eircom Statistics (a.k.a. "Facts")

dahamsta

You skipped back a little bit there Ripwave, your conversation with De Rebel is much more interesting than the one with Marvel (no offense Marvel). So are you going to join the committee?

adam

Ripwave

De Rebel wrote:

Call it wahat you will.

I was just wondering whether you are the windbag I suspect, or if you are actually prepared to contribute something useful.

I'm not prepared to sit on the comittee.

I'm also not prepared to support hypocrisy, just because it's put out by "our" side.

spongebob

Ripwave wrote:

Neither is the fact that only 20% of exchanges have been enabled.

The figure is 18.3% of exchanges . 201 (not 250) out of 1100 exchanges . De Rebel is wrong , less than 20% of exchanges will be done. Furthermore you had no issue with it when I posted that figure a week back.

At this rate we'll have to declare that 100% of Telephone lines have electricity on them to keep you happy

M

Ripwave

Muck wrote:

The figure is 18.3% of exchanges . 201 (not 250) out of 1100 exchanges . De Rebel is wrong , less than 20% of exchanges will be done. Furthermore you had no issue with it when I posted that figure a week back.

I don't have any problem with the figure of 18.3% because it's utterly irrelevant. Would you any happier if eircom had enabled the other 81.7% of exchanges instead, and less than 15% of the phone lines in the country were capable of getting DSL?

I have a problem with the hypocritical use of any misleading statistic when you're arguing that eircom are using misleading statistics.

Either misleading statistics are okay, or they're not. It's hypocritical to say that they bad when McRedmond uses them, but they're okay when a memebr of the IOFFL committeee uses them.

spongebob

It is not in the least misleading Ripwave. 18.3% of exchanges is absolutely correct . Nor do I think that 100% of exchanges will be done or should be done but thats another argument.

We have population coverage of slightly over 50% when we read the Eircom SEC filing on actual availability of DSL where the exchanges are enabled.

50% coverage is pathetic ....utterly pathetic . Then again we do not have 100% ISDN coverage either and that technology was standardised 20 years ago or so.

M

Ripwave

Muck wrote:

It is not in the least misleading Ripwave. 18.3% of exchanges is absolutely correct . Nor do I think that 100% of exchanges will be done or should be done but thats another argument.

I'll say this slowly, because I know you have a bit of a vested interest in this argument.
"Correct numbers can still be used as misleading statistics!".

I have no problem with the "fact" that only one in five exchanges have been enabled (even though it depends on a self serving definition of "exchange"). But it is still misleading to imply that there is any particular significance to this, as though all exchanges are the same, and that it doesn't make any difference which particular 18.3% of exchanges are enabled. The "one in five" statistic is utterly irrelevant, and it's only being thrown up as a cheap propaganda ploy.

I notice that you didn't answer the question, so I'll ask it again:
Would you any happier if eircom had enabled the other 81.7% of exchanges instead, and less than 15% of the phone lines in the country were capable of getting DSL?

50% coverage is pathetic ....utterly pathetic . Then again we do not have 100% ISDN coverage either and that technology was standardised 20 years ago or so.

That's a strawman arguement, Muck - I never said that 50% coverage was acceptable, I simply said that it's hypocritical to use misleading statistics.

Do you think the use of misleading statistics is acceptable?

spongebob

Ripwave wrote:

I'll say this slowly, because I know you have a bit of a vested interest in this argument.
"Correct numbers can still be used as misleading statistics!".

Would you concede that this in itself is a big improvement on Eircoms policy of using incorrect numbers in a more misleading manner. Probably not now you are on a roll

I notice that you didn't answer the question, so I'll ask it again:
Would you any happier if eircom had enabled the other 81.7% of exchanges instead, and less than 15% of the phone lines in the country were capable of getting DSL?

Ripwave, You know yourself that Eircoms copper is so decrepit that it is possibly for them to upgrade 100% of exchanges and still only "15% of the phone lines in the country were capable of getting DSL" as you said seeing as it is falling apart around them . Eircom have picked the largest 18% of exchanges for their DSL rollout , I have no quibble with that.

