IrelandOffline to appear on Morning Ireland on Tue 14th

damien

As for that rural broadband thing. I think that was just a diversionary tactic by McRedmond, make it look like the Govt is somehow to blame and at the same time have them appearing that they want to help the people in the rural areas, while not mentioning they won't upgrade exchanges or fix ****ty lines. It won't happen.

Dermot is very fond of that scheme and won't let the greasy fumbling hands of Eircom touch it. But maybe he should be alerted to what Eircom has said ? His email address was previously distributed on this forum. Let him know.

eircomtribunal

DonegalMan wrote:

According to Eircom's own figures, they have 2,019,00 lines including PSTN and ISDN.

75,000 would therefore be 3.75% - better than 1.875% but still less than the 5% they are quoting.

No Martin, it's 1.875% for Ireland, with no doubt.

The broadband penetration figure universally quoted, and also the comparative figures they were talking about, are the amount of broadband connections out of the figure of the population.

Redmond knows that he is not telling the truth when he uses a 5% figure for Ireland.
"DAVID McREDMOND
Well actually… actually where we are… where we are in that table is we are already now at five percent."
(If he wanted to bring in figures for households connected or of bb as of all lines, then he would have to compare with a totally different set of numbers for the countries he makes the comparison).


We've actually not overtaken Luxembourg, which in January stood a 2.82%. At one stage Redmond does actually not even claim any more that we had overtaken Luxembourg:
"DAVID McREDMOND
We are getting very close to the levels of Germany, the UK, Luxembourg, Portugal and we would expect to catch up with those countries fairly soon."
At another stage we've already passed the same country:
"DAVID McREDMOND
Well no we believe that very soon we’ll be up there with… we’re already… we’re passed Greece, we’re passed Luxembourg, we’re catching up with the UK and Germany and we see ourselves moving up that table very fast."

And of course soon we'll beat them all.

P.

Check out the official EU January 2004 graph on the 305 Kb pdf "There is something Rotten in the State of Broadband Ireland"

LoBo

Maybe the interviewer needs some hard stats in their hands next time they are talking to Eircom - just the basics: % BB penetration for each country in the EU including IRL.

DonegalMan

Paddy20 wrote:

However, I can state that they should hang their collective greedy heads in shame, and the Director's really should consider if they are really up to the task confronting them ?...

Paddy, whether we think it was right or wrong to do it, we have to accept the reality that Eircom is no longer P&T and the task of the Directors is to get the best possible return for their shareholders - legally, they have no social obligations whatsoever.

In briefings with analysts following the publication of Eircom's quarterly results last month, Nolan sought to reassure investors that the company would not take any action that would undermine its ability to pay a dividend to investors.Sunday Business Post

It could be argued that their current strategies are short term return at the risk of long term success, but I think that is one for the financial press.

The only effective way that IOFFL can challenge them is exactly what we are doing, exposing the spins and inaccuracies in what they are saying and getting the media behind the real story.

The best thing individuals can do is to keep those emails and letters rolling into the media and specific action like Damien has suggested to you about ASAI (search this forum and you will find a few instances where that specific course of action has already been successful)

Martin

Ciaran500

Maybe the interviewer needs some hard stats in their hands next time they are talking to Eircom - just the basics: % BB penetration for each country in the EU including IRL.

Thats what I said in my email to Morning Ireland, they need a better informed interviewer and Eircom should not be let on these propaganda style speechs.

DonegalMan

eircomtribunal wrote:

No Martin, it's 1.875% for Ireland, with no doubt.

I stand corrected and have deleted my original post

Martin

Paddy20

Someone in Government should hand Mr McRedmond a boxed gold plated revolver with one bullet in it's chamber, and envite him to 'step outside' and do the honourable thing.

Or has the Irish state now sunk to the level, where truth,decency,morals,honour and responsibility, have vanished completely.

I hope not, but do we have a Politician with the knowledge and nut's to stand up and:- 'speak the truth' in public ?...

dahamsta

DonegalMan wrote:

Paddy, whether we think it was right or wrong to do it, we have to accept the reality that Eircom is no longer P&T and the task of the Directors is to get the best possible return for their shareholders - legally, they have no social obligations whatsoever.

IrelandOffline committee members shouldn't be singing from this songsheet. Eircom directors have a social responsibility created not only by their corporation's SMP, but also by their shady corporate practices (which this interview demonstrates amply). I realise you're not defending them directly, but let's not do it indirectly either. They're an abusive monopoly and it's the directors that explicitly demand and implicitly approve those abuses. They should be treated and spoken about accordingly.

adam

DonegalMan

dahamsta wrote:

IrelandOffline committee members shouldn't be singing from this songsheet.

