UK Telcos "you want to buy something?"

Yesterday I attended a meeting with a company and a large UK telco and was amazed.

The company was a specialist wireless provider who have rolled out several hundred hotspots. Large telco sends the account manager and a "techie". All sounds fine, but after introductions the techie launches into diatribe about WiFi and Wireless technologies, grandmother and sucking eggs came to mind.

After a bit of clarification (as in "thanks, but I think we know about wireless, what we want to know about is if you can offer connectivity options"), the techie did seem to get part of the picture. The account manager didn't.

Next stage - pricing? Just indicative ... the response was "you want pricing, that will involve work, without a commitment I'm not prepared to do that". It was almost as if they didn't want to sell anything ...

No wonder the telecoms industry is in the state it is, very sad.