Eircom running out of money?

bk

BTW also just to say that FTTH/B can be done very badly also.

Take Smart as an example, they have FTTB developments, which they then cripple by installing ADSL2+ DSLAMS in and running a standard phone line up the CAT5E cable to each apartment, limiting the speed to 24mb/1mb on a CAT5E cable capable of 1GB/s!!!

They then only sell 4mb/200k BB to these customers, while elsewhere people are getting 20mb/1mb from UPC, 24mb/1mb from BT and 50mb/8mb from Magnet.

And finally they try running a very crappy SD IPTV service over this 24mb connection!!

The point being that just because you have FTTB, doesn't mean that the companies can or want to competently use it.

BTW Magnet seem to be a leading light in the use of FTTH/B.

watty

Cat5e only does 1Gbps to 100m. Easy to have cable runs more than that in an Apartment. They could though run VDSL 100Mbps probably.

probe

Wcool wrote: »

It looks like we are screwed so for the long term.
Correct me if am wrong:

- fiber is an expensive investment, nobody seems willing/able to invest in a nationwide network.

- the government will not (partly) subsidise any national next generation network by the looks of it.

- UPC seems to have the most feasible technology at the moment but it will only be available in the cities. How future proof it is has to be proven yet.

FTTH/B is a commercially viable service. No government subsidy is required. It will sell itself, and fund itself.

All that is required is for a framework to be put in place to get the ball rolling. That is the Government’s responsibility. Define the rules, and put the installation of the national FTTH/B infrastructure out to tender. The chosen FTTH/B operator does not compete with service providers – ie it provides a neutral platform. In the same way as the NRA builds and operates motorways – they don’t provide trucking services, sell gasoline, run bus services, rent cars, or provide chauffeur services.

The cost of nationwide FTTH/B is about €8.58 per household per month, including the cost of finance. While it is at its most profitable for triple play (internet + phone + TV) customers, it is economic too for people who just want broadband – if you compare it with the full loop unbundling fee payable to eircom + the extra fees they charge for “surveying” their own infrastructure and granting access to DSLAMs etc.

As it rolls out, other modes of delivery (loop unbundling, coax, wireless, bitstream, etc) become unattractive both for the customer and supplier. Intelligent service providers will up sell their customers to the FTTH/B platform with a greater choice of services and better quality. The rest of them will face slow liquidation or go to the wall quickly, depending on their position in the market. The costs of delivering services via the national FTTH/B infrastructure will be much lower than alternatives – which is even more important in the current economic climate.

Nationwide fibre is probably the most crucial investment any country can make for the next decade and beyond – and at about €1bn (with a commercial return) it will provide a far higher return than a similar sum invested in roads, property , and many other types of physical infrastructure.

One has to suspect that many of the naysayers to FTTH/B in this thread have undeclared vested interests! As I said previously who doesn’t want symmetric broadband at 100 Mbits/sec in one’s home? Or HD quality TV. (While DTT can deliver HD TV, the unfortunate way that the spectrum has been mashed up in Ireland leaves little bandwidth for anything beyond a handful of HD TV channels over the air). In any event, DTT can’t provide large scale video on demand services.


FTTH/B does not duplicate existing “last mile” infrastructure. Eircom’s copper has reached the end of its useful life in terms of carrying capacity for 21st century multi-media services. Ditto for UPC’s “last mile”. There is no point in both of them duplicating the fibre to the home replacement when they finally realise that they must upgrade their infrastructure. Any more than the city council building two sewer systems, one dedicated to houses with odd numbers and one for even numbered houses.

The clock is ticking. Eircom is in a mess. Babcock’s share price is down another 11% today, on a high volume of shares traded… It was down 7.92% yesterday, -6.54% on the 13th, -3.17% on the 12th, and -11.76% on the 11th. Meanwhile eircom has just announced a 5.95c call “set-up charge” which will greatly inflate phone call costs, particularly for business users. Further abuse of its monopoly.

The writing is on the wall. The message about B&B is finally getting home in Oz. It is incumbent on the Irish government to deliver a plan to modernise the Irish telecommunications infrastructure – as is happening elsewhere in Europe, Asia, and even North America. While whatever is left of eircom could participate in a national FTTH/B programme, like any other service provider, this company can't be allowed to continue to inflict a sub-standard service at outrageous prices. It is making the entire telecommunications marketplace in Ireland inefficient, expensive and out of date.

