Carphone warehouse to offer broadband packages from Nov 1st

KNO3

Just heard on the radio this morning that the Carphone warehouse Ireland are to start offering broadband packages from Nov 1st 2006.

Should be interesting what they offer, their website is down at the moment so no info there, in the UK the carphone warhouse has been transforming itself into a telecoms company with the mobile division being pushed into second place as a retail arm. Last week Carphone warehouse UK took over AOL UK in a deal that will now see it as the 3rd biggest broadband (ISP) provider in the UK. Now presumably this is why Eircon have been advertising there reduced broadband costs to consumers in the last couple of weeks on the TV and radio knowing that some meaningful competition is on the horizon in the form of Carphone warehouse. When they introduced broadband in the UK earlier this year they offered it for FREE.........but the catch was you had to sign up for a complete telecom package, but apperantly it was still a fantastic deal and they had unprecedented take up by consumers. They wont offer the same deal here presumably as they dont have a telecoms arm to offer any other services in Ireland.

Anybody else know anything about this, what they are likely to offer etc?

Heres a couple of links relating to Carphone warehouse UK from the last 6 months. The first one is the free deal they offered and the second one is the take over of AOL UK last week.

http://www.cbronline.com/article_feature.asp?guid=A485B6B4-246B-4A86-BC52-1C13EB1FFC90

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=FDFD959E-D975-48B1-B64C-C596542DBB6A&z=rc_Networking

Dellas

I guess it will be through www.talktalk.ie but I doubt we will see anything like the UK prices in the Irish market!!! Its the same with everything else that comes here we end up paying more than anyone else. I would love to be proved wrong though....

pm.

will it be 3g bb or dsl ?

smellslikeshoes

pm. wrote:

will it be 3g bb or dsl ?

Judging by the uk it will be unbundled dsl, Dunno how well that would work here because of the disgraceful state of LLU though.

Foxwood

It'll be exactly the same as the resold offering from BT, UTV, Digiweb, Imagine, Perlico, Gaelic Telecom, etc.

While all these guys are fighting to differentiate themselves with a euro here and a euro there, eircom will be laughing all the way to the bank with their line rental increase.

pm.

maybe its not good news after all, whats the point in another company offering bb in areas that have a lot of suppliers, there thousands of people outside major towns that cant get access to bb, i only wish that comreg would get there act together and make bb more available.

watty

There is only four DSL suppliers, and three of them rent the lines from the fourth. That isn't competiton.

Sponge Bob

watty wrote:

That isn't competiton.

Inded Watty, CPW (Talk Talk) and Sky are 2 of the biggest LLU operators in the UK and neither can do any LLU business in Ireland because of the way Comreg lets eircom gouge the LLU operators margins at every opportunity. So they are just another eircom reseller here , CPW are also , incidentally, losing all the Vodafone business they had to another retailer , again in Ireland .

watty

BT are a rather large operator in UK on DSL and their Irish operation has some LLU but lost interest in it. I wouldn't say they have much UK experience as a UK LLU customer though.

pm.

sorry about the stupid question, but what is llu?

Kramer

pm. wrote:

what is llu?

Local Loop Unbundling .

Foxwood

pm. wrote:

sorry about the stupid question, but what is llu?

Local Loop Unbundling.

Most of the so-called competition in the residential comms sector involves reselling eircoms wholesale services. This started 5 or 6 yers ago with CPS (Carrier Pre Select) where your calls would be directed to your selected providers network, and you'd get a bill for those calls, and a seperate bill from eircom for Line Rental. Then they introduced SB-WLR, or "Single Billing-Wholesale Line Rental". The reseller gets a 10% discount on the line rental, and has to deal with all the billing, bad debt and customer support issues, and the customer gets a single bill for line rental and calls from that provider. In both of these cases, the line is still plugged into eircoms euipment at the exchange, and the call routing is handled automagically.

Then there's Local Loop Unbundling, where the phone line (the local loop) is physicallly disconnected from eircoms equipment, and plugged into the competing companies euipment. You calls are no longer handed by eircom, and the equipment that it is connected to is usually capable of higher speeds and longer distances than the equipment that eircom uses.

Of course, the eircom network is so valuable that bypassing it and plugging into someone elses euipment is waaaay cheaper than using the eircom network. NOT!!!!! An unbundled line only gets a further 10% discount, for which the 3rd party not only has to handle billing, bad debts and customer support, but also has to pay for their own equipment in the exchange, and thousands of euro in "access fees" to be allowed access to the exchange in the first place.