However DSL should be generally available in a developed economy. That means at least 80% of prople should be able to have it turned on or off in the morning ...no fuss and no big deal, like buying a sim card . DSL availibility in the UK is over 95% , in Ireland it is 50%

That's a strawman argument, Muck - I never said that 50% coverage was acceptable, I simply said that it's hypocritical to use misleading statistics.

Do you think the use of misleading statistics is acceptable?

Well part of your first quote above

Correct numbers can still be used as misleading statistics

Is a pretty clear statement of intent to find fault with all statistics ...correct or otherwise .......or is there a subtly nuanced inbuilt subtext that has evidently wafted clear over me head

You certainly have a problem with Correct statistics tonight so if I am forced to use Incorrect statistics to keep you happy then I would be guilty of misleading would I not ?

M

De Rebel

Ripwave wrote:

I'm not prepared to sit on the comittee.

Thought so. But quite prepared to come here and criticise others who are prepared to stump up and put in a bit of effort. Windbag.

Ripwave wrote:

I'm also not prepared to support hypocrisy, just because it's put out by "our" side.

And you were on about me being on a high horse? "I'm not prepared to support hipocrisy..." You pompous idiot. And anyway, what hypocrisy? You have never challenged the facts I stated. Only the fact that you perceive them not to be important.

flamegrill

Lads lartings will be handed out, this is hardly going anywhere.

My own feelings are similar to that of Ripwaves. He is on "our" side, but he is a touch of reality that sometimes gets left out. 20% (approx) of exchanges are upgraded, but we can all agree that eircom have chosen the best 20% to upgrade and that they probably cover more lines than the other 80% do in total.

The entire point i feel ripwave is trying to get accross is that we can't win this battle using similar tactics to eircom by displaying stats/figures in an anyway misleading manner.

Can we keep the personal abuse to a minimum and maybe keep the tone civilised.

Paul

De Rebel

flamegrill wrote:

Lads lartings will be handed out, this is hardly going anywhere.

In english?

flamegrill wrote:

The entire point i feel ripwave is trying to get accross is that we can't win this battle using similar tactics to eircom by displaying stats/figures in an anyway misleading manner.

The point that ripwave has got across is that ripwave believes he can win the battle by posting on boards and nothing more. He can't.

flamegrill

Seamus already posted about keeping the peace. Personal attacks will result in bannings for a week.

spongebob

Goody.

I'll be really really nice to the NEXT person who posts their own statistical 'analysis' of the 'facts' ! That even includes Honest Dave McRedmond.

M

De Rebel

flamegrill wrote:

Seamus already posted about keeping the peace. Personal attacks will result in bannings for a week.

Oh get over it.

Ripwave has on this occasion, as so many times in the past, turned a perfectly valid thread into a long tangent by virtue of she/he being a nit-picking crank and dragging up irrelevent issues like one off housing.

She/he has added nothing of value to the topic, turned it into a slagging match and made both of us look foolish.

If you want to imporove the situation I suggest you severly prune the thread of all the irrelevent stuff to take it back to the original topic instead of issuing childish warnings.

LFCFan

I think we can all agree that €ircon are doing their damndest not to deply DSL to as many people as possible, whereas the likes of BT in the UK are doing a damn site more. eg. €ircon's copper sucks, their line test criteria sucks, the distance from the exchange sucks.....basically, €ircon are stalling the rollout of DSL as long as possible so they can continue to rake in rediculous profits from dialup and ISDN connections!

Ripwave

LFCFan wrote:

€ircon are stalling the rollout of DSL as long as possible so they can continue to rake in rediculous profits from dialup and ISDN connections!

If dialup and ISDN are so lucrative, how can eircom have justified to their shareholders the cost of enabling 85,000 DSL lines to date? Remember that they actually have a legal responsibility to their shareholders, they don't have any responsibility to their customers.