.probe

A good article appeared recently in the Sydney Morning Herald about Babcock's "culture of personal greed" - Irish DSL users (using whatever ISP) are paying for this greed!
http://business.smh.com.au/business/bbs-culture-of-greed-20080806-3qnf.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap4

bk

watty wrote: »

Cat5e only does 1Gbps to 100m. Easy to have cable runs more than that in an Apartment. They could though run VDSL 100Mbps probably.

My apartment is about 20m, I'd say very few apartments in my development are over 100m and even at that, you can still get speeds in the 100's of Mb/s as ethernet speed degrades gracefully over distance, it isn't 100mb or 1gb, depending on the distance it can be somewhere in between.

You are of course correct about VDSL, but here is how silly it is.

The current gear in my development is ADSL capable of 12mb/1mb. Literally next week they are replacing the DSLAMs and our modems with ADSL2+ gear to give us the potential of 24mb/1mb service. In a few years time they will need to replace it again with VDSL gear.

That will be three very expensive upgrades. Meanwhile Magnet went with straight ethernet gear from the start and can offer speeds of 50mb today and over 100mb in the future, with no need to upgrade their gear.

I think Magnet have gotten it very right and Smart have gotten it very wrong.

BTW Probe, I agree completely with everything you say. I just wanted to make the point that there is a need for FTTH/B to be properly regulated so that it fosters competition and not mini monopolies like I'm in with Smart.

Solair

Realistically, it's going to be UPC who will end up being in the driving seat when it comes to broadband speed in Ireland.
Their network's improving and is now largely fiber-coax hybrid. i.e. those little green boxes that are appearing on streets are fed by fibre which then feeds the last mile (which in their case is only tens to hundreds of meters) by coax. That kind of infrastructure is fiber-to-kerb, not fibre to home, but it's the first step towards it.

The areas that you get speed limits in with UPC are old wiring systems where you've got lots and lots of users on a single coax running along the front of houses, that stuff's being upgraded very quickly.

eircom's situation's rather dire. They're owned by an investment bank which seems to be in considerable financial difficulties due to the credit crunch i.e. it can no longer get access to cheap loans.

Ideally, eircom needs to be outright purchased by some larger telecommunications entity with deep pockets and a good credit rating. So far, it's been destroyed by being taken into private ownership by a series of companies who had no interest in or background in telecommunications.

There are plenty of likely buyers ... BT would be a good fit, but so would any of the big European telcos as they all have economies of scale they can leverage.

eircom's not even in a good position to buy equipment, it's a tiny operation by international standards. While, say, Deutche Telekom (T-Com), Telefonica, France Telecom (Orange) etc can approach the likes of Ericsson or Alcatel who manufacture the equipment they need with hundreds of millions of customers. Eircom's a total mino by comparison.

Meanwhile UPC is the largest cable outfit in Europe and one of the largest cable and IP players on the planet. It has standardised equipment, deep pockets and massive technical resources.

probe

Solair wrote: »

Realistically, it's going to be UPC who will end up being in the driving seat when it comes to broadband speed in Ireland.

UPC’s cable TV system doesn’t have the bandwidth to handle large scale multi-media IP traffic. It might look OK now, if your experience is limited to the performance available on eircom or its bitstream resellers like BT & Co. If everybody in your neighbourhood gets to depend on UPC for internet, the performance will slow to a crawl.

Aside from that, the UPC TV choice is appalling. 95% of the channels on UPC are British tabloid TV crap. UPC is like an Anglo-Saxon propaganda agency spewing exclusively British/American monocultural rubbish in urban Ireland. There are 58 satellites broadcasting TV across Europe, transmitting about 2,000 TV channels. UPC carries a handful of these. And UPC has no HDTV. In 2008!

UPC’s radio sound quality is unworthy of a hi-fi system. i-tunes sound quality.

And even assuming you are a happy Rupert Murdoch tabloid newspaper reader, and a willing couch potato every evening watching his TV rubbish, do you really want UPC to be your monopoly provider of IP services? If you live in a one-off house in the countryside (like so many people in Ireland) you will never get a cable TV connection.

A nationwide common carrier FTTH/B infrastructure would allow you to use the service provider of your choice – UPC, eircom, digiweb, smart, or whoever – with a far faster internet connection that you currently have and a better choice of TV and video on demand (which is very limited with cable TV). It would guarantee competition.

