[Rant] IBB [end_rant]

Da Man

If it's not easy to compete with one of the most expensive telco's in Europe, then what is? They have no excuses.

One of the strange things with IBB is that an equivalent "home" product is cheaper than the corresponding "business" product with the same contention and speed. At least this was the case the last time I looked at their site. The assumption being presumably that home users use the network a lot less than business users, but it's clearly not working out for them. They should just create a bunch of products priced from €30 upwards and sell them to whoever wants them and possibly cap or throttle the cheaper products at well-advertised thresholds. And possibly figure out how to deliver consistent quality of service, which is something they seem pretty poor at as well.

Can somebody explain to me, btw, why IBB persists with deploying services using public frequencies when they have won the rights to the 3.5Ghz band in many areas? It doesn't really make a lot of sense.

Moriarty

They're waiting on delivery of 3.5ghz gear, it's not at all as easily available as 2.4/5.2ghz gear.

uteotw

Competing isn't only a pricing issue, you have to have the best offer but also make a profit to at least maintain your service and then invest in expanding and improving to stay competitive. Eircom being the historical Telco they control most of the pipes, they have lots of financial power...etc... , NTL has also control over some pipes and quite a big financial backing even thought they had troubles but they are getting more money per customer than they used to. IBB know they have to have the best BB offer to be attractive and they are. They attract advanced BB users but don't seem to be able to reliably deliver on the goods. IBB financial backing I guess is mainly NTR pcl but I don't see them as being in the same financial league as Eircom.

Look at 2001 profits to see the difference :
http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2001/09/06/story12096.asp
http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2001/06/09/story5260.asp

IBB is wireless but eventually their connection has to go through some pipes they don't own. I guess IBB have to pay for the traffic going through these pipes. To stay competitive IBB have to get the best deal on these pipes which leads to deals such the one with ESB which also allow them to expand outside of Dublin and reach new customers and improve their bandwidth. http://www.bizplus.ie/?ns=7666 .

All this is a big financial juggling exercise, they're in for the profit, but that doesn't mean that IBB customers should agree to changes in the service provided if these is not clearly defined in the contract. Another example of a clear contract is when you sign up for a mobile subscription. It cleary states what the cost is during peak and off-peak hours.

About the Home offer being cheaper than the Business offer, the difference is that you're allowed to run Servers (http, ftp...etc..) with the Business offer. You're not allowed to do so with the Home offer.

As I understand it they have seven of the 59 new 3.5ghz license for Ireland.

uteotw

A bit more details about IBB financial juggling... http://www.enn.ie/frontpage/news-9386638.html

deadlock

Da Man:

One of the strange things with IBB is that an equivalent "home" product is cheaper than the corresponding "business" product with the same contention and speed.

The terms and conditions are more restrictive for residential users than for business users. Broadly speaking, residential are not allowed to run servers etc. behind their connection. I say broadly speaking, because in practise this rule is only enforced in situations were the amount of traffic created by the server is excessive and causing problems for other users (i.e. gobbling up most of the bandwidth, most of the time).

Business users don't have the same restriction and are therefore charged more. It's worth noting that this is the norm for most ISPs.