up and coming election

requiem1

i probably like most of you who look at this board have suffered with my broadband and I have recently threatened a legal case against BT and eircom for breach of contract. I have been advised by comreg to not pursue the case as i have no foot to stand on but my solicitors have advised otherwise. He has assured me there is a loophole in their contract to take legal action against. So i just have a couple of quick questions; personally,has anyone ever taken a braodband case to court?
Who in the up coming election has promised to introduce broadband legislation?
cause personally i'd like to vote for them if they'll do it.
thanks:)

uncle_sam_ie

Good luck requiem1, I hope you win. You know comreg don't, because it would make them look bad. Do let us know the out come.

Steffano2002

Let me know if there's anything I can do to help Requiem1! I'd love to see individuals take on Eircom, BT, IBB and all the other ISPs that abuse (for lack of a better word) their customers!

I SO hope you win! These companies need a good kick up the a$$!

ntlbell

requiem1 wrote:

i probably like most of you who look at this board have suffered with my broadband and I have recently threatened a legal case against BT and eircom for breach of contract. I have been advised by comreg to not pursue the case as i have no foot to stand on but my solicitors have advised otherwise. He has assured me there is a loophole in their contract to take legal action against. So i just have a couple of quick questions; personally,has anyone ever taken a braodband case to court?
Who in the up coming election has promised to introduce broadband legislation?
cause personally i'd like to vote for them if they'll do it.
thanks:)

The country has more problems than your poxy broadband issues.

They should increase the voting to 21+

Steffano2002

ntlbell wrote:

The country has more problems than your poxy broadband issues.

They should increase the voting to 21+

The thought crossed my mind also but if that's what's important to him... He pays taxes like you and me and he's entitled to his opinion. No need to be so nasty...

DaBreno

Best of luck with it Lad, Im sure everyone on this site hopes you hand em their teeth.

dumbyearbook

I agree - theres more pressing issues than internet access !!

Why are you attempting to hold up the already strained courts for an issue to do with Broadband?

You nearly as bad as bono going to the high court with his silly trousers and hat case !

uncle_sam_ie

dumbyearbook wrote:

I agree - theres more pressing issues than internet access !!

Why are you attempting to hold up the already strained courts for an issue to do with Broadband?

You nearly as bad as bono going to the high court with his silly trousers and hat case !

I disagree. Why should we as consumers have to put up with getting ripped off. And how do you expect Ireland to compete in the worlds economy if we have a dysfunctional attitude toward broadband. If we want to move forward functional broadband access is crucial. I wonder if you would be so contempt if you were stuck on dialup. On third of the population can't get BB and like me there probably on the roads driving to get it(page 38 http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg0664.pdf). Isn't traffic congestion a major election issue here.

Steffano2002

I agree with Uncle_sam_ie here. If we all had your attitude Dumbyearbook we'd still all be on ISDN paying €120 EUR a month with a 2GB download limit! How can we expect to go forward if half the country can't get broadband? The Internet is the main means of communication in this day and age and it could be compared to having no roads in half the country!

dumbyearbook

I merely saying that to hold up the courts with this is a joke!

- as reagards 120 for ISDN 2GB limit - if you did nt like it you should nt have payed it - and at an early stage all technology is expensive

and- do you think industry pays domestic rates for Broadband anyway? plus its a tax deductable expense so they could bt care less what it is within reason.

I think health and transport are more pressing issues - and I do want to see Ireland remain competitive but there is already broad band in the places which will maintain this compeititivness anyway !

requiem1

just a quick update, another representative from comreg phoned me and told me to drop the case becasue i didn't have a leg to stand on and that it was a stupid idea and my solicitor was just taking my money. She said comreg would not regonise any of the letters i have sent them if the case goes to court.

Surprisingly the department for communication said they would support my case if it went to the courts. Already my service provider BT is blaming eircom and saying it is a case against them but then they turned around and said they wouldn't like to go to court over this and would settle outside of court and cover any expenses i may have occured.

More interestingly than this my friend who just recently qualified as a solicitor told me that a case in the states of similar nature ended up in the introduction of penalty clauses into contracts by ISPs. This is when comsumers suffer downtime and their ISP is forced to pay out for their loss of broadband. In this country the only people that have these contracts with ISP's are the likes of dell and all the big multinationals like accenture.