You're right in what you say - I'm just trying to keep people away from what I consider to be the wrong songsheet.

Personalised attacks on employees and directors of Eircom (or any organisation) is counter-productive and is, quite rightly, against IOFFL policy.

SkepticOne

dahamsta wrote:

IrelandOffline committee members shouldn't be singing from this songsheet. Eircom directors have a social responsibility created not only by their corporation's SMP, but also by their shady corporate practices (which this interview demonstrates amply). I realise you're not defending them directly, but let's not do it indirectly either. They're an abusive monopoly and it's the directors that explicitly demand and implicitly approve those abuses. They should be treated and spoken about accordingly.

Don't you mean that you think Eircom should have social responsibility. It is not an objective fact that it does.

Eircom has certain legal and regulatory obligations but its primary duty - their raison d'etre - is to look after the interests of its owners. The legal and regulatory obligations don't emerge from any social responsibilty within Eircom but must be imposed from outside.

DonegalMan

SkepticOne wrote:

Don't you mean that you think Eircom should have social responsibility. It is not an objective fact that it does.

Ahem ... With respect, guys, I think this is a distracting argument .. (:o in recognition that I started it)

Martin

Jorinn

Just wrote an email taking part mcredmonds parts piece by piece, 2,5k words heh.

damien

Jorinn post it here or else send me a copy privately: research@irelandoffline.org

shinzon

For those who know all of this ignore, but for those who are new to the audience here is my e-mail to Morning Ireland

********************************
Ive never been so proud of Irish journalism as I have been in the last 2 days, your dogged determination to cut through the blatant lies that eircom have been spewing forth over the last year has been commendable and I applaud your voraciousness on this issue

If it helps here is my story beginning April 2003 and ending this august when I finally got broadband, not with any of the telcos but with a local community broadband group called Irishwan.

April 2003

I enquired with eircom on whether I could get broadband on my line, the operator informed me that yes I could there would be no problem, I left it for about 10 days so I would have the funds available to pay for the install etc etc, I logged onto there interactive chatroom and asked could I order Broadband and the 2 operators I spoke 2 said yes, so I said ok and logged on for the 3rd time and said yes I want to order it, this is where things went pear shaped, this third operator said that he checked the line and that my line has failed and I couldn't get broadband ( I questioned him on this because as you have read before the other 3 said I could), of course the last recourse of someone who doesn't want to deal with your query, he disconnected the chat and that was that.

May 2003/Jan2004

I'm going to put the rest in point form as there was so much done in this interim period I cant recall everything that was done but heres the main points.

A) I contacted Comreg on no fewer than 11 different occasions to try and get them to put pressure on eircom to at least point me in the right direction on what I should do to get my line fixed, but like a tiger with no teeth, little or nothing was done to help me.

I contacted Phil Nolans office about my problem and was passed onto Philomena lonergan who in fairness was the first person who genuinely tried to help me, she arranged through another manager in Eircom whose name escapes me to get an engineer to come out to have a look at my line (a feat in itself if you've ever tried to book an eircom engineer), the reason given was that after doing extensive line testing they found a short circuit on one leg of my line, why they couldn't detect this in April and not 6 months later in October is beyond me, but the engineer did arrive and spent 2 days at my house, he put a new eircom box into my house and cleared his words not mine "the crap" off my line, after the engineer left I promptly got my line tested again, and it still failed, so philomena lonergan then asked me and this is what exasperates me to this day, to go around to all of the phone sockets in my house unscrew the faceplate and disconnect all the wires from the faceplate itself, leaving only the Eircom socket connected, I promptly did this and the line still failed, she then put it down to noise on the line and I would never be able to get broadband.

C) During this period there was 1 bright spark on the horizon, I contacted esatbt told them my story and they did offer to try and setup there business product on the line because Waterford has one of esats own enabled exchanges separate from eircom, I did have to decline this as the costs last year were prohibitively expensive, but kudos to them for actually saying they'd try

DO) I contacted the government and got loads of letters of support from various ministers, they kept in contact a few of them actually contacted Xircom on my behalf to find out what was going on, which I will be eternally grateful for, but again nothing could be done because of sitcoms entrenchment on my issue, the person who helped me the most during this time was Tommy Broughan, I cant say enough good things about him , he was genuinely interested in the issue and kept in contact long after the other ministers lost interest, he would be a good guest for your show if your ever doing a follow up piece on the Broadband issue

E) 3 last instances of my dealings with Eircom 1 very helpful, 2 not at all, one of those I will deal with separately

1) I managed to get the Waterford project team leaders mobile number, I rang him and he said he would look into my issue for me, he rang me back a short while later and gave me a cryptic answer which baffles me to this day, he said that he couldn't get involved in this and that was that he hung up on my mother and hasn't been heard from since.

