Farmers Journal Campaign For Broadband In Rural Ireland

Galen

The Farmers Journal have started a campaign for broadband in rural Ireland. All they ask is that we put our signature on the letter in the paper, I have attacted a copy of that letter for anyone to print off, sign and send to the Farmers Journal.

Email: editor@journal.ie with the subject line: What about us?
Post to: The Irish Farmers Journal, Irish Farm Centre, Bluebell, Dublin 12
Or: Drop off letter at the Farmers Journal stand at the International Ploughing Championship.Journal Broadband Campaign.jpg

Sponge Bob

nobody wil lpay a bling bit of heed unles you cc each and every email to the 2 chief recalcitrants they being

minister@dcmnr.ie and minister@pobail.ie (or is that aire@pobail.ie )

otherwise they will pretend they do not know and in Dempseys case he will think country people have no computers....never mind th'oul email

watty

I think almost ALL the Farmers have to have computers to track their EU payments and cows etc and access the Taigus web site etc. Probabily more farmers than corner shops have them now.

Galen

It's not too easy to look at anything online when your stuck at 25 kbps because eircom has left you with a carrier line. I am one of the lucky few with a standard line 48 kbps max. I have a least 3 neighbours stuck on carrier lines, my nearest neighbour applied for isdn but failed because of the carrier line. So even if our local exchange was upgraded we would probably have difficulty getting phone lines passed.

Sponge Bob

Galen

every country boreen in Ireland is carrier lined to the hilt. Some like you or I are lucky and could get BB (were it available) because through luck we have our own copper pair to the exchange.

The treatment of rural dwellers whereby many are paying full line rental of €24.20 for 12k or 16k mega shared crapheaps is a disgrace.

Rural people who do not have their own lines and have a rotten crapheap capable of 1/4 or 1/3 of what a proper lines should do are simply being ripped off. If the line will only do 1/4 of what it should do then you should pay 1/4 of the line rental.

In addition they should have FREE eircom flatrate becuase they are FORCED to spend an inordinate amount of time online because their line is so bad.

Once there is a financial incentive to eircom to fix lines and give people an adequate service on a copper pair the network will be fixed fairly sharpish . As it is they can defraud people with the knowing connivance of Dempsey and Comreg .

Dempsey will (always) attempt to blame Comreg and the .com crash of 2000 for his many many weaknesses as a minister but Dempsey is also working on a COMMUNICATIONS ACT where he could enshrine the legal principle that your pay for what you get .

*Reduce the line rental to what the line actually IS
*Give free flatrate to the customer while that reduction is in force.

watty

Eircom lose money every time a Dialup user moves to Broadband so why should they do anything? What would it be 220Million p.a. loss if EVERY dialup user changed to Eircom Broadband?

Foxwood

watty wrote:

Eircom lose money every time a Dialup user moves to Broadband so why should they do anything? What would it be 220Million p.a. loss if EVERY dialup user changed to Eircom Broadband?

That's a load of crap. Eircom charge €29.99 for eircom net anytime. They charge €29.99, €39.99 or €54.45 for broadband.

In the vast majority of cases, people moving from dialup to broadband spend more each month. They get far better value for the money, but by and large, eircom are earning more from these users after they upgrade to broadband.

(Eircoms wholesale price for the psuedo-"FRIACO" service are probably higher than the new bitstream 1MB prices, but as long as 75% of DSL users are signing up with eircom rather than the resellers, eircom are still creaming it).

Galen

Sponge Bob

I totally agree with you.

As far as Eircom is concerned they claim that they are providing a decent service, voice calls. But this is old news, the usual lies from Dempsey and Comreg.

watty

Foxwood wrote:

That's a load of crap. Eircom charge €29.99 for eircom net anytime. They charge €29.99, €39.99 or €54.45 for broadband.

In the vast majority of cases, people moving from dialup to broadband spend more each month. They get far better value for the money, but by and large, eircom are earning more from these users after they upgrade to broadband.

(Eircoms wholesale price for the psuedo-"FRIACO" service are probably higher than the new bitstream 1MB prices, but as long as 75% of DSL users are signing up with eircom rather than the resellers, eircom are still creaming it).

Well my phone bill used to be about 100Euro worth of Internet calls and 15 Euro voice calls + line rental

Since when was Eircom anytime flat rate?

Since broadband my Eircom line voice calls are a fiver and broadband about 42 Euro for 3M / 512K 30G cap service. No other expenses apart from the Eircom Line rental.

I know lots of busineses using ISDN with up to 500 Euro p.m. call costs for Internet.

lucernarian

Foxwood wrote:

That's a load of crap. Eircom charge €29.99 for eircom net anytime. They charge €29.99, €39.99 or €54.45 for broadband.

In the vast majority of cases, people moving from dialup to broadband spend more each month. They get far better value for the money, but by and large, eircom are earning more from these users after they upgrade to broadband.

(Eircoms wholesale price for the psuedo-"FRIACO" service are probably higher than the new bitstream 1MB prices, but as long as 75% of DSL users are signing up with eircom rather than the resellers, eircom are still creaming it).

Just a question: Do you have a concept of the idea of "Revenue vs Profit"?

thebman

Edit only read the whole scan now, thanks OP

Also I'd like to add that our last bill for Internet at 56K was well over 100 Euro aswell! We have the so called flatrate but we have to download files/drivers etc.. and this takes time and we have a reasonable 56K line at about 7KB per second most of the time.

We only recently got Satellite Broadband which costs a fortune. We are using SkyDSL at 15 Euro a month with just 1GB limit which we hit early every month so far and SkyDSL are the cheapest for Irish users and not even listed on the offical government broadband site as a possability.

Foxwood

brim4brim wrote:

Edit only read the whole scan now, thanks OP

Also I'd like to add that our last bill for Internet at 56K was well over 100 Euro aswell! We have the so called flatrate but we have to download files/drivers etc.. and this takes time and we have a reasonable 56K line at about 7KB per second most of the time.

"eircom net anytime" provides 5 hours a day of online time. You can get an extra 3 hours per day for 75 euro. That's 8 hours a day online. Somehow I don't think even the EUs paperwork is quite that onerous!

oscarBravo

Foxwood wrote:

"eircom net anytime" provides 5 hours a day of online time. You can get an extra 3 hours per day for 75 euro. That's 8 hours a day online.

...for €105 per month, plus line rental. What was your point again?

Foxwood

oscarBravo wrote:

...for €105 per month, plus line rental. What was your point again?

My point is that if he chooses to spend his money that way, I have a hard problem seeing why that's anyone elses probem. If he didn't think it was worth that much, he wouldn't do it.

If he's arguing that his usage is typical, well I think he probably needs to get out more and meet more people.

watty

Foxwood wrote:

"eircom net anytime" provides 5 hours a day of online time. You can get an extra 3 hours per day for 75 euro. That's 8 hours a day online. Somehow I don't think even the EUs paperwork is quite that onerous!

TWO WAY always on satellite I tbink is marginally cheaper than that, for ALWAYS on.

Sky DSL is not mentioned because it needs dialup. It is not a broadband solution at all, only a download accelerator for dialup.

Sky DSL + 8 hrs per day dialup is more expensive than real Satellite Internet.

I hesitate to call two Way Satellite Internet Broadband, but 2 out of 3 not bad, Always On, High Speed but bad pings.

My BB definition:
* Always On. (Dialup + Sky DSL fails, ISDN fails)
* At least 256k down and error free 64K up (ISDN, Dialup + Sky DSL fails)
* Low pings, i.e. < 50ms (Satellite is > 750ms) (Satelite and Voda 3G fail)