Cable & Wireless: Breaking up is not so hard to do

Over the weekend the Observer broke another story about the potential break up of the UKs No.1 Alternative Telco.

CW has been operating separate Consumer, National and International business strategies for some years and the break up would not be unthinkable.

Focus on high value customers core operations and improving utilisation of assets worked well for the International business, the UKs more generalist operation was seen as holding them back.

Now the UK operation is taking a more business like approach; i.e. selling the right products to the right customers and making a profit on each one.

So, maybe it is time to give the UK their head and let them run things.

Who won the battle for Bulldog: C&W of course!

Having sold off the Bulldog customer base to PIPEX earlier in the year, Cable & Wireless are likely to be having there cake and eating it too. As they appear to be on the verge of striking a deal to supply broadband Internet and telephony services to Virgin media over that same Bulldog LLU network.

Coming late to the BT, AT&T way of working CW are now clearly benefiting from the miracle of bandwidth wholesale.

Virgin Media and BSkyB: 'Two houses both alike in..." more than Broadband

Here is a thought on how an acqusition of Pipex might help BT to broaden its position in the consumer quad play

I have just been watching an interview with Steve Beynon the MD of NTL Telewest Business on www.telecomtv.com where he was discussing the strengths of the NTL network and how the wide national coverage and its performance capability comes from the fact that the network was built to facilitate the predicted high demand for streaming HD TV, and the decision by Virgin Media to allow them to continue on building and managing the networks and serving the business community.

Then it struck me that a few days ago I had been reading similar comments from David Rowe the founder of EasyNet, acquired by BSkyB to allow them to extend their media reach onto the net.

Whilst these two feuding media giants appear a million miles apart in style it is curious how similar their ISP businesses are in structure.

Both owned by global media brands, both working towards triple/quad play, both being extremely savvy about how they position their product offerings for consumer and business.

They have both chosen to run their home-user broadband business' with consumer friendly 'media' brands, Virgin and BSkyB, and the have also chosen to manage the both have highly successful

For business and for the construction of a national network infrastructure they have NTL Telewest and EasyNet, both long established business Internet service providers

NTL Telewest Brand to continue - is this a trend?

There is a lot more to PIPEX than "The Hoff"

PIPEX the 'Consumer DSL company" are in fact the UK's 8th largest provider of IP Services to Business.

BackChannels analysis of PIPEXs customer base shows that they perform well in the midmarket and have quite a number of major corporate' on their books as well. Where will those high value business customers go when Carphone warehouse buys them?

Bet they're all looking forward to calling Carphone Warehouses 0870 hotline for tech support .

Will it even be Carphone warehouse? You have to wonder, with the others appearing to have pulled out it just leaves Carphone but don't be surprised if BSkyB comes back for another go, when Carphone have forced the price down a bit of course.

BSkyB has a natural home for all the business services as well - EasyNet. They have proven to every ones surprise that you can be both 'fish and fowl'. Using the highly efficient Sky billing systems to handle the consumer end of the business whilst allowing EasyNet to continue running as a highly successful Business ISP.

BSkyB and BT are the only ones who would get the full benefit of the money they might spend.