Where's ComReg? Residents wait over a year for phonelines

damien

Residents in luxury housing estate on hold for phone line

RESIDENTS of a luxury housing development have put out a distress call after being left hanging on the line for a year for their Eircom telephones.

The hi-spec homes in an upmarket estate outside Cork City have five bedrooms, landscaped gardens, CCTV security, central vacuum systems, whirlpool baths and satellite and internet capability, but all their owners want is a humble land line.

Despite repeated queries and pleas to Eircom to get them connected, however, all they have heard from the phone company is “we’re busy, please hold”.

To make matters more frustrating, neighbours who moved in to the first 40 homes in the Heatherfield estate at Waterfall, which went on sale two years ago at €630,000 each, were hooked up without delay, leaving the final phase of 16 houses in a communications wilderness.

“It’s like Eircom have gone away and forgotten about us only we know they can’t have forgotten because we keep reminding them,” said Celine O’Donoghue, who moved in last December.

“The irony is, Eircom said I could keep my old number when I moved, which I thought would be very handy but a number’s not much good to me without a phone.”

Eircom claims to be able to connect up new owners of existing homes in as little as one day where a phone line is already in place. Its promotional literature continues: “If your new home doesn’t have a working telephone line, your connection will take approximately up to 20 working days (or longer in some cases during promotional periods) for your Eircom phone line to be fully activated.”

Company spokesman Paul Bradley said that in practice, about 70% of phone lines requiring field work were completed within 28 days. He said of Heatherfield: “It’s an unusual case.

“The first part of the estate was provided by telephone lines that came from the original exchange. As the next phase of the estate was built, it required more lines which necessitated the installation of an RSU, a small local exchange,” he said. “This is in the process of being built. We’re looking at September at this stage.”

Residents rejected the explanation given the small scale of the work involved and said they had already been given different timelines ranging from next October to another six months.

Sponge Bob

damien.m wrote:

“The first part of the estate was provided by telephone lines that came from the original exchange. As the next phase of the estate was built, it required more lines which necessitated the installation of an RSU, a small local exchange,” he said. “This is in the process of being built. We’re looking at September at this stage.”

And no broadband for any of them because eircom do not DSL enable these RSU s. If I were an existing occupier I would get the BB in as fast as possible while its possible ...if its possible

The worst thing is that this estate went through planning in 2003 and on sale with builders on site in 2004 and eircom knew the demand back then. Nevertheless there is no copper out there. In a way they are 3 years waiting

RSU (remote subscriber unit) = Fibre Cab= Sub Exchange

AndrewMc

Paul Bradley wrote:

It’s an unusual case.

Sponge Bob wrote:

The worst thing is that this estate went through planning in 2003 and on sale with builders on site in 2004 and eircom knew the demand back then. Nevertheless there is no copper out there. In a way they are 3 years waiting

To say that it's unusual is misleading at best. This sounds like exactly what happened us in Athy two years ago, with planning and construction started in 2001, some houses connected immediately, later ones requested lines in 2003 and only set up in 2004 (just barely, December, and only because IOffL got me on de rayjo). It's also true that in our case they didn't set up the brand-new RSU for DSL, either.

So two years on, millions spent on Comreg, they publish a USO without the O, and the situation hasn't changed. I'm shocked. Really. :mad:

Foxwood

As a matter of interest, are there any regulations about a developers responsibility in these cases? Are developers allowed to sell houses that don't have electricity or water, or are the ESB just terribly more efficient than eircom in this regard?

You can bet that if developers weren't allowed to sell houses that didn't have a working phone line in them (on the social necessity basis of access to emergency services, perhaps), that these problems would never occur.

Sponge Bob

Foxwood wrote:

As a matter of interest, are there any regulations about a developers responsibility in these cases? Are developers allowed to sell houses that don't have electricity or water, or are the ESB just terribly more efficient than eircom in this regard?

No. They are in the building regulations.

You can bet that if developers weren't allowed to sell houses that didn't have a working phone line in them (on the social necessity basis of access to emergency services, perhaps), that these problems would never occur.

That argument is very 1980s , and correct for its time. We have the mobile telephone for the purpose or making emergency calls nowadays and the mobile telephone can make an emergency call even if out of contract where an eircom phone has to be in contract otherwise it does not work at all.

Eircom must provide a line within a year of being asked by the occupant . The developer should also be allowed to ask them to install like the developer arranges water and electricity and hands them over working .

Solair

The ESB is generally much more proactive about network planning and actually does generally get stuff connected up in plenty of time. Also, ESB takes no nonsense from developers. If you're building an estate of houses, you provide everything for them i.e. ducts, spaces for their equipment etc to exactly their specs or you will have huge problems.

Part of this problem is also being caused by bits of Cork or bits of Dublin being located in small towns that shoudn't really be in the commuter belt.

eircom's local network is often simply not capable of keeping pace with the developements and it can take a while for Ericsson or Alcatel to deliver the required equipment to expand it.

It's all down to poor planning, both local authority and eircom planning

Foxwood

Solair wrote:

The ESB is generally much more proactive about network planning and actually does generally get stuff connected up in plenty of time. Also, ESB takes no nonsense from developers. If you're building an estate of houses, you provide everything for them i.e. ducts, spaces for their equipment etc to exactly their specs or you will have huge problems.

In other words, regulations or no regulations, you can't sell a house without electricity, because, even in todays ridiculous housing market, nobody would buy it, but you can sell a house without a phone, because customers don't think it's important enough to kill the deal.

Who's problem is that?

jwt

On the otherside of the argument, having broadband in your house out my direction adds 2.5% to the value when selling!

So getting broadband installed into your house could be worth 10K on a 400K house.

John

AndrewMc

Foxwood wrote:

In other words, regulations or no regulations, you can't sell a house without electricity, because, even in todays ridiculous housing market, nobody would buy it, but you can sell a house without a phone, because customers don't think it's important enough to kill the deal.

Who's problem is that?

To be fair, despite all the publicity, people are still taken by surprise to find there's no phone line, and none coming. Just like electricity - people assume it'll work from day one. Would anyone think to add "check for telephone exchange" to their snaglist?

Edit: And while I think of it, people (like me) were told by a Certain Monopoly it'd only be a few days to connect, not finding out until much much later that wasn't the case at all.

Solair

It's absolutely nuts..
eircom lines need to go in, regardless of what you say about eircom its lines give access to a vast array of operators.

Likewise, local cable operator needs to get access.

Foxwood

AndrewMc wrote:

To be fair, despite all the publicity, people are still taken by surprise to find there's no phone line, and none coming. Just like electricity - people assume it'll work from day one. Would anyone think to add "check for telephone exchange" to their snaglist?

I get the impression that, while people may be surprised to find that there might be a delay getting a phone line, they do expect that they will have to order one, and that they don't expect to pick up the phone and use it when they first walk in the door. I've never met anyone who thought that they'd have to order an ESB connection - when you move into a new home, you expect to turn on the light switch and have the lights come on.

Even if the developer had told customers that they wouldn't get a phone line for 15 months, the development would still have sold out. In those circumstances, my sympathy for the homeowners is somewhat lmited.