IoffL are over-reacting

elexes

damien.m wrote:

Tell that to the folks in City Centre Dublin apartment blocks, tell that to Irish Times journalists living in swanky Dublin neighbourhoods, tell that to the folks out in Howth, tell that to those in Balbriggan, tell it to 25% of the population who will not be able to avail of these rollouts. That town thing is just great marketing.

i find it hard to believe that d1 / d2 lacks some sort of broadband considering i know of 5 hotspots with d1 /d2 address's

dont care about dublin tbh it gets more then enough of everthing and little is always done outside of the city .

cgarvey

elexes, I know of few address in d1 and d2 that can't get DSL, or any wireless service. It's true. We've no acurate way of measuring how widespread it is, but it certainly is the case.

wexfordman, that is a good analogy. Politicians have used that example as well, in the media.. BB is a core part of our supposed knowledge-based society, and is as important as electrification, or the P&T roll out was back when they were first started.

Adam, I think it's more likely to be Phil, than Noel to be honest, although I only have reduced access to IP address information.

A huge problem in this debate about demand, is that there are no verifiable figures available. eircom & ComReg are happy to bandy about the 90% figure, which is completely meaningless when examined properly. What's so commercially sensitive about the failure rate on a given exchange, that eircom hide behind? Why can't we have verified figures of the number of lines that can and can't avail of a BB service. Why aren't ComReg doing anything to stop the deliberate misrepresenatation to consumers, governments and EU reporting bodies? The only meaningful measurement of availability is the number of people/houses that can avail (see the way that word is like 'availability'?) of BB. Of what use, to anyone at all, is including a line connected to a BB enabled exchange when they can't get BB on it?

oscarBravo

rmc wrote:

i work in Blackrock, in a small engineering company.

Do you have broadband?

Blaster99

A problem for eircom is that because of their cynical and opportunistic increase of the line rental a few years ago, most people simply equate eircom with "ripoff". It's curious to see that the wireless operators get so much traction when there's ADSL including line rental that costs about the same and is generally much more reliable and a lot easier to install. It's common to see people over on the Broadband forum saying that they're looking for something that doesn't use a landline because they don't want to pay the line rental. eircom is simply pricing themselves out of the landline market and I would think that's more of a problem then a perceived lack of demand.

maxheadroom

Over reacting? The broadband deficit is affecting business decisions every day:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/05/dixons_ditches_realworld/ wrote:

Dixons Store Group (DSG) is pulling Dixons off British High Streets - the brand will continue, but only as a website. All Dixons stores will be rebranded as "Currys.digital" shops, starting in early May.

The programme to rebrand and rebadge 190 stores will cost about £7m, but will deliver annual savings of £3m. The change will make Currys a chain of 550 stores. Most Dixons staff are expected to move across.

The eight Dixons stores in Ireland are keeping the brand because, a spokesman told us, broadband access is not so widespread there.

watty

eircomtribunal wrote:

Unfortunately you are not correct here, watty. Look up the OECD stats here (It's an Excel file):
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/19/43/34082819.xls
Ireland's DSL coverage is, according to this OECD data, at 90%!
Despite my best efforts, the OECD is not in a position to use other information than the data "supplied by the national regulators and the incumbents" for these stats.
P.

I agree that high price and poor availability reduces demand.

I make mistakes. However there was SOMETHING that Comreg/Eircom was measuring different to make it look like we have more BB than we have as they did not measure it the same way as other countries reporting to EU or OECD?

ednwireland

rmc wrote:

Answer me this?
Why in the locations where there is BB, have people not taken it up?
... AND DON'T SAY PRICE
Ans: The demand is not there.

i live on an enabled exchange in donegal, i have been badgering eircom (and local wireless co. who are finally starting to put in infrastructure i may be able to see) for 3 years and my line still fails, it has a minor short according to eircom engineer line test therfore i cant, maybe if i stopped spending money on dialup i could send some to africa.

Judge

bk wrote:

in areas where NTL is available there is a 15% penetration just for NTL, this is about European average.

What is the source for this figure of 15%?

byte

ednwireland wrote:

i live on an enabled exchange in donegal, i have been badgering eircom (and local wireless co. who are finally starting to put in infrastructure i may be able to see) for 3 years and my line still fails, it has a minor short according to eircom engineer line test therfore i cant, maybe if i stopped spending money on dialup i could send some to africa.

Heh, the local wireless company, is that NWE or whatever they're called? I rang them about 2 months ago, regarding getting BB for my sister who is living in Barnes, and they have some sort of mast on Barnesmore Gap, though I was told they were working on it and it should be running in 2 weeks. That was over 6 weeks ago now.