By the way, that's not a rhetorical question. Does eircom really make more money on a €30/month dialup connection that ties up the phone line so that "real" calls can't be made (inbound as well as outbound!) than it does on a €40/month DSL connection?

Blaster99

It seems to me that if you can sell 512Kbps 48 times over for €30 a pop, you're on a pretty good deal. Otherwise they wouldn't be investing money in the service.

Ripwave

Blaster99 wrote:

It seems to me that if you can sell 512Kbps 48 times over for €30 a pop, you're on a pretty good deal. Otherwise they wouldn't be investing money in the service.

If it took 48 dialup users to make one broadband user, you might be on to something.

But in the real world, each of those €40/month broadband users started out as just one "€30/month or less" dialup user, not 48 of them.

(I have no doubt that there are still people put there paying more than €30/month for dialup, because they don't know about the "flat-rate" packages available. But at this point, I don't think you could really lay the blame for that at eircoms door).

Blaster99

I know it doesn't create the potential for an endless discussion involving various figures and statistics, but my point is simply that 512Kbps sold for 48x€30 probably represents a very healthy margin. I have no idea if it's healthier than some undefined dial-up scenario and I'm happy to let you worry about that.

Ripwave

Blaster99 wrote:

I know it doesn't create the potential for an endless discussion involving various figures and statistics, but my point is simply that 512Kbps sold for 48x€30 probably represents a very healthy margin. .

Selling packets of crisps for €35 makes for a nice margin too, blaster, but it's got **** all to do with the original question.

LFCFan

ok, if it's not dialup and isdn that is making €ircon stall, what is it? If there is profit to be made above what can be made with dialup and isdn, then why don't €ircon push forward with their DSL rollout in a more agressive manner? They should be extending the reach, improving the lines and introducing ADSL 2+. Oopps.....I forgot. It's €ircon we're talking about here and they are more worried about keeping their investors happy :mad:

SkepticOne

Ripwave wrote:

If dialup and ISDN are so lucrative, how can eircom have justified to their shareholders the cost of enabling 85,000 DSL lines to date? Remember that they actually have a legal responsibility to their shareholders, they don't have any responsibility to their customers.

By the way, that's not a rhetorical question. Does eircom really make more money on a €30/month dialup connection that ties up the phone line so that "real" calls can't be made (inbound as well as outbound!) than it does on a €40/month DSL connection?

Well, a lot of businesses either have a separate phone line for Internet, or else ISDN with one channel dedicated to the internet. If you try to use ISDN or PSTN in a way similar to broadband (i.e. always on) you end up paying Eircom pretty much the same if not more despite getting less of a service. But this is not a problem for Eircom.

Some businesses (as well as home users) won't dedicate a line but will use the phone line intermittantly for Internet. These users won't necessarily pay more to Eircom but what ever they do pay it (in some cases significant) represents a disincentive to Eircom to provide broadband (either fixing up lines or enabling exchanges). The amount of this disincentive is proprortional to the amount the users pay on dial-up.

This amount is significantly less than before FRIACO became operational last year and we have seen a corresponding change in Eircoms attitute to broadband. Perhaps removing the disincentive completely (e.g by setting FRIACO charges to zero) would cause some improvements in Eircom's willingness to bring lines up to a decent standard, make more use of their existing technology, and roll out DSL to more exchanges. I think it would, but they would still be the monopoly provider in most cases and this is the reason why we are talking about canibalisation of revenue. In countries where there is significant competition these questions are irrelevent since people just switch to broadband whether or not it is being supplied by the incumbent telco.

So to get back to your question, I believe that Eircom justify enabling 85,000 DSL to their shareholders because in the exchanges which they already have upgraded, they do make more from broadband than dial up and so it is worth heavily advertising this. But revenue from dial up and ISDN has hindered the development of broadband in the past.

lynchie

Muck wrote:

Goody.

