Eircom trials 5Mbps broadband service

Kristok

To_be_confirmed wrote:

What about the line distance limit??? Is there something uneconomical about enabling a line >5 km just to see how it will work out?? If it doesn't work I can send back the modem or pay for an engineer to see what he can do to get it working. Truth is that eircon couldn't care less if I have bb or not. I don't think I'm asking much. I don't care if I don't have ADSL2 or whatever, a plain 1 mbit connection would keep me happy.

Perhaps you are simply making the point that eircom can't be expected to provide ADSL2+ speeds on every line in Ireland. That is quite fair and eircom, as a company with a duty to look after shareholder's money, can't be expected to enable every single exchange singlehandedly.

That does NOT mean that eircom can get away with allowing the deteriorating network to deteriorate further in the late '90s. Economics does NOT mean that they can get away with fleecing any competitor who steps foot on an eircom exchange. It does NOT mean that eircom shouldn't give a **** when a customer lives a mile or two outside the limit, when DSL can still work, either.

It's interesting to see that the upgrades are going ahead already. I wonder why they are using Carraigaline as one of the test locations? It's good to see rural places being upgraded quickly though.

A distance limit is based on the technology they are using and what they believe the lines can handle. If their equipment has the ability to go further and until someone actually has proof that it can this is just speculation then the fact that the lines are so bad in Ireland its probably not worth them considering anything over 5km as there would be a much higher chance of failures. Again all speculation and the flavour of DSL they went with had a distance limit of 5km when they went with it if BT are now able to get that same DSL product to work over 8km then great but they also had the same limits as we did once. Im all for extending the limit if its possible but your solution of enabling a line and sending out a modem to see if it works is a waste of resources if the line is going to fail a high proportion of the time.

I am saying 24mb speeds can’t be provided to every line in Ireland and it will take a long time before it can be rolled out to the other lines that it can work on.

Laguna wrote:

Why are you bothering to reply to Kristok?, all he'll do (in one long sentence, without grammar) is ask how can Eircom be expected to give broadband to everyone without them becoming bankrupt (something he's said in every post), just throw your hands up in the air and admit defeat, his attitude is in the majority in this country, you're not going to win. Something Kristok should ask himself is WHY he cant see Eircom have put Ireland in this dire situation in the first place. The man seems to have a fundamental lack when confronted with people who are dissatisfied with the state of the network. Kristok, save yourself replying as you only say the one thing, I'll do it for you

So now instead of answering a simple question (simple assuming im wrong and your right that is) your discouraging people replying at all. Im sorry if my grammar isnt good enough for you but im not in school so get over it (more name calling to divert the thread off topic again I see) I wouldn’t have to keep asking the same question over and over again if someone would answer it, you tried and couldn’t give any sort of worthwhile answer. When did I say the network was in a great shape ? i completly agree with you the network is rubbish after decades of mismanagement and thats the problem its going to take eircom many more years before it can catch up with countries like the Uk etc because we are so far behind and working with a network not up to the job. The problem with your point of view is on the one hand you give out about how bad the network is and on the other you expect new technology to work on it.

Complaining that eircom should have looked after the network in the 90's is pointless it didn’t happen we are where we are now and we cant change the past so we should deal with the present and move forward not complain that if they had have done things better years ago we would be like France etc. I have to say you have a lovely attitute about irish people that we just give in, the reality is there is nothing to win you cant make Eircom change overnight its what we have as rubbish as it is its all we have because other alternatives like ntl dont even bother rolling out their network.

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

Kristok would no doubt be shocked at companies such as Ryanair who can sell airline seats for 99c and still be more profitable than most competitors.

Perhaps he can shed some light on why companies such as smart and magnet are installing adsl2+ equipment in the exchanges but yet Eircom persists with the same old DSL technology in newly installed exchanges. After all if they started putting in the newer technology - at least they would have greater reach in those exchanges.

Remember how expensive and elitist mobile phones were when eircell began and there was no O2. There was no thought then that subsidising the phones would bring greater revenues despite what was happeing in the UK at the time. It is this type of monopolistic thinking that has given the crap broadband situation we are in.


