The mess that is the phone network in Ireland

lucernarian

Hello all,
Would anyone here agree with me that we have a phone network that is worse than some third world countries in many cases? You don't have to travel far to see extreme neglect of our phone lines by eircom. I feel this could seriously damage our competiveness by way of a lack of broadband services and I think that we need to make this a serious issue for the government.

Hobbes

Try the Ireland offline forum.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=60

lucernarian

Could my topic be discussed as a political issue? I am looking at my point as an economic and political issue but if you disagree then I suppose that means that the topic is invalid here.

sceptre

To_be_confirmed wrote:

You don't have to travel far to see extreme neglect of our phone lines by eircom

The Ireland Offline committee are still looking for pictures of examples of the terrible neglect if you can manage to take any.

sceptre

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Could my topic be discussed as a political issue?

Of course it can. There's been quite a bit of discussion over on the IOFFL board about the neglect and the potential consequences in the future (as well as the current consequences of bleeding the assets in the past few years) but if you want to discuss it as an economic and/or political issue then it's probably quite at home here. For the participants, discussion of "company X took 14 weeks to install /my/ phone line" belongs elsewhere.

Obviously from a certain perspective I've a potential conflict of interest (I'm on the IOFFL committee even if my work rate has been less than stellar in the past few weeks). It's only from a certain perspective though (probably just the perspective of someone who doesn't want to spend money on phone line upkeep), given that IOFFL is a consumer organisation, unfunded, unpaid and so on. Just mentioning it before someone else does

Hobbes

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Could my topic be discussed as a political issue? I am looking at my point as an economic and political issue but if you disagree then I suppose that means that the topic is invalid here.

If it is a matter of debate, then here is probably good. If you want something done about it the other forum is probably better.

De Rebel

You are 100% correct. It is a political issue, not a technology one. And that is why it is good to see it finally getting main stream coverage. Recent weeks have seen Broadband feature on

• RTE's Morning Ireland four days in a row
• Irish Times editorial
• Business & Finance
• A cartoon in Phoenix Magazine
• The Evening Herald
• RTE's 5-7 live
• Dave fanning's show on RTE
• Along with continued excellent well researched coverage from the Sunday Business Post who have been championing the issue for quite some time, and of course regular coverage in the technology journals
• And many more that I've already forgotten

The country has a Minister for Communications, the last holder of the office being accutly aware of the importance of Broadband. And while we might not agree with all of his actions, he took many steps to advance the cause. And we must look to the incoming Minister and the Department to further the work.

The Oireachtas has a very competent Joint Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources who's ICT sub-committee produced a superb report earlier this year.

Although its glory days are behind it, the Government appointed Information Society Commission has produced some excellent reports, mainly under the guidance of one of its members, Dr. Patricia O’Hara of the Western Development Commission.

There is certainly an awareness at Department/Ministerial level of the importance of telecommunications infrastructure. And that awareness is now creeping into the public consciousness.

There is no doubt that the current situation, where the state no longer owns the infrastructure, is more difficult to manage than the previous incarnation where the state did own the infrastructure and could use it to implement policy. In reality, the state made a dreadful mistake in selling eircom, but that's history and is not going to be reversed. And discussing that decision, while interesting, is totally unproductive.

We must look to the future. IrelandOffline is trying to look outwards, to educate and guide the policy makers and to raise the public consciousness. We are a voluntary unfunded body with zero resources. We have an important mission, to get Ireland connected.

The social and economic implications of failing on this are potentially very significant. Many here know that. So get out there, and make this a political issue, raise it with your TDs, councillors, and any contacts you have in the media or business forums. A lot has been accomplished in terms of awareness recently. But there is still a lot to do.

[edit]I'm a committee member of IrelandOffline, if that wasn't obvious[/edit]

lucernarian

So... How damaging could our lack of broadband be to our competitiveness in the future?

Would it be in the national interest if Eircom was renationalised?

Btw I hope that this topic will have non-ioffl members participating in it. This is an issue that could affect us all if it damages our economy.

luckat

For some reason the last few governments have been in love with the idea of selling off parts of the national infrastructure to kindly asset-strippers. Is it in the national interest? Hah! Is it in the politicians' interest? Well, that's another question.

billy the squid

Privatising eircom was possibly the worst idea that the government ever came up with. First you had thousands upon thousands of people who lost money when they bought those eircom shares, and then they were eventually forced to sell the shares when eircom was bought over by valentia, They werent even allowed to hold onto them in the unlikely event that they might regain their value.

