New Esat bundled deals on broadband.

Dangger

Forgive me for the blatant copy and paste.

Press Release

Esat BT Shakes Up Broadband Market by Launching New 'Talk & Surf' Bundles

-- Cheapest Broadband Service Throughout Ireland at €40 incl VAT

Dublin, Wednesday 7th January 2004: Esat BT today launched Talk & Surf
Bundles, an innovative range of simple packages that allow users to mix and
match the most suitable home phone and internet service, delivering a
tailored communications package with considerable savings.

Of the four bundles, the most innovative package combines Esat BT Advantage
PLUS home phone service with IOL Broadband for a total of €65 incl. VAT.
Each month, this bundle provides consumers with unlimited local and
national home phone calls throughout the 32 counties, together with
always-on high speed broadband Internet access. This is the most
competitively priced broadband service in the Irish market, as the bundle
comprises a broadband service for €40 incl. VAT, together with all local
and national calls for €25 incl. VAT. Eircom's equivalent broadband
service at €54.45 per month is now 37.5% more expensive than this latest
offering from Esat BT. IOL Broadband also provides free connection until
Feb 21st 2004, free modem, free internet security packages, and the first
month free, as well as greater downloading and uploading capacity than
Eircom.

According to Bill Murphy, chief executive officer, Esat BT, "Esat BT has
once again taken the lead in driving down the cost of home phone and
Internet services. I am particularly proud that we are offering the lowest
cost broadband service in Ireland. We all know that price is the critical
enabler in broadband adoption, so today's launch underpins Esat BT's
commitment to ensuring Ireland progresses up the broadband league tables by
offering the best value connection in the country. Combined with an
unbeatable voice product, this is a compelling offer, particularly for
parents whose children spend hours on the phone to their friends and
similar amounts of time on-line."

The second bundle provides additional flexibility and choice to users who
have varying levels of home phone and Internet usage. Esat BT Advantage
PLUS and IOL Anytime is available for €50 per month incl VAT. This provides
customers with unlimited local and national calls throughout the 32
counties, together with a flat rate Internet connection allowing users to
go on-line anytime of the day or night for 180 hours per month (average of
6 hours a day).

Mr. Murphy added, "Again, this bundle is all about giving users the power
to control their costs, and will be particularly attractive to those who
spend a significant amount of time using the Internet".

Additional bundles include:
- Esat BT Advantage and IOL Anytime. This service provides customers with
competitive phone rates for local, national, international and mobile calls
which are always cheaper than Eircom* even against their best options gold
package. Customers signing up for this voice service can avail of our flat
rate Internet services, IOL Anytime, for a monthly charge of €25 incl VAT
- Esat BT Advantage and IOL Broadband also provides competitive home phone
service for local, national, international and mobile calls which are
always cheaper than Eircom* even against their best options gold package.
Customers signing up for this voice service can avail of our broadband
service, IOL Broadband, for a monthly charge of €40 incl VAT.

* Comparison based on Eircom standard phone offering versus Esat BT
Advantage phone package

vinnyfitz

tempting
(that's just about 33 euros + VAT for the BB)

Creamy Goodness

i'd rather they get rid of the cap or at least bring it to the limit that ntl has on their cable service of a 1gb a day

MarcusGarvey

I wonder can you upgrade to this from just having IOL BB ? This still doesn't count line rental though does it ? And its not single billing as Eircom will still bill for rent right ?

Dangger

yup, unfortunately single billing is not yet sorted so you will still have a line rental from Eircom.

Have to say I'm tempted to switch myself though. Am I right in thinking that EsatBT's connections come with static IP's?

query

No, Esat BT are all dynamic

tomk

Don't know about the static IPs - my interpretation of this is that you're still getting IOL BB i.e. resold €ircon RADSL, not EsatBT BB.

Moriarty

Originally posted by tomk
Don't know about the static IPs - my interpretation of this is that you're still getting IOL BB i.e. resold €ircon RADSL, not EsatBT BB.