However I suspect there is a bit of the old P+T remaining. :rolleyes:

We all know how Ryan air cut costs everywhere, landing in cheaper airports, they don’t provide tickets, getting air hostess to clean the planes instead of companies like ics, running crappy old fleets that make so much noise they are becoming illegal to fly. Im not really sure what your point is though. Ryan air buck the trend of the low cost airlines and makes a good profit and from what ive read most airlines are bleeding money around the world so im not really sure I get your point at all the industries are completely different.

Eircom don’t replace their equipment because from the point of view of eircom the equipment is there already why replace it when no one really wants it and the people who do mainly fixed line users will dump their expensive products if they go and upgrade their exchanges. Smart and magnet are installing in exchanges for the first time, they also need something to attract new customers so installing equipment that can provide adsl2 is ideal as it might only cost a few thousand per exchange more but could attract customers they would otherwise not be able to. Eircom will always react to the market and not lead all big companies do and the small ones are the ones who bring progress.

And as for mobile phones the handsets are subsidised not the calls and they are still expensive. Eircom offered free modems and really that’s all I can see in the way of a comparison here. The only thing that will bring down the cost of calls on mobiles is competition as seen from meteor and 3 who have forced the 2 original operators to lower prices although still not enough. If smart and magnet can offer bb to every household that eircom does at a faster and cheaper price then they will force eircom to upgrade and lower prices but its going to them so long too do that.

daveyjoe

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

They have no choice all they are doing is offering the exact same package as eircon; eircon upgrade ALL they don't need to differentiate between providers because in monopoly land there is only one provider

Yeah, but they can still limit bandwidth from their end. I would be very surprised (and outraged), if they did this, but you never know.

1,500 posts Kristok congratulations, it's a pity that you are just spewing crap in most of those posts.

OfflerCrocGod

Kristok wrote:

A distance limit is based on the technology they are using and what they believe the lines can handle. If their equipment has the ability to go further and until someone actually has proof that it can this is just speculation then the fact that the lines are so bad in Ireland its probably not worth them considering anything over 5km as there would be a much higher chance of failures.

Crap. They use the same equipment as BT and BT offer ADSL on all lines regardless of distance and in the rare case that it doesn't work they send out an engineer to see if they can fix the line. €ircon prefers people on dialup and ISDN because they make more profit; also once on ADSL they could easily switch provider meaning they will have and even smaller profit. ADSL is totally againts eircon's interests, as is FRIACO and LLU they have fought tooth and nail againts all those technologies and that's the REAL reason we are so far behind the rest of the world.

DemonOfTheFall

Yeah, the question regarding the arbitrary 4.5k limit has been answered numerous times. Eircom just arent willing to even let people TRY and see if their line works. There are tons of reports of eircom failing people on line tests, so the people sign up with BT instead.

Last time I checked, eircom have 1 metric fúckton of money, and can afford to invest a little bit in the nation's development.

However, I think that with the current round of speed upgrades we are fairly in line with a reasonable level of access, 3meg/384 is a grand connection. Now if they would just drop their sky-high line rental and obscene call prices they would be an alright company. a 3meg/384 line with phone line rental for 50euro a month from BT isnt that bad, and thats with them paying eircom a hefty cut on the deal.
Surely eircom should be able to cut a better deal since all the money goes straight to them ?

lucernarian

Laguna wrote:

Why are you bothering to reply to Kristok?, all he'll do (in one long sentence, without grammar) is ask how can Eircom be expected to give broadband to everyone without them becoming bankrupt (something he's said in every post), just throw your hands up in the air and admit defeat, his attitude is in the majority in this country, you're not going to win. Something Kristok should ask himself is WHY he cant see Eircom have put Ireland in this dire situation in the first place. The man seems to have a fundamental lack when confronted with people who are dissatisfied with the state of the network. Kristok, save yourself replying as you only say the one thing, I'll do it for you

I explained precisely how it was NOT uneconomical for eircom to trial my line; I am willing to pay the cost of it as I said earlier. I read Kristok's answer so I'm leaving it at that. I just hope that sometime soon a new thread will open with the title "Eircom trials 8 km broadband service".