Just wondering if there is another company you're referring to.

paulm17781

Judge wrote:

What is the source for this figure of 15%?

I think it is number of cable broadband subscribers over number of cable broadband enabled houses.

Sponge Bob

Judge wrote:

What is the source for this figure of 15%?

NTL press releases this year , BB customers as % of homes passed by BB enabled cables. 15% or so. Thats because its cheap unlike eircom line rental

ai ing

OT: Just to let you know that if it is NWE your going for to be aware that the customer and technical support there is absoluteley dire.

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054883904

cgarvey

Sponge Bob wrote:

NTL press releases this year , BB customers as % of homes passed by BB enabled cables. 15% or so. Thats because its cheap unlike eircom line rental

Well there's still a line rental charge, so I think it's a combination of :

1. ntl Basic (Analogue) TV is required to receive BB. Cost is €19.99 vs. eircom line rental of €24.18.
2. ntl standard BB for €19.99 (always on 1Mb) vs. eircom €29.99 (always 1Mb)
3. A shift in tradition of always having a land line. Now most people want a TV "line", and less so a phone line now with the high penetration of mobiles (even if they are more expensive)

bk

cgarvey wrote:

Well there's still a line rental charge, so I think it's a combination of :

1. ntl Basic (Analogue) TV is required to receive BB. Cost is €19.99 vs. eircom line rental of €24.18.
2. ntl standard BB for €19.99 (always on 1Mb) vs. eircom €29.99 (always 1Mb)
3. A shift in tradition of always having a land line. Now most people want a TV "line", and less so a phone line now with the high penetration of mobiles (even if they are more expensive)

Plus NTL offer first 12 months TV free if you are a new customer.

ednwireland

byte wrote:

Heh, the local wireless company, is that NWE or whatever they're called? I rang them about 2 months ago, regarding getting BB for my sister who is living in Barnes, and they have some sort of mast on Barnesmore Gap, though I was told they were working on it and it should be running in 2 weeks. That was over 6 weeks ago now.

Just wondering if there is another company you're referring to.

yep thats them all i would say in their defence is that they are a very small company and guess what they cant keep up with demand they have put on 100's of users on their network in the last couple of months. i think they are struggling to get the time to sort out the mast at barnesmore i got them a hotel on the lake and they havent done that yet either. i have met one of the owners on several occasions and up until recently he was dealing with customers, installing connections planning and upgrading the network. they have recruited a couple of staff since though. but anyway as soon as they get mention they put a mast up they are flooded with demand.theyvw just put extra backhaul in letterkenny and derry as well. i'd guess youve more chance of getting their broadband than eircoms out there.

Foxwood

bk wrote:

Look at it this way, as of June 2005 the UK had a BB penetration of 13.5%, compared to just 4.3% in Ireland. Now we share the same language as the UK, we get paid almost the same as them, we have a very similar education system, we have a very similar culture, we share a very similar heritage, we live only a 100 miles from the UK mainland and we even share a part of the island with them. Yet we are way behind the UK in terms of BB penetration.

The only logic explanation for this is that BB isn't as widely available as in the UK and that it is more expensive.

Given that DSL is a distance limited technology, there is another rather more salient explanation - despite all the similiarities, our population distribution is quite different. Because of a rather different social history, the UKs rural population tends to be concentrated in villages, rather than scattered up and down boreens. And while over 40% of ireland population lives within 100km of Dublin city, the actual "city" with concentrated population is actually smaller than most large UK cities in the UK (in no small part due to the fact that they actually have real "local government" in the UK, but that's another thread). The rest of this "Greater Dublin" population tends to live in scattered developments that are often too far from existing infrastructure for DSL to work. If developers tried to sell new houses that didn't have electricty, they wouldn't get far, but so far, the market isn't exactly demanding that developers sell "broadband ready" houses, so it's not surprising that Irelands BB infrastructure is still behind the curve.

Foxwood

cgarvey wrote:

Well there's still a line rental charge, so I think it's a combination of :

1. ntl Basic (Analogue) TV is required to receive BB. Cost is €19.99 vs. eircom line rental of €24.18.
2. ntl standard BB for €19.99 (always on 1Mb) vs. eircom €29.99 (always 1Mb)
3. A shift in tradition of always having a land line. Now most people want a TV "line", and less so a phone line now with the high penetration of mobiles (even if they are more expensive)

The NTL charge is a fixed charge - you actually get something useful for your €19.99 basic charge (useful a very large percentage of the relevant population, that is). For your €24.18, you don't actually get anything useful, except the right to spend even more money making telephone calls. (I suppose you do get incoming calls for "free", but I don't know many people who ever got a phone just so that they could recieve calls :-) )

Foxwood

bk wrote:

Actually in the areas that NTL operate, they have a very high penetration rate of about 15%, the same as the UK.