The reselling of the eircom adsl service is neither here nor there. If esat wanted to, it could offer fixed ips. They wouldnt even need to talk to eircom about it as ip addresses for esat customers arent assigned until they reach the bowels of esatbt HQ.

skrobe

right that's it Im getting it. I'm on the advantge package anyway might aswell, it's below the average price in the uk for broadband. Sorry ibb but I've waited long enough and with no clear dates( they say during the year) i'm going for it .
j:D

machalla

I presume the broadband part of it is 12 months as usual?

What about the phone bundle part? Are you tied into 12 months on this? I would presume so but what happens if you quit this part after say 6 months?

I suppose fair play is due to ESAT for attempting to offer some value for money on the broadband part of it. Not sure how much value you get from the phone deal unless you use it a lot (well more than €25 a month in calls) but still. I imagine they intend making their money on the phone side of things.

MarVeL

Anyone know if the calls are actually unlimited or just "unlimited" as long as you stay within set guidelines?

MarkR

Typical. Mark orders BB from UTV and IOL drop their prices! Just to check, you can get Bb from IOL by iself, with no phone package for 40, and with it for 65. UTV comes with its own telephone package at 44.99? Or is IOL looking the sweeter now. Ah well, i'm sure UTV will have to drop their rates to compete...

Mark

rymus

Originally posted by MarVeL
Anyone know if the calls are actually unlimited or just "unlimited" as long as you stay within set guidelines?

"Unlimited" just as long as you don't abuse the spirit of the service and start making phone calls

raster

Originally posted by MarkR
..."you can get Bb from IOL by iself, with no phone package for 40...

Just scanned your post, what is your source, Im paying 49.49 EUR pm at the mo to IOL

Hobart

Originally posted by MarVeL
Anyone know if the calls are actually unlimited or just "unlimited" as long as you stay within set guidelines?

I believe thay stay within the €25 per month bracket as long as no one call lasts more than 60 mins. You can hang up after 59mins and redial.

Raskolnikov

Originally posted by raster
Just scanned your post, what is your source, Im paying 49.49 EUR pm at the mo to IOL

If you want €40 broadband then you have to sign up with the EsatBT telephone service by the looks of it.

http://www.iol.ie/bundles/

MarkR

That was just me reading the original post wrong. So the BB part is 40, and you need to get it with an additional telephone package costing extra?

Raskolnikov

Originally posted by MarkR
That was just me reading the original post wrong. So the BB part is 40, and you need to get it with an additional telephone package costing extra?

Looks like it, hence the deal being called a 'bundle'

raster

Yes, so you take their CPS and you get IOLBB for EUR 40

neverhappen

I said to IOL....

I see from the broadband faq that iol broadband uses dynamic ip... Can you
tell me if a fixed ip address is available as an option ?

IOL said to me...

IOL Broadband Residential offering can only offer dynamic IP Addressing on
this product.

If you would like to provide your telephone number I can pass your query
onto our Business DSL department to check if they offer DSL in your area.


IOL obviously dont think that residential users want fixed ip and if you do you must be a business user trying to scam your way to the cheaper solution for your business.

Moriarty

In the grand scheme of things the vast majority of residential users would have no use for a static ip. Ripe strongly discourages isps from issuing fixed ips to customers in any case. All in all, its understandable that it isnt an option on the residential service.

Dizz

want fixed ip

Why not just use a dynamic dns service like dyndns.org?

Dizz

Ripwave

Originally posted by raster
Yes, so you take their CPS and you get IOLBB for EUR 40

No. You get Broadband and their "unlimited local and national calls" package for €65.

The "unlimited local and national calls" package on it's own costs €25.

You can get ESAT CPS without getting the €25 package (if you don't make €25/month worth of local and national calls), but in that case your broadband will still cost €49.95.

BKtje

so basically if you want broadband anedmake €16 worth of local/national calls it would be worth your while. (€50 +16 = €66 which is more than the bundle )

Ripwave

Originally posted by B-K-DzR
so basically if you want broadband anedmake €16 worth of local/national calls it would be worth your while. (€50 +16 = €66 which is more than the bundle )

There are actually two different bundles, but they both have a minimum monthly cost of €65. You have to make more than €20 worth of local/national phone calls to make it work out cheaper than UTVIP.

