that it can't win, stuck with costs that it can't bear. What is the scheme actuary going to suggest next to protect the scheme from disintegration? The whole house of cards is at the mercy of interest rates, which suggests the fate of the company is out of the hands of their ludicrously recompensed executives.

Sold all my holding today at a loss and felt immediate relief. For me, the numbers don't stack up unless something external changes. If I want to gamble on interest rates I would just do so directly, not through the medium of an ailing wannabe cable TV company.

All fair points ap8889, and I feel your pain. I topped up my BT Group holdings this month, so that's it for me with them for now. I'm happy to leave them alone in my 32 share HYP, of which they form 3% in capital value terms of the HYP whole. For the sake of diversification, and the yield on offer, I'm happy to hold BT Group.

Ian.

[daveh]

and they are consulting on TUPEing employees to Openreach
http://www.investegate.co.uk/article.as ... 5104V&fe=1

So what will happen with the BT pension scheme wrto Openreach? I seem to recall the BT DB pension schemes are now closed to new accruals and presumably as Openreach is still a subsidiary of BTgroup it will pay its share of any catch up payments into the old schemes. However it (Openreach) is a separate legal entity and will now have a separate workforce - so how does that work wrto the pension scheme?

[monabri]

Bad news or good news? The market seemed to like the announcement. Not long until August 9th

[idpickering]

Bad news or good news? The market seemed to like the announcement. Not long until August 9th

And that’s why I topped up this month.

Ian