"All upgraded by the end of the year"

Zith

Hi,

Rang the eircom broadband number yesterday to ask if my exchange will ever be upgraded. Was surprised to get an answer that "all exchanges will be upgraded by the end of the year". Wishful thinking I presume? The sales rep sounded very sure of this. Is this the latest stunt to keep customers away from alternatives?

Also said the next lot of upgrades are due September 30th.

/Zith

jor el

It'd be nice if they did, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Sales people have been know to lie about such things before.

kaizersoze

I can smell the sales bs from here:)
Not a chance

Sponge Bob

Wrong.

there is 'a chance' that a program will be in announced and place 'by the end of the year' to upgrade the remaining eircom exchanges , 600-700 of them, and put DSL capability in .

There is no chance that such a program will be complete before the end of 2007 but Noel Dempsey is more than prepared to spend the €50m that Dave Mc Redmond told the Dáil in June that it would cost in order to save his political career ....that figure was €200m only a year ago.

Chairman: In your submission there is a sketch indicating that in March 25% of lines could not have broadband but in your answer to the question you say that in June 2006, 85% of network lines are now broadband enabled. Which is correct?
Mr. McRedmond: We say 85% of lines are within broadband exchanges. We used that figure because that is the only figure operators use throughout Europe when they talk about coverage. The average coverage for Europe is 87%; we are at 85% coverage. However, all telcos throughout Europe have an issue in that even though broadband is available, some lines will always be too far from the exchange or there might be some technical issue in the line. In this regard mention was made of carriers.
Every operator has those issues. No operator publishes what is called the line failure rate, so we do not have a comparison there. However, the difference between the 75% and 85% is accounted for by those lines we are not absolutely sure can carry broadband. We are sure that 75% can carry it and we are also sure that 85% are covered by broadband, using the EU definition and the same definition that every other company uses.
Deputy Broughan: Eircom says in its submission that the 15% represents 1,500 sites.
Mr. McRedmond: That is the last 15%, which is not covered. It accounts for a huge number of sites. That is correct because we have an extremely dispersed population. In Ireland there is one third the population per exchange as compared to other countries and that just reflects population dispersion. This is not an easy issue. We have identified the cost of enabling those exchanges as being €50 million. As Dr. Nolan has told the committee, we have called several times for Government to work with us to enable all those——

Only a few months back they were looking for €5BN through the TIF, €50m is about the cost of one Bypass or a few decent water schemes or sewage schemes.

At a cost of €50m I'd say its game on but if your line is crap now it will still be crap then I must warn you

smellslikeshoes

I was told the same thing a few times last year, Its the usual eircom spin to try keep customers and make money in the short term.I would love if it was the new leadership taking the bull by the horns but I doubt it.

Laguna

Ah it's all a load of cock, no matter if they enable all the exchanges, if you're a rural dweller, you're going to be beyond the 4.5km DSL limit and therefore you still won't be able to get broadband even though they upgraded 'your' exchange.

Creamy Goodness

Laguna wrote:

Ah it's all a load of cock, no matter if they enable all the exchanges, if you're a rural dweller, you're going to be beyond the 4.5km DSL limit and therefore you still won't be able to get broadband even though they upgraded 'your' exchange.

well that's not eircom's fault really, unless you're talking about the updating every exchange to adsl2?