There is no alternative. The fast thinking countries are rolling FTTH/B out now. The slow, also-ran countries will ultimately follow suit. Having lost the competitive advantage that being an early adopter gives. If Mary O’Rourke hadn’t taken the initiative to entice Global Crossing & Co to land their trans-Atlantic fibres in Ireland in the late 1990s, Ireland would be in a far poorer position today. Getting an open fibre infrastructure system into each home and business will yield ten times the benefit of the Global Crossing connectivity.

.probe

MunsterCycling

And yet this is the same Mary O'Rourke that presided over the debacle that was the eircon floatation, which has seen the nations telecom infrastructure crumble by a succession of asset stripping owners and incompetence in Government. The Government should nationalise the infrastructure and tell the telco's they can only buy access to the network not own any of its infrastructure. /rant

PogMoThoin

MunsterCycling wrote: »

And yet this is the same Mary O'Rourke that presided over the debacle that was the eircon floatation, which has seen the nations telecom infrastructure crumble by a succession of asset stripping owners and incompetence in Government. The Government should nationalise the infrastructure and tell the telco's they can only buy access to the network not own any of its infrastructure. /rant

Too late for that, Eircom own the network, end of. Lets move forward from mistakes already made, we need FTTH, its inevitable.

Blaster99

I have to assume that anyone who advocates nationalisation never experienced Telecom Eireann. A greater joke of a telco was hard to find. Well actually, I think Greek Telecom was worse.

What probe forgets is that there are only a handful of countries with a reasonable amount of FTTH and none of them are any real players in terms of content. It makes no real difference to us if France or Korea has 1Gbps bandwidth or whatever. As it stands, 20Mbps is plenty and we have that in some urban areas. Obviously UPC's broadband coverage is still pretty pathetic by international standards but I guess they'll get there eventually.

PogMoThoin

Blaster99 wrote: »

As it stands, 20Mbps is plenty and we have that in some urban areas.

You sound like my Mother, "Ah, sure isn't it good enough"............No its not, Why does this country always have to drag its heels? FTTH is going to have to happen eventually, its inevitable. Lets get discussing and planning this NOW!

Solair

UPC are ploughing in a lot of new fibre optics at local level. It will greatly enhance bandwidth on their network as it means that fewer users will be sharing the same pipe and should also mean better broadband speeds.

probe

MunsterCycling wrote: »

And yet this is the same Mary O'Rourke that presided over the debacle that was the eircon floatation, which has seen the nations telecom infrastructure crumble by a succession of asset stripping owners and incompetence in Government. The Government should nationalise the infrastructure and tell the telco's they can only buy access to the network not own any of its infrastructure. /rant

I totally agree. The eircom IPO selling off 100% of the voting shares was an appalling stupid move. Every other government - France, Germany, Switzerland etc held on to 50%+ of their state telco.

But the Global Crossing deal was a correct decision - one that should be replicated now with a national, open FTTH/B infrastructure, which should be open to all service providers. Otherwise Ireland will continue at the bottom of the pile, and everybody will suffer higher prices, less competition and poorer service as a result.

I'm not suggesting that any provider is forced to use a national FTTH/B platform. They can build their own FTTH and duplicate everything if they want. However they would gain nothing by that, and it would cost them a fortune.

There is no benefit in private ownership of national infrastructural assets. Governments have the lowest cost of capital, and everything else can be outsourced to the private sector to ensure efficient management and competition among service providers. In the same way as motorways are not owned by private companies - but their construction, tolling, service area operation, cleaning, breakdown services, traffic information services, etc is usually outsourced to private companies.

.probe

probe

bk wrote: »

I assume Probe was referring to UPC's use of DOCSIS 2 rather then DOCSIS 3.

DOCSIS 3 is a new and immature standard with expensive equipment, that is why UPC went with DOCSIS 2 IMO. Their new network is still mostly Fibre and when DOCSIS 3 matures, it will be relatively easy to just switch the DOCSIS 2 gear for DOCSIS 3, no digging required. UPC have and are doing the hardes bit, which is laying down the fibre.

Rubbish! For example, France’s Numericable (http://www.numericable.fr) uses DOCSIS3, to provide 100 Mbits/sec internet, HDTV – including VoD using MPEG4 at 12 Mbits/sec, and provides unlimited free phone calls to 46 countries* all from EUR 29,99 per month. Numericable will have fibre installed to 7.5 million households in France by 2009. HD movies for €4,99 for cinema releases, or €2,99 for older stuff. They offer 8 HD TV channels + zillions of SD TV channels on the set top box.

