Metropol

The only change to the name is that they changed "and" to "&" when they introduced the N&P logo. They never ditched the full name. All three logos are here:
http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Norwich_%26 ... ng_Society

Strange to harmonise branding when the two have a very different offer - Yorkshire being a more traditional building society where N&P have a strong Current Account offer.

Whilst they may have kept the Norwich and Peterborough name after all, they definitely stopped referring to it as such and referred to it as N&P instead during that period - they sponsored the weather on Anglia Tonight during the transition and I remember them starting to refer to it as N&P at the time!

I've taken another look at the whole affair and found an image of the new logos for Yorkshire and the subsidiaries, and it turns out they are rebranding the other building societies they operate, which are Barnsley and Chelsea building societies. This image from DesignWeek:



In Ipswich we have a Yorkshire, N&P and Chelsea, which will offer the exact same products seemingly, just under a different name! According to an online news article from when the new logos were revealed they said they were keeping the N&P brand as there was next to no geographical overlap between the two - we're pretty far away from Yorkshire so I'm not sure why there's a YBS here in the first place!

N&P offer a current account.

I wonder why N&P got a pink and purple colour scheme when it's previous logo was black and the one before it was blue and yellow? The colour scheme given to YBS Share Plans (whose previous logo was the same colours as YBS itself) would've made more sense.

So, less than ten years after it fled the mobile market like a pig from a gun, BT are gunning for EE, which has only recently rebranded from Orange/T-Mobile.

All this to fulfil their lofty aim to deliver the UK's second-best quad-play service. How the mighty have fallen.

Alexia wrote:the UK's second-best quad-play service

You mean the first national, non-MVNO quad play service.

Considering how badly Virgin Media have pushed their coveted quad play (it wasn't the revolutionary move that was predicted all those years ago), it shouldn't take much for BT to overtake Virgin in the quad play stakes, especially given the rise of Netflix.

Alexia wrote:So, less than ten years after it fled the mobile market like a pig from a gun, BT are gunning for EE, which has only recently rebranded from Orange/T-Mobile.

All this to fulfil their lofty aim to deliver the UK's second-best quad-play service. How the mighty have fallen.

Why didn't they go for O2 instead, which they used to own when it was called Cellnet?

What's that old phrase - never go back? Also I doubt Telefonica will have given BT a competitive deal comparative to what they sold it for in the first place. Also O2 don't have the best 4G infrastructure in the UK (at present) and the combined Orange / T-Mobile / EE customerbase is 28m customers.

JAS84 wrote:

Alexia wrote:So, less than ten years after it fled the mobile market like a pig from a gun, BT are gunning for EE, which has only recently rebranded from Orange/T-Mobile.

All this to fulfil their lofty aim to deliver the UK's second-best quad-play service. How the mighty have fallen.

Why didn't they go for O2 instead, which they used to own when it was called Cellnet?

Just to add to what Alexia said, there are two main reasons for BT choosing EE instead of O2.

First, O2 has greater debt commitments than EE, which is part of the reason Telefónica has been looking to offload it. BT probably could have picked up O2 for a lower price than EE, but it would also have to manage those debts in the future.

The second reason is two-fold: EE has a much larger customer base, along with the largest 4G network - not just in terms of subscribers, but also in terms of raw network infrastructure upgraded to support 4G LTE connectivity. That means BT will have to invest less in building out the remainder of its 4G network, while already enjoying the largest 3G and 4G subscriber base.

EE is the obvious choice in many ways - but it's also likely to be much harder to get regulatory approval, since the largest fixed-line telephony and broadband provider will be seeking to acquire the largest mobile network (with 33.8% of the UK market). Ofcom is likely to have something to say about that.

bilky asko wrote:Considering how badly Virgin Media have pushed their coveted quad play (it wasn't the revolutionary move that was predicted all those years ago), it shouldn't take much for BT to overtake Virgin in the quad play stakes, especially given the rise of Netflix.

Virgin never really got the mobile bit right in terms of the offer, rubbish handsets, rubbish plans, and different customer service, contact points etc, but I guess that's because it's a MVNO, so the back office may be tied to to the 'host' network's systems.

Actually doesn't Virgin Mobile use EE for it's network. Wonder how long such deals last, and if BT would/could move to try and end it?