Eircom Phonebooks and DeRegulation

gom

As far as I'm away. Eircom produce the only free phonebooks in the country. Why haven't they been challenged by ComReg for this highly anti-competitive behavior?

At present I have infront of me a 01 PhoneBook for 2004. It is produced by Eircom and i'm in work(it could be a corporate edition?).

Apon its front is a FULL FRONT page 'Rat-AD' for Eircom Broadband and the only possible identifier as a phonebook is the relatively small

01 Phonebook 2004 / Eircom

in the bottom corners of the phonebook...

Surely its time for the phonebook to be independent of the Telcos or else (and personally my favoured move) a co-operative effert by all the telcos

Paddy20

gom,

I think you will find that Eircom no longer produce their telephone directories for free. As a few years back. Golden Pages Ltd was offered the opportunity to produce both their own Golden pages business directories and the Eircom telephone directories.

If you look at ordinary domestic Eircom telephone directories you will notice that they now also include a business listings section at the back. This practice was introduced after Golden Pages Ltd took over the printing, production and distribution responsibilities from Eircom.

This move by Eircom was obviously so that they could save the costs involved in having to produce and distribute their own customers telephone directories.

Paddy20.;)

query

And I think you'll find that two years ago Ocean took out a full page ad

gom

Sigh of relief

bk

Interestingly my new phonebook came with an IOL CD for their net services including Anytime, included in the wrapper.

gombín

No such thing as a free lunch lads. eircom are obliged to supply a local directory to each connected household in the natio as part of your standing charges (i.e. rental).

Regards.

sceptre

Originally posted by Paddy20
gom,

I think you will find that Eircom no longer produce their telephone directories for free. As a few years back. Golden Pages Ltd was offered the opportunity to produce both their own Golden pages business directories and the Eircom telephone directories.

If you look at ordinary domestic Eircom telephone directories you will notice that they now also include a business listings section at the back. This practice was introduced after Golden Pages Ltd took over the printing, production and distribution responsibilities from Eircom.

This move by Eircom was obviously so that they could save the costs involved in having to produce and distribute their own customers telephone directories.

Paddy20.;)

Close, but no cookie - first two paragraphs are factually correct, third one probably isn't. Second one's irrelevant.

The (white pages) phone book production was transferred to Golden Pages Ltd in 1998 while Eircom still owned 63% of the company. The transfer of the responsibility for printing the volumes was less to save Eircom the expenditure (particularly as the phone books are now making a profit, see last link) but so that Eircom could sell its stake in the firm for €185 million. This was always on the cards, even prior to the takeover (publishing isn't exactly a core Eircom activity). As was pointed out by a few people here around the time of the initial Valentia bid, selling the non-core assets was going to be a key move of the Soros players. You are correct when you say that Eircom don't produce the phone book any more, this is effectively the first edition produced in the company since Eircom divested itself of the Golden Pages controlling stake (Eircom still held a controlling stake during the production of last year's issue). They now have no involvement apart from providing the numbers. The business listings are separate purely for convenience, both in preparation and for end-users. Eircom also provide the numbers separately, for their own reasons mostly.


It's highly unlikely that a list of numbers would be copyrightable, even under Irish legislation - Irish courts would be likely to follow the US decisions of Feist Publications v Rural Telephone Service (itself involving a published list of phone numbers) and Baker v Selden, as well as the Irish Magill case (the TV listings case, took a trip in Europe that one). Hence there's nothing stopping anyone producing their own phone book if they have the money to do so. As a matter of fact, many local communities in Ireland either produce one themselves or are offered a local directory by a number of companies set up to make money from just that.

(nice readable Sandra Day O'Connor ruling on Feist here btw. I don't agree with some of her judgements (though I do here) but she's always easy to understand)

spongebob

Eircom must maintain a central database of all landline numbers

Eircom must deliver one copy of the phonebook to each customer once a year....irrespective of who prints it.

Eircom must also produce a CD version of the 2004 directory

See Pages 6-8 of this.


M

Paddy20

Muck,

Looks as though Eircom have been caught out once again. As far as I am aware the Eircom White pages directory which used to be for domestic private users only listings but now contains
business listings as well, not helping the domestic user as far as I am concerned.

Is as I stated above now produced and distributed via Golden pages Limited. I have noted a distinct fall off in the reliability of delivery of new directory editions as it also appears that Golden pages took the distribution contract away from An- Post, and gave it to some cowboy outfit!, who failed miserably to distribute the Eircom directory on time here in Donegal.

What next, EH?..

Paddy20.

jd

Originally posted by Paddy20
Muck,

Looks as though Eircom have been caught out once again. As far as I am aware the Eircom White pages directory which used to be for domestic private users only listings but now contains
business listings as well, not helping the domestic user as far as I am concerned.




Paddy20.

eh-business listings were always in the white pages.
They separated business and residential listings in the white pages-some people like it, some people don't.
The golden pages always had a listing based on function, which the white pages dont..
Jd

Paddy20

jd,

I stand corrected, mumble mumble, grunt grunt, only human after all?..

Paddy20.:eek:

embraer170

Going OT here but anyway:

Well as long as it doesn't get worse than Switzerland. Two years ago phone books at public telephones were replaced with smart electronic directories, from where you could not only check personal/business listings but also send messages, emails, faxes etc.

Well this year they started charging about €0.35 per number you check. Reason given "too many people making pointless requests". Probable consequence: Nobody will use them anymore.

sceptre

Originally posted by embraer170
Going OT here but anyway:

Well as long as it doesn't get worse than Switzerland. Two years ago phone books at public telephones were replaced with smart electronic directories, from where you could not only check personal/business listings but also send messages, emails, faxes etc.

Well this year they started charging about €0.35 per number you check. Reason given "too many people making pointless requests". Probable consequence: Nobody will use them anymore.

In this case, it is worse than Switzerland. Haven't seen a phone book at an Irish public phone in a decade. You may make directory enquiries by phoning up at 70 cents per minute or by checking the tea-leaves and calling for inspiration.

De Rebel

Originally posted by sceptre
In this case, it is worse than Switzerland. Haven't seen a phone book at an Irish public phone in a decade. You may make directory enquiries by phoning up at 70 cents per minute or by checking the tea-leaves and calling for inspiration.

ISTR when they removed the phone books from the "phone boxs" it was announced that directory enquiry calls from pay phones would be free. Not sure if this is still the case, haven't used an Irish pay phone in years.