Imagine buys Irish Broadband

The Fool

http://www.rte.ie/business/2008/0429/imagine.html

smellslikeshoes

Although I dislike imagine this seems like good news, although there is gonna be one less competitor in the market, there will be a company with some clout behind it that can actually provide broadband independent of Eircom.

Moriarty

Took their time

Sponge Bob

Caps come in Monday I'll wager, Imagine are pretty much the most capped Irish provider and God help you if you break it .

dunworth1

i think that's its a bad thing because if Irish broadband put caps on there broadband they'll loose most of there customers:mad::mad::mad:

Cabaal

While Imagine do have caps they also have a 60GB added cap if you pay them about a euro a month which isn't a bad option - https://www.imagine.ie/pages/broadband-extras.html

So while I haven't used them certainly initially it seems like a good offering, imho UTV are the only other ISP that offer an added extra to give you more of a cap then the basic offering

castie

98 cent a month for an extra 60gb cap thats ridiculous.

Me thinks if they raised all prices by 1 euro and increased all caps theyd make more money and get more customers.

Cabaal

castie wrote: »

98 cent a month for an extra 60gb cap thats ridiculous.

Me thinks if they raised all prices by 1 euro and increased all caps theyd make more money and get more customers.

UTV charge 6e extra a month for a "unlimited*" option, the unlimited option comes with a fair usage policy so you'll never really know where you stand with them as they won't give you any hard numbers to what your "cap" is.

So taking that into account the 98c for a 60GB cap is pretty good when compared to BT or Eircom who offer nothing like it, its certainly nice for people who can only get resold bit-stream products in their area to have that extra cap without having to pay for a business package with no cap/high cap which is alot more expensive

While I get where your coming from regarding making more money if they offered bigger caps, you have to remember that the vast majority of ISP's customers never go anywhere near 10GB in a month....its only a minority who tend to use 30GB+ each month.

Until downloadable media (tv shows, movies etc from the likes of iTunes) become available and the takeup of these services improves then the amount of data downloaded by the average joe user is unlikely to increase and as such ISP's won't start offering packages with higher caps....of course these services also cause problems for ISP's due to the business model used as the more data a user downloads the more it costs the ISP and if a user downloads too much then the ISP doesn't make a profit from the user.

It all really depends on what the ISP is paying for there backhaul, Its all a careful balancing act, just look at the situation with BBC iPlayer and ISP's in the UK.

Nehaxak

Thing is though, if RTE ever released something like an iPlayer - it'd never really effect Irish ISPs as nobody watches RTE anyway. Sorry had to get that one in there

I'm glad Imagine has bought IBB, it's a good business move and yes, I hope myself they don't remove the no cap service currently with IBB.

Redisle

I saw this thread and the first thing I thought was this is the end of my nice cap free connection tbh..
What can we be expecting now? Caps? Bittorrent throttling/Traffic Shaping? (People claimed IBB did this before, but im getting full speeds recently)
A cap of something like 30gb would fill up fairly quickly especially if they go counting upload and download. People uploading things like pictures and videos using IBB 3mb would reach that cap without difficulty..

JuncoPartner

castie wrote: »

98 cent a month for an extra 60gb cap thats ridiculous.

Thats hardly ridiculous really. Its only a euro a month, seems like a decent deal to me.
One thing to be wary of though is they have started automatically signing people up to this extra 1 euro pack when you join now. You get it for free for the first month or two but then you get charged for it afterwards unless you yourself actually make the move to have it removed. They also do this with a "Family Protection" pack aswell which in all fairness is a lot more ridiculous!

Regards the actual purchase, its a great move for all involved, IBB have been whoring for a buyer for a long time, and Imag!ne fresh from rejection after rejection by the big boys (Vodafone, O2) have no further scope to grow without acquiring smaller businesses. They are already profitable themselves and buying an extra 60,000 customers makes a lot more sense for them than investing in NGNs and LLU. Also the fact that IBB have an alternate to Eircom DSL packages is great for Imag!ne who were fast becomming the only reseller left reselling Eircom DSL exclusively.
Whats funny tho is the mention of Wimax by Imag!ne as Im pretty sure noone in there actually knows what that is :P

watty

The Cap free-ness helped lose IBB 25mil last year. They have lost maybe 70m in all.

I expect all ISPs that want to stay in business will charge by consumption like gas, phone, Electric, mr Binman.

It won't be the evil time limited and the ordinary users that doen't watch catch-up Tv will pay the same or less. Heavy users will have to pay extra or be capped.