The people who own eircom now are more interested in what dividend they get rather than customer satisfaction and quality of service.

When eircom was a semi-state body we had one of the best telephone networks in the world, now look at it

Renationalise I say.

lucernarian

One big problem though... I think it would cost €5 billion to renationalise Eircom. Would it be worth it?

Moriarty

It was valued at (iirc) a touch over €1bn 6 months ago for their floatation.

billy the squid

Then why not just nationalise all the physical stuff like the wires and the exchange. Eircom could stay eircom but would have to be treated the same way as the likes of UTV and buy wholesale products from a semi-state body who would administrate the network, would that not take a chunk out of the five billion euro.

Under government control the network could be brought back up to standard encouraging commerce and making back whatever money the Government paid for it in a couple of years.

Of course this would mean that eircom would loose all that line rental money as it would go to maintaining the copper and the exchanges. If a customer wanted then to go to say UTV for example, eircom wouldnt get a penny.

Moriarty

Indeed. The UK regulator ofcom was mulling over splitting BT into two seperate and distinct companys - the infrastructure side, and the retail side.

That's almost certainly a wiser approach than simply renationalising eircom entirely. Totally seperate the infrastructure side of eircom, spin it off into it's own company and mandate that it can't sell directly to the consumer.

lucernarian

originally posted by billy the squid
Then why not just nationalise all the physical stuff like the wires and the exchange. Eircom could stay eircom but would have to be treated the same way as the likes of UTV and buy wholesale products from a semi-state body who would administrate the network, would that not take a chunk out of the five billion euro

You know, I actually thought of something very similar in August this year and so that I could show it to someone, I wrote my ideas on the front and back of an envelope (nothing else handy at the time). I showed it to a good friend who is an activist of a political party and he thinks it could be very useful.

bonkey

What???

You mean like recognise that a physical distribution network is effectively a natural monopoly because there is no real benefit to the customer to pay for a second competing distribution network???

That would make it just like ESB then....where the government did keep a monopoly on the network, but opened the generation market (badly) for competition???

Arguably this is what the government should have done when privatising Eircom at the time. But should they look to do it now - paying a serious premium in order to buy-back the rights? Possibly - if the math makes sense, or if the determination is made that the only way to ensure that the network isn't being used to the advantage of the owning provider.

On the flip-side, imagine the potential public outcry....

Eircom was privatised, and public quite literally encouarged to invest. They lost a ton. If the government were to buy it back, the purchase would probably be set in order to milk the govt. for as much as possible, so the public (as taxpayers) get fleeced a second time to end up back where they were. End result : Big Business 2, Member of public 0.

Moriarty

Dunno about that. They sold at the height of the telco boom. They'd be buying back in a pretty depressed market. The potential is there for the government to actually make a profit over the entire timeframe.

Saying that, I can't think of a single reason where putting the infrastructure back under government control would work out better than simply cutting the infrastructure side away from eircom, creating a new company for it and denying it any access to the retail market. It'll then have to rely on all the Other Licensed Operators for business and there will no longer be obstruction and obfuscation on the infrastructure side to the benefit of one specific retail telco (eircom retail). That has the added benefit of the exchequer not having to fork out a few billion to bring it back under direct government control aswell.

oscarBravo

bonkey wrote:

You mean like recognise that a physical distribution network is effectively a natural monopoly because there is no real benefit to the customer to pay for a second competing distribution network???

This raises another interesting point: there are two aspects to the network in question - the last mile, and everything else. There's lots of fibre out there - Eircom's, Esat's, ESB's, Aurora's, the MANs... but only one company has (shoddy) copper pairs going into every home and business.

The thought of splitting Eircom appeals to me on a visceral level - but wouldn't it have to be split in three to be completely fair? A backbone network provider, a last mile copper provider (the only real monopoly) and a retail telco?

Back to bonkey's original point ("there is no real benefit to the customer to pay for a second competing distribution network") - I dunno, widespread availability of cable services seems to have been a galvanising force in the UK, the US and elsewhere. Bear in mind also that the last mile copper network is really, really manky - an alternative last mile might be just the thing.

lucernarian

originally posted by bonkey
You mean like recognise that a physical distribution network is effectively a natural monopoly because there is no real benefit to the customer to pay for a second competing distribution network???

