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By silicon.com, 3 October 2005 18:10

It has been on the cards for years, rather than months or weeks, though perhaps it takes the official merger announcement and de rigeur conference call to focus minds on what the marriage of NTL and Telewest will deliver.

There are plenty of shareholders, employees and customers - plus would-be customers - out there wondering how much sense the move makes.

On the one hand, the size of the combined entity would seem to promise more competition for BT in communications, more for BSkyB in entertainment.

But in terms of business comms, NTL-Telewest will lag a number of other providers, not just BT. And its cable TV platforms have lagged behind BSkyB for some time, which is rather embarrassing given that Murdoch's satellite venture only effectively distributes in one direction.

Only in broadband does the bigger beast have a number one position. And, as is seen across the world with the exception of the US, DSL over copper phone lines is growing faster than broadband over cable connections. (Though don't go thinking the cablecos don't also have the facility to do DSL one day over lines they once laid but don't generally use now.)

So the upside, no matter what the spin today, may not be huge.

The downside? After a telecoms bust time of devastation and debt, it is fair to think things can't get that bad again. That said, for the $6bn paid we foresee some difficulties in terms of integration.

The job of making sure things like call centres and billing systems will one day speak to each other will fall to the combined group's CIO. This is an area which accounted for much of the pain NTL felt in the late 1990s, as it consolidated various cable operations.

After NTL lost its CIO in December last year, the expectation was that Telewest's man would lead the combined entity.

Anecdotally - from the hundreds of Reader Comments silicon.com receives on this subject each year - it would seem Telewest has done the better job of customer service, much of it dependent on workable internal systems, in recent history.

One way to look at this is that it's good news. That while NTL execs seem to be pulling most strings in the new company - which may get rebranded - the Telewest back room boys can up standards further.

The alternative is to think the opposite will happen. For competition in business and residential communications, as well as the pay TV market, we hope that isn't the case.