Millions taken prisoner and price hiked
Two disgruntled executives from UK telco BT have revealed the shocking tactics used by an effective duopoly of infrastructure providers supply the UK. A combination of dominance, arrogance and a lack of regulation has allowed them to get away with misleading marketing, entrapment of customers who are then subject to price hikes and woeful service.
Speaking at the launch of start-up internet service provider, Rebel Internet, Tucker George revealed an insider’s view of the UK’s broadband market, a mechanism which he said is truly broken. “It’s controlled by a small number of big broadband providers who have trapped customers and stifled any effective competition,” said George, who was at BT for just under four and a half years. In that time George held three posts where he was, by turns, managing director of Strategic Initiatives, Global Transformation and Business Transformation.
Prior to that George also spent five years with the United States Marine Corp. This special force teaches the skills to take tough decisions, lead people and, legend has it, indulge in psychological warfare. As a man who knows how to lead an army and get inside the head of the enemy, could George have had some influence as the British telecom industry took so many prisoners? George wasn’t some grunt in the call centre who ‘never really knew what was going on’, he was the equivalent of a Five Star General! “I’ve seen the bad behaviour of Big Broadband first-hand and it is shocking,” said George, “these companies spend hundreds of millions of pounds on confusing marketing, entice customers into long-term contracts laden with hidden fees, deploy above-inflation prices rises, and then deliver woeful customer service. All for the same basic broadband and Wi-Fi that often doesn’t work as promised.”
According to Linkedin, George is also an alumnus of Goldman Sachs, which presumably gave him the mission critical intelligence sources to track down and capture venture capital. George has planted the flag of Rebel Internet in the ISP market, with a mission to end the UK’s Wi-Fi woes. “Unlike the Big Broadband providers, Rebel offers fair and transparent pricing, premium customer service and a Wi-Fi service that actually works,” said its PR sources.
According to their own despatches, Rebel Internet CEO Tucker George and COO David Groth are to ‘deploy’ Wi-Fi hardware and software that will eliminate dead spots, dropouts and buffering. Which is wonderful news to anyone that’s receiving a 5 Gbps ‘broadband’ from a service provider because they don’t live next door to the local exchange. A good wi-fi router will make a huge difference. “We believe in our product and deliver a superior customer experience, so we don’t need to trap customers into onerous contracts to force loyalty.”
Rebel’s fibre broadband service is now available nationwide to 29.5 million homes and can connect 9.6 million homes to full-fibre broadband capable of speeds of up to 1Gb. That is a term that does an awful lot of heavy lifting. In those two little words up to there are 995 Mbps of nuance.