All UPC.ie can offer is 20 Mbits/sec for their over-priced SUPER PREMIUM product. Eircom is only using ADSL2+ for its €107.69 and €204.49 per month broadband services! Everybody else has to put up with 1990s ADSL in Ireland – which means you will get a far slower effective connection speed unless you live within a few hundred metres of the RSU (read “exchange” in the 1960s lingo still used by eircom/comreg/and the Irish media generally). In the rest of Europe, ADSL2+ is the norm for all DSL broadband connections. And eircom’s €204.49 product is less than half the speed of a €29.99 connection from www.free.fr, or www.neuf.fr etc.

.probe

http://www.numericable.fr/offre/images/Numericable-fibre-optique-avantages.pdf

Coverage map: http://www.numericable.fr/offre/fibre_optique.php

*Unlimited free phone calls to France Allemagne Guernesey Norvege Andorre Hongrie Pays-Bas Autriche Irlande Pologne Belgique Islande Portugal Bulgarie Israel Republique Tcheque Canada (fixes & mobiles) Italie Reunion Canaries Jersey Roumanie Chypre Lettonie Royaume-Uni Danemark Liechtenstein Saint Marin Espagne Lituanie Slovaquie Estonie Luxembourg Slovenie Etats-Unis sauf Hawaï et Alaska (fixes & mobiles) Madere Suede Finlande Malte Suisse Grèce Martinique Turquie Guadeloupe Monaco Vatican

Wcool

probe wrote: »

Rubbish! For example, France’s Numericable (http://www.numericable.fr) uses DOCSIS3, to provide 100 Mbits/sec internet, HDTV – including VoD using MPEG4 at 12 Mbits/sec, and provides unlimited free phone calls to 46 countries* all from EUR 29,99 per month. Numericable will have fibre installed to 7.5 million households in France by 2009. HD movies for €4,99 for cinema releases, or €2,99 for older stuff. They offer 8 HD TV channels + zillions of SD TV channels on the set top box.

All UPC.ie can offer is 20 Mbits/sec for their over-priced SUPER PREMIUM product. Eircom is only using ADSL2+ for its €107.69 and €204.49 per month broadband services! Everybody else has to put up with 1990s ADSL in Ireland – which means you will get a far slower effective connection speed unless you live within a few hundred metres of the RSU (read “exchange” in the 1960s lingo still used by eircom/comreg/and the Irish media generally). In the rest of Europe, ADSL2+ is the norm for all DSL broadband connections. And eircom’s €204.49 product is less than half the speed of a €29.99 connection from www.free.fr, or www.neuf.fr etc.

.probe

http://www.numericable.fr/offre/images/Numericable-fibre-optique-avantages.pdf

Coverage map: http://www.numericable.fr/offre/fibre_optique.php

While I sympathise with you, you make it sound as if providing broadband is a license to print money. Obviously it is not or else we would have had FTTH years ago. Another observation is that all those 7 million customers are in the big cities, Ireland does not really have cities outside Dublin...

I find it strange too that they didn't go for DOCSIS 3 considering the benefits that you mention, but apparently there is a (financial) reason for it.

You know, I don't expect broadband to cost only 30 euro in Ireland. It bothers me more that even 70 euro per month can not buy me anything speedy.

bk

Probe, I agree with you, some far better services are offered in other countries.

But in an Irish context, what UPC is offering is a very good service, way better and cheaper then what anyone else is offering here in Ireland. While it certainly isn't as good as some hyper-competitive markets like France, it is even better then what most of my colleagues in the Bay Area (San Francisco, silicon valley) get, that's not too shabby.

BTW Unlike Ireland, most French TV providers give the basic TV service away for free as they don't really have a culture of paying for TV in France, if you look at the TV channel line-up of the €30 package, you will see that most of the channels are ones that French people get for free over satellite anyway. To get the extra premium channels, you have to pay €90 per month, still outstanding value as it contains 100mb BB, but just FYI.

probe

bk wrote: »

Probe, I agree with you, some far better services are offered in other countries.

But in an Irish context, what UPC is offering is a very good service, way better and cheaper then what anyone else is offering here in Ireland. While it certainly isn't as good as some hyper-competitive markets like France, it is even better then what most of my colleagues in the Bay Area (San Francisco, silicon valley) get, that's not too shabby.

BTW Unlike Ireland, most French TV providers give the basic TV service away for free as they don't really have a culture of paying for TV in France, if you look at the TV channel line-up of the €30 package, you will see that most of the channels are ones that French people get for free over satellite anyway. To get the extra premium channels, you have to pay €90 per month, still outstanding value as it contains 100mb BB, but just FYI.