This makes IOLBB cheapest for most users, I'd imagine.

SkepticOne

These bundled deals are a bit dodgy, imo. The product being offered here is a combined broadband + phone deal for 65 euros.

The idea that the broadband component costs 40 euros is entirely down to the PR department. With exactly the same product Esat could claim that the the broadband costs 45 euros and the phone bit costs 20. Or they could have kept the same 49 euro broadband and reduced the phone component to 21 euros. It is simply a matter of playing around with the cross-subsidies. The same money gets paid out by the customer and contributes to Esats profits in the same way.

Why did they keep the phone deal the same and reduce the broadband cost? Imo, because broadband is the political issue and it looks good for them to have the cheapest broadband available.

sceptre

Originally posted by SkepticOne
The idea that the broadband component costs 40 euros is entirely down to the PR department. With exactly the same product Esat could claim that the the broadband costs 45 euros and the phone bit costs 20. Or they could have kept the same 49 euro broadband and reduced the phone component to 21 euros.

It'll be interesting to see how they market it. because the phone component is a mandatory cost for the consumer, they'll have to point it out every time, including the total figure, otherwise the ASAI will get a deluge of mail (at least by their standards) because I'll highlight it here myself if nothing else. Why, because as Mike said...

The product being offered here is a combined broadband + phone deal for 65 euros.

As people may have noticed, I'm a little jumpy when I hear about lying (or misleading (or potentially misleading)) adverts, particularly from telcos

Urban Weigl

Originally posted by sceptre
It'll be interesting to see how they market it. because the phone component is a mandatory cost for the consumer, they'll have to point it out every time, including the total figure, otherwise the ASAI will get a deluge of mail (at least by their standards) because I'll highlight it here myself if nothing else.

Line rental is also a mandatory cost of broadband from Eircom for example, yet it is not included in the price. For example if I wanted to get Eircom broadband for 54.45, the minimum I will be paying will actually be 76.95 euros per month. The ASAI are only there to stop the government from stepping in. They are useless.

sceptre

Originally posted by Urban Weigl
The ASAI are only there to stop the government from stepping in. They are useless.

Oh agreed, but I'm not going to ignore the one avenue there just because I think they're mostly a waste of space. You never know, Esat may even promote this one honestly.

I'm sure Comreg et al would view having an Eircom line, technically supplied by a different company as a prerequisite for having Eircom broadband rather than the possibility of this service being advertised as cheaper broadband with no mention of the other mandatory part of the same service. It's not a distinction I'd believe in personally (and I'd prefer at least to see the broadband adverts mention that an Eircom line is necessary, the small print in the UK has to include all necessary elements rather than a just a necessary concurrent purchase) but they wouldn't be blocking a complaint based on a falsely-advertised broadband/call bundle on that basis. Might not happen, but knowing the behaviour of our two main telcos it probably will be.

I'd prefer to see a government-established and -sponsored (read as "on a statutory basis working in conjunction with the ODCA and comreg if they had to") body but it's probably outside the scope of the thread to discuss it. I've had some hassle with the ASAI's jurisdiction and willingness to get off their butts at all in the past year.

Ripwave

Originally posted by sceptre
As people may have noticed, I'm a little jumpy when I hear about lying (or misleading (or potentially misleading)) adverts, particularly from telcos

In fairness to IOL/ESAT, they haven't been advertising Broadband for €40. The information on the website makes it clear that it's a "bundle", and the reference to €40 in a press release doesn't count as advertising.

Ripwave

Originally posted by sceptre
I've had some hassle with the ASAI's jurisdiction and willingness to get off their butts at all in the past year.

The ASAI doesn't have any "jurisdiction". It's a private club, run for the benefit of it's members (advertising agencies). It has no power to penalise "offenders", and doesn't even bother to "advertise" any negative rulings it gives out. There might be one or two column inches in the inside pages of the paper, but given that the actual offence involves misleading the public by spending lots of money and making sure that the public sees the ad in the first place, the rulings might as well be made in private for all the good they do.