Laguna

To_be_confirmed wrote:

I explained precisely how it was NOT uneconomical for eircom to trial my line; I am willing to pay the cost of it as I said earlier. I read Kristok's answer so I'm leaving it at that. I just hope that sometime soon a new thread will open with the title "Eircom trials 8 km broadband service".

You're preaching to the converted here, I'm in the same boat as you as I live 6km from my exchange. I wrote to philnolan@eircom.ie on the 23rd of November (the CEO of eircom last week) asking him what the position was with Eircom increasing their distance for DSL, obviously the man doesn't understand the concept of customer relations, did I receive a reply?, NO, did he even forward my mail to someone who could simply send me a courtesy response?, NO, they're a shower of incompetent ****s who know their days are numbered (with the impending wiMax technology on the horizon) and are going to fight tooth and nail for every penny they can whilst continuing to let the existing network deteriorate and degrade further.

JackieChan

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

Last time I checked, eircom have 1 metric fúckton of money, and can afford to invest a little bit in the nation's development.?

DOTF,
But this money is needed to pay huge dividends to Valentia,Goldman Sachs and George Soros!!

lucernarian

Laguna wrote:

You're preaching to the converted here, I'm in the same boat as you as I live 6km from my exchange. I wrote to philnolan@eircom.ie on the 23rd of November (the CEO of eircom last week) asking him what the position was with Eircom increasing their distance for DSL, obviously the man doesn't understand the concept of customer relations, did I receive a reply?, NO, did he even forward my mail to someone who could simply send me a courtesy response?, NO, they're a shower of incompetent ****s who know their days are numbered (with the impending wiMax technology on the horizon) and are going to fight tooth and nail for every penny they can whilst continuing to let the existing network deteriorate and degrade further.

Firstly, I hope you used the address phil.nolan@eircom.ie as a missing dot may be the reason why. I had to send the email a couple of times before I even got a response. I'd say they will ignore tmails unless you look like you won't give up easily.

Get them to check the exact distance of your line, you may be lucky if it's shorter than you think. Mention stuff like enabling the line anyway to see if it will work with the modem, ADSL repeaters and don't give up until you get answers. Oh and mention that BT serve lines up to 10 km long in cases.

I'm also looking into BT LLU serving me instead. There are cases where people got 6 mbits on a Smart line, that failed for Eircom. Are there any LLU operators in your local exchange?

Kristok

Thats it i give in i cant reply to any more of this nonsense its just the same thing over and over again. You actually think Phil Nolan is going to answer you and give out when he dosnt that just shows where you head is. I hope you guys looking to get your bb do but lets see how long your waiting for 24mb bb all over ireland and not just in one or two exchanges.

DemonOfTheFall

Great, a little less of that "ah what can be done about it" attitude would go far in Ireland!

eoghanflynn

anyone herd of it yet.they say they have 24mb d/l 24mb upload!!

Sparky

eoghanflynn wrote:

anyone herd of it yet.they say they have 24mb d/l 24mb upload!!

yeah only in their fiber to the home estates, so since your in rathfarnham you wont get them speeds.

Anarchist

Any news on speed increases for Smart BB users?

PiE

Kristok wrote:

the fact that the lines are so bad in Ireland its probably not worth them considering anything over 5km as there would be a much higher chance of failures.

Oh Jesus Christ, crawl back into your hole and die a horrible death.

cgarvey

All those abusing Kristok (some of whom should be banned IMO), are forgetting one thing. eircom aren't here to serve you. They're here to serve their shareholders. There is no commercial incentive for them to go beyond 5KM (if that is indeed the figure). The costs of additional engineer installs (amber programme), the costs of additional support/CS calls when the product doesn't match up, the revenue from dialup minutes, the potential for the government to pay eircom, etc., etc. .. in fact I can't see any commercial argument to do what all the quick-to-criticise are demanding. Any non-commercial argument is pointless, they're not a charity.