That would make it just like ESB then....where the government did keep a monopoly on the network, but opened the generation market (badly) for competition???

Unfortunately in most parts of Ireland phone lines are a natural monopoly unless there is a serious attempt at developing something like wireless. Nowhere outside Dublin apart from a few exceptions has cable.

originally posted by moriarty
Saying that, I can't think of a single reason where putting the infrastructure back under government control would work out better than simply cutting the infrastructure side away from eircom, creating a new company for it and denying it any access to the retail market[/qoute]
Think of it like this: Any profits made might go back to the Exchequer or if they want (unfortunately a bit unlikely) they could run it as a non-profit organisation which would help our competitiveness as a whole by having a high-standard, cheap-as-possible phone system.

[qoute]originally posted by moriarty
Dunno about that. They sold at the height of the telco boom. They'd be buying back in a pretty depressed market. The potential is there for the government to actually make a profit over the entire timeframe.

An interesting point, and one which must be taken into account, not to mention the possible extra money gained by being more technologically competitive.

RainyDay

billy the squid wrote:

First you had thousands upon thousands of people who lost money when they bought those eircom shares, and then they were eventually forced to sell the shares when eircom was bought over by valentia, They werent even allowed to hold onto them in the unlikely event that they might regain their value.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that shareholders representing mroe than 80% of the share capital voted to accept the Valentia offer. The only ones 'forced' to sell were the minority 20% - and if they weren't prepared to accept the normal operation of company law, they shouldn't have invested in the first place. The suckers were convinced that they couldn't lose on Eircom. They chose not to sell after the initial jump in the share price and greedily held on for more gains. I find it hard to have any sympathy for anyone who lost money on Eircom shares.

lucernarian

Hmm, I suppose we should blame the government for encouraging us to take part in what was virtually a form of gambling. Skilled investors find it tricky to judge what is a good investment, let alone an ordinary man on the street.

sceptre

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Hmm, I suppose we should blame the government for encouraging us to take part in what was virtually a form of gambling.

Thanks and apologies to Ben Elton in advance

It's the old "buy something you thought you already owned" trick isn't it. You owned it, now we're selling it off and you can buy some of it, you lucky chappie. Around the time of the Eircom flotilla and the talk of flying Aer Lingus on to the stock market, I constantly expected to turn on the telly and see the government flogging off my old sofa. The Sceptre Sofa Share Opportunity. Warning: sofa shares can spring up as well as down. Buying shares in the Sofa Opportunity does not guarantee that you won't be royally ridden when you want to sit on it. Mortgaging your house so you can buy a cushion may be a risky move.

lucernarian

I see that the Government is now backing down on privatisation (front page of thursday's indo i think). What is the Government's views on Eircom now? Do they regret selling Telecom Éireann?

Cork

The sad fact that is being missed that Telecom Eireann was never an example of excellance.

From its own p+t days it never did a fastastic job.

Do ye remember people ringing into radio stations for the radio station to make calls to their relations live on air?

Demot Ahern issued directives to Comreg on be mobile number portability and on flat rate.

The new Minister has got to get tough and get direct COMREG on broadband.

We need tuff regulation big time.

lucernarian

originally posted by Cork
Do ye remember people ringing into radio stations for the radio station to make calls to their relations live on air?

:eek: To be honest, I have never heard about anything like that and I'm quite shocked. Mabye if we had proper state management of it then it would never have been privatised. What I'm saying is that efficient state management of Telecoms infrastructure is IMO the best situation but unfortunately it's very idealistic. But that doesn't mean that setting such a goal for ourselves and especially the politicans is a bad thing. We should always try our best, even if the aim is difficult to achieve.

Cork

Government should have held on to the network.

Broadband in this country is a job. My area will not have broadband for years. This is crazy.

Dermot Ahern issued directives on Flat Rate. I think that if our broadband infrasture remains third rate then the Minister has to strengten regulation or start issuing directives on the metter.

Sleepy

A bit of a longshot maybe but if it were provable that a number of the top boys involved in Eircom's flotation had profited largely from it (which I'd bet my salary they did) at the public's expense could the government/courts seize assets (i.e. the network in the form of punitive damages?