Eircom's definition of broadband (not)

jlawler

After a protracted problem trying to sort out my broadband connection with UTV I found out some really interesting information. Eircom define braodband as anything greater than 256kB download. So even though I was paying for 3MB and was barely eeking out 650KB they would still come back to UTV and tell them the line was Ok and they are allowed to do this.

I had the line into my house replaced but I am only of the root cause of the problem because the engineer doing the work told me that there was problems getting broadband in my area because the capacitance of the lines is too high. Otherwise I would still be in the dark about the reason for the slow download speed so despite the fact that there is nothing I could do about it (its > 256kB after all) I am informed and frustrated as opposed to being purely frustrated.

There were problems with the line apart from the slow download. While UTV are not blameless in the way they handled the fault logging when I did get to speak to a manager he refunded me the 9 months I had been paying for the higher subscription and while being out of contract. This was because of the failure to get the problem fixed promptly and the the fact that I wasn't getting the serrvice I was paying for. In fairness to UTV they do have people who seem to know what they are talking about and can answer technical problems on the other end of the line.

Now its all fixed I am still at best only getting a whopping 650KB from my braodband. I am not living in the boondocks as I am only 15miles from Dublin city centre. Hows that for a digital hub!

The problems with logging the fault occured because as I selected UTV for broadband and phone I no longer have the same account number with Eircom and I didn't know what it is and neither didUTV. Everytime UTV tried to log the fault on the line fault (N.B.not a broadband fault) with the only Ac No. I had (the old one) it got rejected by Eircom as invalid. Eventually they were able to dig out the new number. Also despite the fact that there is a service agreement for Eircom to fix faults within 5 working days and in this case they took 10 there was actually nothing UTV could do. Eircom plumb the depths of worthlessness once again.

So a couple of questions.
1. How many people are paying for services they cannot recieve i.e. they are paying the higher tariff but their download speeds are greater 256kB but less then the basic tariff.
2. Can we do a poll of what download speeds are receiving?

Justin Lawler

uncle_sam_ie

At least your getting this crapy BB service. I'm stuck with Dial-up ISDN and am paying two to three times more for it.

watty

Because of nature of Internet everyone would have to test at same times an identical selection from an identical "basket" of 10 or so UK, Irish and USA sites. Any other "download speed" comparison is useless and very misleading.

SkepticOne

jlawler wrote:

Now its all fixed I am still at best only getting a whopping 650KB from my braodband. I am not living in the boondocks as I am only 15miles from Dublin city centre. Hows that for a digital hub!

Yeah, a lot of the copper infrastructure even in cities is not appropriate for full speed broadband. This has been known about for a long time.

Although it is unrealistic to expect the infrastructure to improve, a partial solution would be to inform people that they won't be getting advertised speeds if they go ahead with the service.

crawler

The VAST amount of DSL broadband in Ireland is Rate Adaptive (RA)...which means, well, it adapts the rate based on the copper quality.....

Old news but not something you are going to see in any eircom ad I guess

jlawler

But is 256kB not outrageously low!
And of course it hasn't kept up with the advances in technology. Eircom squats like a golden Buddah on the copper infrastructure.

There was a good paper by Demos (the UK think tank) in 2002 which looked at their broadband access. It came to the conclusion that the only way to deal with the problem was the breakup of BT (see links at the bottom). The bastion of the free market the US did this with Bell years ago (although how effectively is questionable). The initial privatisation of Eircom and its subsequent history has been a litany of mistakes that have been fundamentally bad for the Irish consumer and national competitiveness. A weak regulator just compounds the problem. It is notable that the same approach has not been taken with the ESB where they have set up a separate company (ESB networks) to run the infrastructure. It is telling that while the ESB has almost 100% of residential users they only supply about 40% of Industry capacity.

Justin

http://www.demos.co.uk/thepoliticsofbandwidth_pdf_media_public.aspx

Good links on rural broadband and its implications
http://www.demos.co.uk/RuralBroadband_pdf_media_public.aspx

The social implications for Broadband
http://www.demos.co.uk/BroadbandBritain_pdf_media_public.aspx

Blaster99

No, 256kbps is a feature that's not used by eircom. The fact that RADSL can work down to 256kbps is good, not bad. What's bad is that eircom will not let people who could have 256kbps have it because their line test barrier is set too high.

Forget speeds checks, see what your modem syncs at. If it's syncing at less than you're paying for, then pay less.

crawler

Blaster99 wrote:

No, 256kbps is a feature that's not used by eircom. The fact that RADSL can work down to 256kbps is good, not bad. What's bad is that eircom will not let people who could have 256kbps have it because their line test barrier is set too high.

Forget speeds checks, see what your modem syncs at. If it's syncing at less than you're paying for, then pay less.

Correct - my point was purely technical....

Getting broadband at a lower speed is far far better than failing for a higher speed....people are only charged for the speed they can achieve anyway....

jlawler

Blaster99 wrote:

What's bad is that eircom will not let people who could have 256kbps have it because their line test barrier is set too high.

If you set the bar even lower Eircom will just say "thank you very much" and underperform even more. We want better performance not just a load more wriggle room for them. If the bar was set at a point they couldn't deliver you might see them invest in the infrastructure rather than just milk it.

Justin

Aidan1

Yeah, a lot of the copper infrastructure even in cities is not appropriate for full speed broadband. This has been known about for a long time.

By 'infrastructure', do you mean the trunk network itself or are you referring to local loop from your local exchange out?

watty

Ultimately the Bell split up failed. They are all almost back together. You CAN stick humpty dumpty back together.

I don't think the cut off level makes any difference to Eircom's Infrastructure investment at all.

They should allow 256 and allow one or two channel ISDN always on Internet at less than BB rate for those that can get ISDN but not adsl.

And ofcourse true flat rate dialup with a 1/2 price second line rental.

But we all know this. Eircom will do none of it unless forced by regulator with very big sharp teeth.

SkepticOne

Aidan1 wrote:

By 'infrastructure', do you mean the trunk network itself or are you referring to local loop from your local exchange out?

In this instance I mean the local loop.

SkepticOne

jlawler wrote:

If you set the bar even lower Eircom will just say "thank you very much" and underperform even more. We want better performance not just a load more wriggle room for them. If the bar was set at a point they couldn't deliver you might see them invest in the infrastructure rather than just milk it.

Tbh I don't think it would make any difference. If Eircom were forced to only offer DSL if speeds over, say, 3mb/s were guaranteed then they would simply offer DSL to a smaller number of people. They were quite happy to not offer DSL at all, years after it was available in other countries and then offer it at an outrageous price for a couple of years after its introduction. Incidently, when it first came out, they would not offer DSL unless the line synced up to over 1mb/s despite the service being only available at 512k.

eircomtribunal

SkepticOne wrote:

They were quite happy to not offer DSL at all, years after it was available in other countries and then offer it at an outrageous price for a couple of years after its introduction.

Reminds me of the cartoon we ran on eircomtribunal.com about Eircom's "i-stream" DSL offer.

And of course Etain's memorable comment on the consequences of such pricing: "While DSL roll-out is proceeding rapidly, take up is slower with some 2000 lines ordered by the end of October"
From the foreword by Etain Doyle of ComReg's Quarterly Market Commentary, December 2002.

P.