Really this might be a step too far for the consumer but does nobody think that it might be an idea that the ISP's have to suffer a penalty for not providing us the service that we pay for?

requiem1

Steffano2002 wrote:

I agree with Uncle_sam_ie here. If we all had your attitude Dumbyearbook we'd still all be on ISDN paying €120 EUR a month with a 2GB download limit! How can we expect to go forward if half the country can't get broadband? The Internet is the main means of communication in this day and age and it could be compared to having no roads in half the country!

oh and i don't know if any of you saw the scheme the british government have with sky, but anyone with a sky subscription will get a free 2mb line. This was the governments way of increasing braodband in england. I really wish our government would do something similar, at least i can get it most people can't even get it in this coutry:(

qwertplaywert

the sky thing is still through the phone lines so people who cant get broadband now wouldnt be able to get the sky thing anyways

netwhizkid

See my signature, Broadband is very important and in my own local area where there is no broadband several companies have refused to locate here due to the lack of broadband.

This is contributing to traffic on our roads and forcing many local people to work further away etc. Broadband is essential and should be considered a service alongside, Gas, Water, Electricity Telephone etc. It is a thundering disgrace that in 2007 that so many people have no access to broadband, I rate it 2nd in my priorities behind Health.

BeerWolf

Under developed countries with better infrastructure than Ireland [that involves Communications and Transport]... go fig :rolleyes:

It's a damn joke considering much how we pay towards the government...

ZENER

requiem1 wrote:

i probably like most of you who look at this board have suffered with my broadband and I have recently threatened a legal case against BT and eircom for breach of contract.

What part of the contract have they breached ?

Who in the up coming election has promised to introduce broadband legislation?
cause personally i'd like to vote for them if they'll do it.
thanks:)

What if they plan to increase toll road fees, decrease spending on education and health and close all pubs at 9:30 . . . will you still vote for them ?

What I don't understand is that people screamed for private enterprise to enter the market to improve things - they did (SMART Telecom - almost went bang due to lack of customers ?!) but the sad fact is that Broadband is dependent on proximity to an exchange, it doesn't matter how many private companies you bring in - that won't change ! What I see happening more and more is people on the fringes of coverage being sold BB which then becomes unreliable - it's companies like BT and other private operators that are pushing the service to these people under false pretences where Eircom would have said not available.

The argument used against private bus companies and CIE holds here, no private company is going to spend money unless there is a profit to be made - so customers living far from an exchange are still screwed ! They're not interested in 10 or 20 houses in a remote place in Donegal (no offense to natives of this fine county) they're more interested in the high density population of Dublin, Cork and other such large cities: i.e. "the plumb routes".

For these there are companies like IBB and Clearwire - but that's another story . . .

My 2c but good luck with the case anyway.

ZEN

uncle_sam_ie

ZENER wrote:

What part of the contract have they breached ?



What if they plan to increase toll road fees, decrease spending on education and health and close all pubs at 9:30 . . . will you still vote for them ?

What I don't understand is that people screamed for private enterprise to enter the market to improve things - they did (SMART Telecom - almost went bang due to lack of customers ?!) but the sad fact is that Broadband is dependent on proximity to an exchange, it doesn't matter how many private companies you bring in - that won't change ! What I see happening more and more is people on the fringes of coverage being sold BB which then becomes unreliable - it's companies like BT and other private operators that are pushing the service to these people under false pretences where Eircom would have said not available.

The argument used against private bus companies and CIE holds here, no private company is going to spend money unless there is a profit to be made - so customers living far from an exchange are still screwed ! They're not interested in 10 or 20 houses in a remote place in Donegal (no offense to natives of this fine county) they're more interested in the high density population of Dublin, Cork and other such large cities: i.e. "the plumb routes".

For these there are companies like IBB and Clearwire - but that's another story . . .

My 2c but good luck with the case anyway.

ZEN

I'll accept that private companies will only go were the profit is and that they could careless about people living outside the major urban area's. I don't accept it resulting in a digital divide. That would hurt us all in the long run economically. You can't grow a business on dialup. If you can't grow you can't contribute. And, as far as I'm concerned, if your business doesn't have a website it doesn't exist.That's were the government has to step in. They could easily introduce tax incentives to the telcos making them want to invest in rural area's. They should also take the valuable wireless spectrum off eircom which they are currently sitting on and give it to smaller ISP's that would use it(good read http://www.mulley.net/2006/09/16/eircom-wireless-broadband-sssh-its-a-secret-says-comreg/ ). I live four miles from an eircom mast with a great line of site. They could easily deliver a wireless solution to me, but they don't. Why, because we have a week regulator and a useless minister for communications.