.cg

Laguna

cgarvey wrote:

All those abusing Kristok (some of whom should be banned IMO), are forgetting one thing. eircom aren't here to serve you. They're here to serve their shareholders. There is no commercial incentive for them to go beyond 5KM (if that is indeed the figure). The costs of additional engineer installs (amber programme), the costs of additional support/CS calls when the product doesn't match up, the revenue from dialup minutes, the potential for the government to pay eircom, etc., etc. .. in fact I can't see any commercial argument to do what all the quick-to-criticise are demanding. Any non-commercial argument is pointless, they're not a charity.

.cg

I can see your point and have now decided that not having broadband available to me is perfectly palatable and acceptable now. Thank you Eircom, for all you haven't done and won't do.

cgarvey

Have you joined Ireland Offline? Have you looked into getting a GBS for your area? No one is saying you have to accept it. But you abusing other posters trying to point out the way-it-is to you, is not going to change anything. It's not right that you don't want BB, but that is far from eircom's concerns, and rather than just bashing eircom, you ought to look at the big picture. Every other commercial ISP is the same, understandably. Channel that energy into something productive, rather than slating those whose opinion don't match yours!

For the record, I don't like eircom, and am in no way happy with their deliberate stalling of BB rollout. However, they are allowed to do that, which I think is the bigger problem. If you were eircom, would you do any differently? I'm guessing not. I'm also guessing that no other ISP would either.

Laguna

Listen man, I'm educated enough to perceive the fact that Eircom are a PLC and have a responsibility to their shareholders only, my problem is with the Irish Government who with their great powers of foresight sold off the national telecoms provider before the network was capable of supplying broadband (when broadband was more than on the horizon, it was already implemented in other countries). I didn't *abuse* other posters on here, I, as well as other posters kept on repeating ourselves verbatim to a certain poster which eventually became oh so very tiring.

DemonOfTheFall

cgarvey, the aren't allowed to deliberately delay the BB roll-out. The fact is that they are a *monopoly*. That waives their right to doing whatever they feel like. It opens them up to being regulated with a heavy hand and forced into doing things.

watty

It's simple

Every dialup user that moves to BB loses Eircom a lot of money.

LLU will lose Eircom a lot of money.

So Eircom fight regulator and other operator tooth & nail.


Part of the reason why Swiss Gov,. has stopped Swisscom aproach as experts feel Eircom is going to get thummped hard soon by our Gov.

Eircom aDSL enables exchanges with *ANY* gear so as to satisfy regulator who would otherwise make them let Smart, BT etc put gear into the Exchange.

Yesterday I read that Swisscom are now allowed again to consider foriegn aquisitions but specifically NOT Eircom.

Anarchist

Nice reply Watty

cgarvey

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

cgarvey, the aren't allowed to deliberately delay the BB roll-out.

I'll call your bluff. Show me the legistlation or ComReg directive, or anything that has any legal standing that states they must roll out BB to X by Y. Until then, I'll keep assuming that there is no such thing, and they are allowed to deliberately block BB rollout, as they have been doing for years. Watty's common-sense post explains why they would.

Xennon

I dont see why Eircom should even consider rolling out BB.

Its simple, Eircom own the copper. Its theirs...the government sold it to them. Now the government/comreg are trying to tell them what to do with it. Thats rediculous.

Solution. Government admits the co*k-up and buys Eircom back while it has the opertunity. Splits the company in two. Communications company and infrastructure, then sells communication company. Infrastructure remains property of state. All communications companies are charged to use the infrastructure and that money is used to upgrade the system, along with government moneys.

How can you sell a car and then tell the new owner how to dirve it??..

If the government dont take this opertunity to buy back Eircom, and it is sold to a corperation outside this country then we can forget about ever haveing a decent data infrastruture in this country. A company will take one look at the cost of upgrading vs the loss in income from dialup and simpley tell comreg to stick it.

Im almost sure that comreg dont have a legal foot to stand on telling Eircom how to run their company.

Whats happened in this case is politics. The government wont admit that it was a mistake to privatise the copper, and so put the spotlight on Eircom.
Eircom are not the people to be pointed at in this case IMHO. The muppets that privatised it are. I wouldnt mind except this very same thing happened in Denmark, youd think they would have payed attention to that.