Rattlehead_ie

I cant see why they would bring in caps this would be throwing away IBBs one major competitive edge over the others out there,maybe enforce their exceptable usage policy a bit more than it is now,as Im sure there are some people taking the piss, but one of the main reasons WHY IBB are able to go with a 'No Cap' service is because they own their own infrastructure, there not relying or reselling Eircoms service.That along with the 50-60k custoemrs were probably the main attractions to Imag!ne.

On the buyout/merger I think it will be a good thing, yes maybe one less ISP provider in the market, but as someone said previously it give the others a kick seeing as this would increase the combined companies customer lvl IBBs 60k + what ever imagine have.

Watty can I ask how does them not havin a cap loose them money?u mean that they have to go off and buy badwidth to support the non capped?

Bros123

What happen here now.................
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055265940&highlight=irish+broadband+speed+increases

Chaz

Bros123 wrote: »

What happen here now.................
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055265940&highlight=irish+broadband+speed+increases

and you wondered why I told you so in other thread? Small industry - this wasnt new news to some.

Bros123

Chaz wrote: »

and you wondered why I told you so in other thread? Small industry - this wasnt new news to some.

Well you didn't hint!!:p

Chaz

Bros123 wrote: »

Well you didn't hint!!:p

Woulnt have been proper, despite the fact that I used to work for IBB too at a stage.

watty

Rattlehead_ie wrote: »

Watty can I ask how does them not havin a cap loose them money?u mean that they have to go off and buy badwidth to support the non capped?

Only one factor admittedly.

Some ISPs the strategy has been do ANYTHING to boost the customer base and get bought, never mind costs.

Other ISPs have a different approach.

We still have about 25 too many ISPs for a small country. Economies of scale etc competing against Eircom dsl monopoly and UPC cable monopoly. About 6 ISPs would give better competition, better service and lower prices.

Small ISPs vary from terrible to excellent.

Cabaal

Seems everything in Ireland seems to think we get the raw deal, its worth remembering that pretty much all the large ISP's in the UK now have a set cap or fair usage policy.
These include
BT
Orange
Plusnet
Tiscali
etc

The UK has iPlayer and other streaming/movie downloading/renting services and yet the caps continue, so don't expect it to change in Ireland anytime soon....its all about making money at the end of the day.

Yes they are ISP's in the UK that don't have a cap but there small outfits in the scale of things,.

Rattlehead_ie

watty wrote: »

Only one factor admittedly.

Some ISPs the strategy has been do ANYTHING to boost the customer base and get bought, never mind costs.

Although I wont argue with that, I dont see how that is relivent to IBB, they have had a no cap but an acceptable usage policy since they started and I dont think it was NTR getting ready to sell them at that point it was only in 2006 when they annoucned their change in direction towards renewable energies that the idea of IBB being sold apeared. Anyway doesnt matter, I hope the No Cap policy stays and look forward to seeing what Imag!ne IBB come out with in the future.

Nehaxak

Cabaal wrote: »

Yes they are ISP's in the UK that don't have a cap but there small outfits in the scale of things,.

Far as I'm aware, Demon/Thus internet don't impose caps and are a very large and professional ISP in the UK, one of only a very few to also offer uncontended SDSL services for business. Customer service, network availability and stability is also second to none, from my own experience anyway.

Watty I'd like to see how you came to the conclusion that IBB's uncapped service cost them 25 million last year and 70 million overall ? Not being antagonistic about it, I really do want to know how they lost such money due to having an uncapped service.

watty

I didn't claim it was all because of that. But it would contribute. Having no cap costs the operator more. That is incontrovertible. High overheads of Call Centre and high costs of Installs also contribute to the losses.

watty

Unless you have a prohibitively expensive or very slow network, a No Cap means poorer performance for all the normal users. With "No cap" 5% to 10% of users can slow the system to 1/2 to 1/3rd speed for everyone. UK is notorious for people only getting 1/3rd to 1/2 EVER of their package speed.

Cabaal

Nehaxak wrote: »

Far as I'm aware, Demon/Thus internet don't impose caps and are a very large and professional ISP in the UK, one of only a very few to also offer uncontended SDSL services for business. Customer service, network availability and stability is also second to none, from my own experience anyway.

quick look at Demon's home packages shows that there all subject to Fair Usage Policy's,

Now if your going to compare business packages to home packages your not comparing like with like, there are uncapped business packages in Ireland too buy you have to be prepared to pay

watty wrote: »

Unless you have a prohibitively expensive or very slow network, a No Cap means poorer performance for all the normal users. With "No cap" 5% to 10% of users can slow the system to 1/2 to 1/3rd speed for everyone. UK is notorious for people only getting 1/3rd to 1/2 EVER of their package speed.