I'll be really really nice to the NEXT person who posts their own statistical 'analysis' of the 'facts' ! That even includes Honest Dave McRedmond.

M

Eircom on target for broadband delivery

03 November 2004 17:07

The Commercial Director of Eircom has said that the company will achieve its target of 100,000 broadband connections countrywide by the end of this year.

David McRedmond was addressing the Joint Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources.

Mr McRedmond also said that eight out of every ten existing lines 'qualify' or are capable of delivering broadband.


He said that all towns in the country are covered for broadband.

McRedmond's facts are that 8/10 or 80% of all existing lines are capable for DSL - I assume that means they pass the "eircom" line test

All towns in the country are covered for broadband - Surely that statement can only be true if ALL exchanges are upgraded?

damien

It's 7.6 /10 on their SEC filling. So which is the true figure ? I'm assuming that the have upped it since the SEC filing. They wouldn't like to the Oireachtas would they ?

spongebob

lynchie wrote:

McRedmond's facts are that 8/10 or 80% of all existing lines are capable for DSL - I assume that means they pass the "eircom" line test

There he goes again , Damien quoted the correct figure which is 76% and is available on page 55 of The SEC Filing . The 76% figure refers to a 256k-512k product . I believe the deppities do not consider sub 512k capable lines to be BB capable

The 76% figure also referred to the 137 exchanges upgraded as of March 2004. Another 60 or so have been brought onstream since , generally smaller than the first 137 .

Eircom has 1.7 Million lines in total but the 76% figure referred to 1.1 million of them not all 1.7 Million or around 836,000 .

The UK is around 95% of all lines now. Eircom is capable of providing BB on somewhere above 50% . Eircom has not even tested 100,000's of lines as there is no kit in over 900 exchanges to do the test .

M

eircomtribunal

lynchie wrote:

McRedmond's facts are that 8/10 or 80% of all existing lines are capable for DSL

If rte quote Eircom's spin-master correctly ("McRedmond also said that eight out of every ten existing lines 'qualify' or are capable of delivering broadband.") than the Committee should have asked a few questions:

1. Does McRedmond go by the Committee's definition of broadband as being at least 512 k?

2. Has the line failure figure reduced since the time of the SEC filing, where it was at 24%?

3. How can McRedmond claim this 8 out of 10 success rate for all lines? Is it not so that only figures for the lines on broadband enabled exchanges are available? Is it not to be expected that the failure rate for the lines not yet on bb enabled exchanges will be considerably higher?

P.

P.S. Are the proceedings of the Committee accessible somewhere now?

damien

eircomtribunal wrote:

Are the proceedings of the Committee accessible somewhere now?

Maybe Ronan in there could help you Peter ? I'll be asking tomorrow too.

I'm actually worried for David. I'm hoping that he didn't lie to the Oireachtas. That could be a problem.

eircomtribunal

damien.m wrote:

I'm actually worried for David. I'm hoping that he didn't lie to the Oireachtas. That could be a problem.

He is far too cute to lie where he could be held accountable, like in the SEC filing.

His PR mastery is fascinating.

We've displayed a little example on one of the new www.comwreck.com blogs, direct link to the article "Sec, lies and videotape" is here

P.

De Rebel

There is usually a time lapse (of weeks) in the posting of the Joint Committee's proceedings. This is unlike the Dail, where an unverified transcript is published on a same/next day basis.

According to this weeks Dail schedule the Joint Committee on Communications etc. was due to meet today(Wednesday), details as follows:

The Joint Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources will meet at 2.30 pm in CR3, Leinster House.
Agenda:
(a) Election of Vice Chairperson;
(b) Review of fixed line charges and billing practices with Com Reg, Eircom and Esat BT.

The Joint Committee's proceedings will appear here when available

De Rebel

Peter

Just remind us ( so that we have it conveniently to hand ) assuming that eircom achieves its target of 100,000 broadband connections countrywide by the end of this year where will we stand in comparison with international 2004 penetration rates. I think you have this in bar chart format.

Thanks