What's the penetration rate for DSL among customers that are actually capable of receiving it?

It seems to me that you're calculating NTLs 15% based only on those households that are passed by broadband-enabled cable, but you're calculating DSL penetration based on every household in the country even those that are physically too far from an exchange to be able to avail of the service? That's a bit of a double standard!

I'm no fan of eircom, but if you're too far from an exchange, you're too far from an exchange. Should eircom have to spend say 5K on delivering broadband to 3 customers that are 6 miles from a rural exchange?

watty

It's been done in NI (BB for everyone by BT). Though I wouldn't move BACK to get BB. (or for anything else).

As to how many % people WITHIN 5km of a ADSL enabled exchange can actually GET BB at all, is unknown. Anyone passed by NTL digital BB enabled cable CAN get it.

For most people the only hope really will be wireless.

byte

ednwireland wrote:

yep thats them all i would say in their defence is that they are a very small company and guess what they cant keep up with demand they have put on 100's of users on their network in the last couple of months. i think they are struggling to get the time to sort out the mast at barnesmore i got them a hotel on the lake and they havent done that yet either. i have met one of the owners on several occasions and up until recently he was dealing with customers, installing connections planning and upgrading the network. they have recruited a couple of staff since though. but anyway as soon as they get mention they put a mast up they are flooded with demand.theyvw just put extra backhaul in letterkenny and derry as well. i'd guess youve more chance of getting their broadband than eircoms out there.

I think I know of the hotel you mention (HP), and I believe they've been mad after broadband since the new building was put up. All hotel rooms are networked too. I'd imagine the hotel would want plenty of bandwidth to cover all the bedrooms, though I guess not all network points will be used simultaneously.

Sorry for going OT btw. Just interested in the progress of the mast in question.

Foxwood

watty wrote:

As to how many % people WITHIN 5km of a ADSL enabled exchange can actually GET BB at all, is unknown. Anyone passed by NTL digital BB enabled cable CAN get it.

NTL have lots of customers on digital enabled cable that can't get broadband from them. You exclude those NTL customers, but count all of Eircoms customers.

bk

Foxwood wrote:

What's the penetration rate for DSL among customers that are actually capable of receiving it?

AFAIR about 11%

Foxwood wrote:

It seems to me that you're calculating NTLs 15% based only on those households that are passed by broadband-enabled cable, but you're calculating DSL penetration based on every household in the country even those that are physically too far from an exchange to be able to avail of the service? That's a bit of a double standard!

That is unfair, I was giving the NTL number not to criticise Eircom, rather to make the point that there is great demand for BB in Ireland and the major problem is availability. Go back and read the thread from the start.

Actually this proves my point further, Irish BB penetration is about 4% nationally, yet amongst people served by NTL it is 15% and served by Eircom it is about 11%. Logically this proves that there is great demand for BB (about 15% is EU average) but that the overall Irish BB penetration rate is so low due to lack of availability.

Also IMO the 4% difference between NTL and Eircom is due to price (NTL being cheaper), which proves that price is also an important factor.

Foxwood wrote:

I'm no fan of eircom, but if you're too far from an exchange, you're too far from an exchange. Should eircom have to spend say 5K on delivering broadband to 3 customers that are 6 miles from a rural exchange?

Frankly yes, we pay the highest line rental in Europe, why shouldn't we expect a high quality of service like the rest of Europe? If BT can deliver BB at a minimum of 512k to 99.8% of the population of Northern Ireland, why shouldn't we expect the same?

Foxwood

bk wrote:

Frankly yes, we pay the highest line rental in Europe, why shouldn't we expect a high quality of service like the rest of Europe? If BT can deliver BB at a minimum of 512k to 99.8% of the population of Northern Ireland, why shouldn't we expect the same?

Personally, I'd rather pay lower line rental, and let the people who want to live in a nice green field whistle for their broadband. I'm already paying for twice the average amount of roads so that these people can live up boreens, I don't think I should have to subsidise their brodband too.

Foxwood

bk wrote:

Also IMO the 4% difference between NTL and Eircom is due to price (NTL being cheaper), which proves that price is also an important factor.

I think the flyers that NTL are reputed to stick in peoples letter boxes when an area is enabled probably has something to do with it too.

