IrelandOffline vs eircom on Last Word on TodayFM at 1820 tonight

damien

In response to eircom's latest marketing statement today, IrelandOffline will be on the Last Word "discussing" this with David McRedmond.

fatherdougalmag

How can McR question demand at this stage? The very existence of IrelandOffline quantifies the demand. They reckon they need to generate demand and then supply the service? As for his guff about permission to gain access to new builds?!

Well done IOFL and Damien.

mike65

I had to laugh at McRedmonds plea - "lets talk about the good news, its Christmas!"

Mike.

damien

Damnit. I just thought of a good counter "Then stop being a scrooge David"

lucernarian

Where can those who missed the show hear it?

That would've been a good counter allright. Mabye you could arrange another interview next week and use it then?:D

Heard it.

McRedmond never comes up with anything new does he?
Same old Garbage as a year or two ago.
He shouldnt be telling Ireland off line to do his marketing for him.
He shouldnt be using take up as an excuse to evade Eircoms responsibilities.
They own the infrastructure.
The customers pay the rent.
It is incumbent on Eircom to ensure that the customer gets what they pay for and thats a line quality and broadband availability thats the same in Ballymegash as it is in Greystones.

rymus

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Where can those who missed the show hear it?

http://www.radioireland.ie/lastword/lastword.html

second half of todays show seems to be down at the moment...

Creamy Goodness

rymus wrote:

http://www.radioireland.ie/lastword/lastword.html

second half of todays show seems to be down at the moment...

it's working for me.

Creamy Goodness

oops i clicked the wrong one, was listening to wednesday's show. :eek:

jwt

Well done Damien


And many thanks for taking the interview at such short notice.


John

vito

rymus wrote:

http://www.radioireland.ie/lastword/lastword.html

second half of todays show seems to be down at the moment...

yep 404 file not found for second half...

zuma

Odd you think they would have it fixed by now!!!

Anyone got a clip of the interview???

eircomtribunal

Good coverage of IOFFL's excellent rebuke of Eircom's "we are so proud" claims on ENN:

"There is real momentum in the Irish broadband market," said David McRedmond, commercial director with Eircom. "It took eighteen months to reach the first milestone of 100k broadband connections by December 2004, but it's only taken twelve months to add the second 100k."

The telecoms operator also said that availability of DSL broadband in urban areas is now ahead of the EU average and forecast that by March 2006, Ireland will be level with other European nations in terms of availability in rural areas.

However, the lobby group Ireland Offline disputed Eircom's suggestion that the Republic is now on a level footing with other European countries in terms of broadband availability.

In a statement, the organisation said that while access to DSL services is now at 75 percent in Ireland, this compares with 100 percent availability in Northern Ireland and in the UK.

"One in five phonelines which are connected to a broadband exchange in Ireland still fail to get broadband. This is not on a par with EU," said John Timmons, vice-chairman of Irelandoffline.

Moreover, Damien Mulley, the group's chairman, said that going by current growth patterns, neither Minister Dempsey's or Eircom's targets for broadband connections are likely to be met.

"Being proud of 200,000 connections is bring proud of being second last in Europe for broadband, that's where we stand. To be on a par with the EU we need to have 400,000 connections today and 600,000 connections next Christmas. Nothing short of that should bring about pride. It's shameful," said Mulley.

What's ever more annoying me is that ComReg's propagandistic misinformation in their "Quarterly Lies Bulletin" still gets across to the journalists:

According to ComReg's latest study, which was released earlier this week, there was a 19 percent increase in broadband subscriptions in the three months to the end of September 2005. Moreover, the growth rate in broadband subscriptions over the last 12 months was 229 percent.

P.

Sponge Bob

229% of **** all is still **** all

Solair

The eircom guy talked about how they were one of the only telcos in europe that is experiencing organic growth in their access network. That means that eircom are seeing healthy revenues coming from first time connections / new connections.

This situation's very unlike what's going on in most other Western countries where organic growth is long gone out of the PSTN market. Most PSTN providers are loosing large numbers of customers to mobile, but also to cable and increasingly to VoIP over non-DSL products.

If eircom's still experiencing this kind of organic growth in the market it's no wonder that they're not all that concerned about DSL.

The only thing that will really get the access problem solved is when the cable companies get their act together and really start hurting eircom's subscriber base badly.

eircom will be forced to innovate and improve DSL services.


I would agree with the guy on the point that the internet in general in Ireland has been poorly marketed. However, this was mostly thanks to a lack luster performance from our big two telcos.. eircom and esat/BT Ireland , who together had an almost total monopoly on dial up / ISDN access for several key years.

High per min call costs and scary internet bills have put a lot of people off getting any form of internet access. The internet bug never got time to bite a large % of the Irish population.

Demand needs to be driven that's for sure, but I am not sure that eircom are the ones who are likely to be doing this.

I'd strongly welcome a big ISP or two to enter this market, perhaps on the back of one of the existing smaller players.

E.g. BT Yahoo on BT Ireland.
AOL or Wanadoo could easily enter using Digiweb or someone who could provide them with the infrastructual support.

The net needs a bit of hype alright, but I don't think our monopolist wannabe telco has any reason to do that all by itself right now.

I just don't think that the small companies have the marketing clout to really get the message out there. Even BT Ireland's internet ads are pretty pathetic compared to their UK counterpart's.

I can't believe that he accused a Ireland Off-Line of being nay sayers. The comment didn't even make any sense!

Well done Damian though. You defended your corner well and showed up slick PR for what it is - patronising rubbish!