"Full Service" line rental costs €19.98 plus VAT. Wholesale Line Rental costs €17.02 per month (plus VAT). LLU costs €15.09 per month (plus VAT).

That means that "bare bones" LLU costs 20% more than the average price of "Full Service" line rental in the rest of the EU. Which explains why we have some of the lowest broadband penetration in the EU.

KNO3

Foxwood wrote:

Local Loop Unbundling.

Most of the so-called competition in the residential comms sector involves reselling eircoms wholesale services. This started 5 or 6 yers ago with CPS (Carrier Pre Select) where your calls would be directed to your selected providers network, and you'd get a bill for those calls, and a seperate bill from eircom for Line Rental. Then they introduced SB-WLR, or "Single Billing-Wholesale Line Rental". The reseller gets a 10% discount on the line rental, and has to deal with all the billing, bad debt and customer support issues, and the customer gets a single bill for line rental and calls from that provider. In both of these cases, the line is still plugged into eircoms euipment at the exchange, and the call routing is handled automagically.

Then there's Local Loop Unbundling, where the phone line (the local loop) is physicallly disconnected from eircoms equipment, and plugged into the competing companies euipment. You calls are no longer handed by eircom, and the equipment that it is connected to is usually capable of higher speeds and longer distances than the equipment that eircom uses.

Of course, the eircom network is so valuable that bypassing it and plugging into someone elses euipment is waaaay cheaper than using the eircom network. NOT!!!!! An unbundled line only gets a further 10% discount, for which the 3rd party not only has to handle billing, bad debts and customer support, but also has to pay for their own equipment in the exchange, and thousands of euro in "access fees" to be allowed access to the exchange in the first place.

"Full Service" line rental costs €19.98 plus VAT. Wholesale Line Rental costs €17.02 per month (plus VAT). LLU costs €15.09 per month (plus VAT).

That means that "bare bones" LLU costs 20% more than the average price of "Full Service" line rental in the rest of the EU. Which explains why we have some of the lowest broadband penetration in the EU.

Cheers Foxwood, didnt quite realise the extent of the grip Eircom hold over the irish market, i knew they they had a good grip just didnt realise it was a stranglehold, if you run the numbers its a wonder anybody else bothers at all for the few quid thats in it.

Ow well the hopes are dashed for now of real competition, thanks for making it crystal clear how this thing works.

pm.

cheers foxwood;) did ireland not have a certain amount of time to get a higher percentage availability of bb? by the sounds of things eircom/comreg will never get there act toghter and bring us out of the dark ages of dial up:mad: im lucky enough to have bb ( if thats what you want to call it ) 512 down but with the contention rate 40:1 i rarely get half that. i think the best people in rural areas can hope for is if vodafone/o2 launch there 3g service nationwide.

Foxwood

pm. wrote:

im lucky enough to have bb ( if thats what you want to call it ) 512 down but with the contention rate 40:1 i rarely get half that.

eircom hasn't sold a 512k service in over a year. The lowest available DSL service is sold as a 1Mbps service (thogh that is "up to" 1Mb). If you're consistently getting 250Kbps, then your line must be in pretty bad shape - you're lucky it qualified at all.

pm.

Foxwood wrote:

eircom hasn't sold a 512k service in over a year. The lowest available DSL service is sold as a 1Mbps service (thogh that is "up to" 1Mb). If you're consistently getting 250Kbps, then your line must be in pretty bad shape - you're lucky it qualified at all.

sorry i wasn't clear, my bb connection is wireless a company in athlone called last mile bb, the speed of my phone line when downloading orders or emails for work is 9.6kps

Dellas

We have too many companies offering the same thing just a different name!! They should make them go to areas that do not have broadband instead.

Foxwood

Dellas wrote:

We have too many companies offering the same thing just a different name!! They should make them go to areas that do not have broadband instead.

"Make them?" Sorry, BT, you're not allowed to sell DSL in areas that are served by eircom exchanges, if you want to have broadband customers, you'll have to shag off and try your hand with wireless broadband.

I don't think so!

Dellas

Ok give them incentives then , tax breaks to go to areas where there is no broadband or better still the government should have set up a seperate department with the a decent budget to upgrade as many areas as possible, we should have 10 exchanges a week going live and this should be fast tracked even if the government have to pump money into it.

pm.