If people don't know about it, price isn't a major disinicentive - after all, the largest single provider actually has the highest prices.

bk

Foxwood wrote:

Personally, I'd rather pay lower line rental, and let the people who want to live in a nice green field whistle for their broadband. I'm already paying for twice the average amount of roads so that these people can live up boreens, I don't think I should have to subsidise their brodband too.

Lets see, how about over 1,000 new apartments built just 4 miles from O'Connell Street which are on an exchange that isn't DSL enabled yet.

I can tell you dozens of stories about colleagues, family and friends living inside the M50 who still can't get DSL.

Not exactly living up boreens.

The real problem is that despite us having the highest line rental in Europe, Eircom spends one of the lowest figures in Europe on infrastructure. The majority of your line rental is going directly to pay off the dividends to Eircoms owners while the network is falling apart from under investment.

There is no reason why we shouldn't have lower line rentals AND a world class telco infrastructure, just like our cousins have up north with BT.

I think the flyers that NTL are reputed to stick in peoples letter boxes when an area is enabled probably has something to do with it too.

Compared to a massive national TV, Radio, Billboard and newspaper advertising campaign by Eircom. You do know that Eircom is one of the largest advertisers in Ireland and RTE's biggest advertiser.

Also Eircom flyer DSL enabled numbers via bills, just the same as NTL.

If people don't know about it, price isn't a major disinicentive

What? If it costs more then you can afford or are willing to pay, of course it is a disincentive.

eircomtribunal

Foxwood wrote:

Given that DSL is a distance limited technology, there is another rather more salient explanation - despite all the similiarities, our population distribution is quite different.......so it's not surprising that Irelands BB infrastructure is still behind the curve.

There is no question that Ireland's population pattern is different, but that is no excuse or explanation for the extraordinary Irish Internet and broadband failure (an English speaking, young, educated population in a Northerly climate nearly at the bottom of the league with Greece).
Ireland failed to keep up with Europe's level of Internet penetration/usage long before any infra-structural DSL hindrances could have had a bearing, because with modem dial-up that did not matter.
Our dispersed settlement pattern is a challenge to be overcome, just as other countries had their own specific challenges, and it does not hold water as an excuse.

P.

eircomtribunal

Foxwood wrote:

It seems to me that you're calculating NTLs 15% based only on those households that are passed by broadband-enabled cable, but you're calculating DSL penetration based on every household in the country even those that are physically too far from an exchange to be able to avail of the service? That's a bit of a double standard!

You have a point there:
NTL has a 15% broadband take-up of its broadband enabled lines. In Eircom's case, with a realistic 65% DSL availability on the telephone lines, they have an estimated 1.3 million broadband enabled lines. On them they have 200,000 DSL subscriptions, which is a level of 15%. Just the same as NTL, when a likewise comparison is done.
But:
We can assume that in the areas where NTL offer their service there are also DSL users; so in those area we do probably have a much higher broadband take-up rate than elsewhere. Don't know about figures, though.
P.

Blaster99

eircomtribunal wrote:

There is no question that Ireland's population pattern is different, but that is no excuse or explanation for the extraordinary Irish Internet and broadband failure (an English speaking, young, educated population in a Northerly climate nearly at the bottom of the league with Greece).
Ireland failed to keep up with Europe's level of Internet penetration/usage long before any infra-structural DSL hindrances could have had a bearing, because with modem dial-up that did not matter.
Our dispersed settlement pattern is a challenge to be overcome, just as other countries had their own specific challenges, and it does not hold water as an excuse.

P.

But is the population pattern very different from NI? I doubt it.

You can't compare with the whole UK for a number of reasons: population density and size of market being the most important.

oscarBravo

Foxwood wrote:

Personally, I'd rather pay lower line rental, and let the people who want to live in a nice green field whistle for their broadband. I'm already paying for twice the average amount of roads so that these people can live up boreens, I don't think I should have to subsidise their brodband too.

Personally, I'd rather pay less tax, and let the people who want to live in cities whistle for their trams and metros.

But that's another conversation.

watty

The M50 was built as a Dublin bypass, but the guys with brown envelopes ensured it is full of Dublin local traffic.

That is another story too.

From earliest days Post Service, Telegraphs and later Phone was regarded as USO, Universal Service Obligation.

Webpages, Email, VOIP and file transfer has/is replacing Telegraph/telex, Phone, Fax, letters and mail order catalogs. Logically there must be at least USO on 28K Dialup with flat rate access (There is neither) and ideally USO in Broadband (At least 156k always on, flat rate).

To suggest that it be limited to a a few city centres is laughable.