Dave_W

cgarvey

Good summary dave.. privitising a national asset should have had all sorts of clauses in place, but alas.

.cg

Peanut

Xennon wrote:

...
Eircom are not the people to be pointed at in this case IMHO. The muppets that privatised it are. I wouldnt mind except this very same thing happened in Denmark, youd think they would have payed attention to that.

Yeah it's pretty worrying the knee-jerk assumption of people sometimes that privatisation is always good => more competition. Best example is the British Rail system which was screwed for years after being split up.

PixelTrawler

The only problem with your points Dave is the assumption that if eircom was nationalised again, that the government would do a good job of building the infrastructure. This is not necessarily the solution either.

Just look at the health system...

Never know though they could suprise us all;)

Also governments have the right to challenge companies operating an monopoly, just look at EU Vs Microsoft

OfflerCrocGod

The problem is that we have a very weak regulator when a utility is privatised you need to establish a strong regulator and we simply don't have that here in Ireland and we are paying the price......

lucernarian

cgarvey wrote:

All those abusing Kristok (some of whom should be banned IMO), are forgetting one thing. eircom aren't here to serve you. They're here to serve their shareholders. There is no commercial incentive for them to go beyond 5KM (if that is indeed the figure). The costs of additional engineer installs (amber programme), the costs of additional support/CS calls when the product doesn't match up, the revenue from dialup minutes, the potential for the government to pay eircom, etc., etc. .. in fact I can't see any commercial argument to do what all the quick-to-criticise are demanding. Any non-commercial argument is pointless, they're not a charity.

Fair enough, there is little comercial incentive for eircom to go beyond X km. I do think that there is no commercial disincentive for eircom either, at least compared to enabling areas less than X km away. Why would eircom make less return on enabling a long-dstance line if the customer pays for engineer installs and support calls etc. when compared to a customer nearer to the exchange? That is the main point I am making.

I feel that eircom are unjustifiably excluding customers further than X km from their bb enabled exchange. I say unjustifiably because I, for one, am willing to pay over the odds to a certain extent so I can get the service but eircom are not intereted. The technology is proven to work at distances beyond around 5 km.

Eircom are using line distance as an excuse just like they ignore small exchanges for ADSL even though the larger of those are likely to be economic. Problem is, like watty said, that these cases are not as economic as using the existing dial-up infrastructure.

Even though I am willing to pay for the extra expenses for enabling my line, eircom in reality won't immediately change their policy just for me. I still think that making this issue known will eventually make a difference. And I personally target eircom because Comreg won't fight my battles.

Edit: Sorry if that was OT, I wanted to clear the air. As I said, the trial of 5 mbits is good but a trial of larger line distance limits would be better.

cgarvey

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Why would eircom make less return on enabling a long-dstance line if the customer pays for engineer installs and support calls etc.

Because, you'd be in the minority. The cost of having to change their systems to allow this, the cost of training staff (yes, hard to believe they do!), the additional more troublesome calls they'll be getting because of the distance-related stuff .. just the common sense economics of it. It'd be different if they wanted to roll out BB, and had nowhere else to do. But then, they don't want to, and there's certainly much lower hanging fruit in other areas, while keeping the distance limit short.

The longer the distance, the greater the cost (which you seem to agree with). I'm sure you and I can come up with a lot of people who would pay (and the costs, I'm sure would be many times over the normal egineer install price), but those people/businesses are still in the minority, and there's much easier cash to be made elsewhere.. should they so wish.

That's all aside from the disgrace of the situation, etc., and the embarassing mess the government have made of it.

.cg

lucernarian

I definetely adknowledge that eircom won't change company policy for me, or even a few disgruntled customers who will pay extra. It doesn't mean for me that they are right to do it, nor that I should lay down and accept it unconditionally.

If there is lower-hanging fruit (which there probably is) then I will be like an apple which hits eircom on the head. If enough apples fall, it will make a difference.

The costs would only be many times higher than a normal engineer install only because of the opportunity cost for eircom (engineer's time possibly wasted etc.). But eircom are unfair to exclude people who want to pay IMO. I won't change my mind about that.