Dellas wrote:

Ok give them incentives then , tax breaks to go to areas where there is no broadband or better still the government should have set up a seperate department with the a decent budget to upgrade as many areas as possible, we should have 10 exchanges a week going live and this should be fast tracked even if the government have to pump money into it.

dellas i dont think there is anyone here that will disagree with you, but remember this is ireland, the country you pay top dollar for shiite, 40 euro a month for half of a half a meg connection at best:mad:

Foxwood

pm. wrote:

dellas i dont think there is anyone here that will disagree with you,

I do - I don't want to subsidise eircom with my taxes as well as with the highest line rental in europe.

If it's not economically viable to upgrade an exchange, it's not economically viable. The government poured plenty of money into the holes in the ground that they called MANs. While there have been some benefits, they certainly haven't justified the money spent. Giving eircom an extra €70 million to upgrade exchanges that probably wouldn't deliver DSL to half the customers they serve anyway (because DSL just isn't going to work down 10 miles of crappy copper) is NOT the right way to go forward.

KELTICKNIGHTT

need to get rid of eircom hold on thing,comreg are useless,always taking eircoms side,backing the details
have listened to bull on tv and radio from both,same bull different month ,different year
we have the lowest bb speeds in eu and pay the highest prices,why,because we ado and dont have a choice as long as one useless company runs things
did you ever get them to fix a fault in phone line,either someone on holidays or will take 2 weeks,dont get me going,had my fill of eircom with high prices
the goverment need to get off there butts and sort it out,eircom now being a private company shouldnt have the lines in thsi country and had enough money pumped into to line s and exchanges that date back old times,its ajoke
till some bright spark figures a way to bring ireland forward and without eircom,things will stay the way they are

Dellas

Foxwood wrote:

I do - I don't want to subsidise eircom with my taxes as well as with the highest line rental in europe.

.

Neither do I but seeing as Eircom are the national telecom who else could do this !! Take the whole network away from Eircom and make it state owned until they re cable and enable all exchanges. Make Eircom the same status as BT and UTV etc.... get rid of Comreg as they are useless then that would really go a long way to solve some of the issues.

The whole Island needs to be re cabled with proper equiptment. Actually 3 quarters of the Island the other quarter is run by the British and has 8 meg as standard.

Its the typical Irish blue tack attitiude, theres a hole somewhere so we will put blue tack in it rather then replace the whole panel.

And as for my taxes going on things I dont want it to , well where do I start !!


I wonder if we will ever see this kind of package on the Irish market:rolleyes:

GBP. 26.99 per month
8 Meg
Features
FREE wireless BT Home Hub5 and connection
Free UK2 Evening and Weekend Broadband Talk calls
FREE BT Hub Phone
FREE Videocalls
Norton security package
250 FREE WiFi minutes per month for 12 months
Huge 40GB monthly usage guideline
11 FREE email addresses for you and your family
Create your own online radio station and webspace

KELTICKNIGHTT

eircom,had there shot at it for years and havent provided,by having them there only keeps it as is
how did other countrys do it
action is need by goverment minister to get peoplr to sort it out
comreg are useless at it
need someone else to make eircom do better or out
there been enough time wasted with them already

Sponge Bob

you could write an email to Dempsey the dear leader of communications in the government but he never ever answers emails , probably does not read them either

KELTICKNIGHTT

wouldnt waste my time

Dellas

Interesting just got this reply from CPW/Talk talk .....


''At the moment we do not provide any type of broadband in the Republic of
Ireland. We do plan to offer a broadband service in Ireland but unfortunately we
do not have a timeframe to this to happen.

If you have any further queries about your Talk Talk account please contact our
customer services team free on 1800 3000 65.

Sincerely,
Talk Talk customer services''

KNO3

Dellas wrote:

Interesting just got this reply from CPW/Talk talk .....


''At the moment we do not provide any type of broadband in the Republic of
Ireland. We do plan to offer a broadband service in Ireland but unfortunately we
do not have a timeframe to this to happen.

If you have any further queries about your Talk Talk account please contact our
customer services team free on 1800 3000 65.

Sincerely,
Talk Talk customer services''

The MD of the Carphone Warehouse Ireland was on the Sunday morning business programme on Today FM (10.30-11.30am sunday just gone) this is where I heard this, he was specifically asked about the CPW broadband launch and he said the date was Nov 1st 2006, what I didnt realise was that it was going to be a (Eircom) package, basically repackaged.

Dellas

Yeah I guess they are all tied to Eircom really , they have no other choice .