Have to agree with this, again you end up with maybe 10% of users affecting 90% of the other users service, sure an ISP can buy more bandwidth but that costs money and it starts getting to a point where its just not profitable anymore, the only other way around this is to charge more to customers but if you do that then you won't get as many new customers.

So in the end its easier just limit the 10% of users, so for example if an ISP goes from unlimited to a 30GB cap it really is only affecting 5-10% of its users who are in the scale of things very heavy users when compared to the normal user.

As I've said before, it sucks but thats the reality of things at present.

Nehaxak

@watty - I didn't really want to post this reply to you as I enjoy reading your posts and your input in the past on these forums, especially on the Sat fourms, I don't want this to come across as a personal attack in any way because it is not meant as such but I do have to reply as I disagree with what you've said here about the losses and caps with IBB.

Anyway, no facts or figures to back up what you've previously said so basically it's just speculation when you say the no cap service by IBB contributed to their 25 million losses last year.

Would be like me saying Digiweb made 25 million profits last year off the backs of Irish consumers by providing them with a sub-standard, overpriced and badly supported service and they continue to give nothing back to the consumer, purely just another a rip off merchant fleecing the Irish public for all they've got.

That or, Digiweb made losses last year of 25 million because of their consumers cancelling due to Digiwebs caps imposed, poor service, dreadful customer support and below standard network stability.

Pure speculation, though either would fly with some people as truth if I came straight out and made a statement like that, especially if I was otherwise a well respected contributor and mod liek yourself.

Sorry but still the same thing, though you may not have meant it, you do work for digiweb and you did yet again make another comment on a competitor with no facts to back it up and all just pure speculation.

Only way I see it anyway, that plus another opportunity to put a dig in to excuse digiweb for their capped service.

I don't work for IBB or Imagine but I'd be pretty pissed off at speculation like that just as a business deal was going/has gone through and current consumers of the service were wondering what might happen to their current packages.

I honestly was hoping you'd come back with facts and figures on what you said as I really would like to see if IBB having an uncapped service was causing them losses, might even go some way to change my mind on ISPs imposing caps (though I doubt it).


@Cabaal - Yep I take your point on comparing business offering to home user offerings. Demon though have stated publicly in the past on game forums etc., that in regards their FUP, they only take action against users who are really taking the piss (probably a search of Wow forums for example might pull up some posts from them on same that still exist). If I remember though I'll ask them to explain their FUP to me as I'll be talking with them in 2 weeks time.

Marlow

watty wrote: »

The Cap free-ness helped lose IBB 25mil last year. They have lost maybe 70m in all.

It's not the cap-free ness, where IBB looses their money. Bandwidth is the smallest amount of cost in running an ISP. Matter of fact, the more you buy, the cheaper you get it. The largest cost is installing the customers, equipment (the ISPs own infrastructure) and support.

And matter of fact, where the most loss for ISPs happens, is if they don't have their accounts in order or are spending on the wrong things.

/Martin

watty

Call centre and Installs cost no doubt a major ingredient. Better to invest larger up front in making things go well than lots of call centre staff on ongoing cost to handle complaints. Not that I make any claim as to what exactly IBB has spent the last 40million on.

rcly123

JuncoPartner wrote: »

Thats hardly ridiculous really. Its only a euro a month, seems like a decent deal to me.
....
Also the fact that IBB have an alternate to Eircom DSL packages is great for Imag!ne who were fast becomming the only reseller left reselling Eircom DSL exclusively.
Whats funny tho is the mention of Wimax by Imag!ne as Im pretty sure noone in there actually knows what that is :P

To the best of my knowledge, Imagine are NOT a re-seller. I have been told that they are a Tier-1 Telco, buying from Eircom Wholesale, just like Eircom Retail (who we all call Eircom).
Can anyone clarify that?

JuncoPartner

Yes and no. They do purchase from Eircom at a wholesale level like BT and Cable & Wireless etc. They own their own switch just like Perlico do.
They are however still reselling Eircom DSL products as opposed to operating in any LLU exchanges where they would be selling their own DSL products.
Also Eircom have never actually split into proper retail & wholesale divisions...yet.

rcly123

So, in lay mans terms, would that mean that on a phone-call basis, they have equipment in attached to the Local Exchange that makes them equal to Eircom, but on a Broadband level , they require access to Eircom equipment to serve the customer?

Moriarty

No. Perlico presumably have an interconnect situated somewhere in dublin - all perlico dsl and phone data is carried over eircom's network from each customers premises across the country back to the interconnect point where perlico take ownership of the traffic.

Perlico may not even have any physical infrastructure, they may have an arrangement with another telco to handle that side of things with a "white label" service.