2) About 2 to 3 weeks ago an eircom engineer was working across the road from me in another premises, I got talking to him about my problem and he agreed to test my line (which he really shouldn't have done), he ran the tests and all 11 of them passed with flying colours, he was completely mystified as to why eircom wouldn't give me broadband, which brings me to my last point, the blatant lying that goes on at Eircom customer support.

3) I rang eircom after the engineer tested my line and asked for another retest in light of the engineers testing, she tested it still failed, I enquired why it was passing with the engineer and not Eircom, her exact words were " our records are more upto date then the engineers", at that I finally snapped and just slammed the phone down in frustration, my mother rang the next day just to see what lies were next, the person at he other end of the phone promised "A broadband engineer will be booked to call at your premises, now it mightnt be within the next couple of weeks but he will come out as there extremely busy", having dealt with eircom for nearly a year I knew this to be completely false so I rang up asking to confirm the appointment, the rep on the phone was hostile to say the least but what she did say was "Broadband engineers do not come out to customers premises, none has been booked your line is failing broadband and that is that goodbye and the phone went dead.

And that's the saga from beginning to end, today because of Irishwan im finally connected to Broadband, the only reason I wasn't connected sooner was because there was no node to connect to until now

But to be honest I would still like to be able to have the option of connecting through the phoneline especially as were paying the highest line rental in Europe for a line that isn't even capable of handling standard 512k connections.

Feel free to use any part of this e-mail you wish as I will stand by all the statements ive made and I hope you continue to highlight this problem
***************************


Shin

damien

Good email Shinzon. McRedmond did say he wanted to help anyone that has broadband issues.

damien

While we are still in DSL stats, can someone give me an exact date (with a link to the details) when adsl was commerically available in Ireland ?

SkepticOne

damien.m wrote:

While we are still in DSL stats, can someone give me an exact date (with a link to the details) when adsl was commerically available in Ireland ?

http://www.enn.ie/print.html?code=7202002

ODTR gives Eircom's ADSL the go-ahead
Wednesday, April 17 2002
by Matthew Clark
Send story to a friend
Print this Story
The ODTR has cleared Eircom to finally roll out its ADSL product, I-stream and the two organisations have agreed on other issues such as local loop unbundling.

Eircom said on Wednesday that its broadband Internet service will finally launch following an agreement with the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation on the wholesale prices which will apply to other Licensed Operators in Ireland and Eircom's retail business.

ADSL will now become available immediately to 500,000 homes in Dublin through 35 unbundled exchanges. The company plans to unbundle a total of 100 exchanges throughout Ireland over the next two years.

It was also announced that the ODTR has approved final prices for interconnection services provided by Eircom for periods up to 31 March 2001. Moreover the ODTR confirmed that Eircom intends to discontinue legal proceedings launched in 2001 against ODTR decisions in relation to RIO and local loop unbundling.

Does not mention the price, but I think it was around 107 euros for a 512k service with a 3 gig cap.

It had been held up by the ODTR for several months due to disputes over margin (difference between wholesale and retail offerings). At one stage the retail price was actually raised by Eircom to above 110 euros. in an attempt to address the ODTR's concerns.

eircomtribunal

damien.m wrote:

While we are still in DSL stats, can someone give me an exact date (with a link to the details) when adsl was commerically available in Ireland ?

Their product was called i-stream and I remember us making this joke about it on eircomtribunal.

P.

cgarvey

Rips are up now, sorry for delay.

.cg

SkepticOne

"Moreover the ODTR confirmed that Eircom intends to discontinue legal proceedings launched in 2001 against ODTR decisions in relation to RIO and local loop unbundling."

Eircom's decision not to sue ODTR over LLU pricing is in no way related to the ODTRs goahead for Eircom to charge consumers the highest prices in the world for basic capped DSL. To suggest otherwise would be actionable.

mike65

eircomtribunal wrote:

Their product was called i-stream and I remember us making this joke about it on eircomtribunal.

P.

I remember it being re-branded as I-Scream

Mike.

LoBo

Some very good graphics in your .pdf on comwreck.com (direct link) - exactly what I mean by a fact sheet for journos who are interviewing Eircom- eg:

I've helpfully labelled luxembourg there too

If you're emailing Morning Ireland, why not add a link to the pdf (see above) for further info.

dahamsta

One again, thanks to cgarvey.

http://irelandoffline.org/files/media/mp3/040915-rte1-morningireland-mcredmond.mp3

adam

sceptre

Off topic stuff about percentages and metrics and wotsits moved to a nice shiny new thread here

damien

On behalf of IrelandOffline I'd like to thank everyone who took time to make transcripts and record the Morning Ireland pieces. It is really appreciated. Well done all.

Damien.