It is the way properly organised competition works! France Telecom DSL had no TV or free phone calls until free.fr came along. FT didn't even use ADSL2+ modems. Free.fr did, and gave everybody maxxx speed for €29.99 per month including basic TV and free phone calls. They were able to do this because of properly regulated loop unbundling.

They are all moving to fibre now, and France will have more FTTH than anywhere else in Europe shortly. There is a culture of paying for TV in France - Canal+ has been subscriber based since 1984. www.canalplus.fr. The DSL companies have optional TV channels too for an extra fee. VoD is no different to online DVD/BD rental. And of course there is the annual Redevance Audiovisuelle payment - which goes to support serious programming on the commerial TV channels, as France doesn't have RTE or BBC style government controlled mass market TV stations.

I am suggesting is that Ireland doesn't go into a duplication of fibre game, by setting up a framework for a shared "last mile" FTTH platform open to all competitors. It would provide competition and wide availability of high speed services in both urban and rural areas.

The case is even more urgent in Ireland than elsewhere, given the poor state of the eircom plant, and the poor financial (heavily indebted) condition of both eircom and its parent B&B, and the related SIV.

Babacock and Brown's share price fell a further 23.5% today to AUD 3.45.

.probe

probe

Wcool wrote: »

While I sympathise with you, you make it sound as if providing broadband is a license to print money.

I didn't suggest that broadband is a license to print money! What I am saying is that if you combine TV, VoD, telephone, internet, security and other services over a shared fat pipe, without duplication, a relatively sparely populated country like Ireland can still make it commercial. It is combining the concept of a multi-play installation, with shared last mile infrastructure + the combined marketing clout of multiple operators moving people over to the same shared fibre resource.

FTTH/B can be far cheaper to install in rural areas than in urban. They are using it in rural areas in several countries because it has reach (no DSL type loop length limitations), low maintenance costs and a long shelf life.

.probe

bk

probe wrote: »

I am suggesting is that Ireland doesn't go into a duplication of fibre game, by setting up a framework for a shared "last mile" FTTH platform open to all competitors. It would provide competition and wide availability of high speed services in both urban and rural areas.

The case is even more urgent in Ireland than elsewhere, given the poor state of the eircom plant, and the poor financial (heavily indebted) condition of both eircom and its parent B&B, and the related SIV.

As long as it doesn't create mini monopolies, you have my vote.

bk

Babcock & Brown shares suspended

http://www.rte.ie/business/2008/0820/babcock.html

Things looking really bad for them, it would seem like an excellent time for UPC, Smart and BT (LLU) to gain from Eircoms pain, I don't think Eircom will be upgrading their infrastructure any time soon.

If Smart were to push out a 24mb/1mb BB product now like BT, I'm sure they would gain lots of customers.

smellslikeshoes

bk wrote: »

Babcock & Brown shares suspended

http://www.rte.ie/business/2008/0820/babcock.html

Things looking really bad for them, it would seem like an excellent time for UPC, Smart and BT (LLU) to gain from Eircoms pain, I don't think Eircom will be upgrading their infrastructure any time soon.

If Smart were to push out a 24mb/1mb BB product now like BT, I'm sure they would gain lots of customers.

I didn't really think much of these reports that they were in trouble up to now but that definitely seems like they are in big trouble. Hopefully whatever happens its not going to end up with Eircom in even more debt.

probe

The Australian Securities Exchange announcements regarding the suspension of dealing in Babcock and Brown's shares are here:

http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/CompanyInfoSearchResults.jsp?searchBy=asxCode&allinfo=on&asxCode=BNB

.probe

MunsterCycling

.probe for Minister for Communications

probe wrote: »

It is the way properly organised competition works! France Telecom DSL had no TV or free phone calls until free.fr came along. FT didn't even use ADSL2+ modems. Free.fr did, and gave everybody maxxx speed for €29.99 per month including basic TV and free phone calls. They were able to do this because of properly regulated loop unbundling.

They are all moving to fibre now, and France will have more FTTH than anywhere else in Europe shortly. There is a culture of paying for TV in France - Canal+ has been subscriber based since 1984. www.canalplus.fr. The DSL companies have optional TV channels too for an extra fee. VoD is no different to online DVD/BD rental. And of course there is the annual Redevance Audiovisuelle payment - which goes to support serious programming on the commerial TV channels, as France doesn't have RTE or BBC style government controlled mass market TV stations.

I am suggesting is that Ireland doesn't go into a duplication of fibre game, by setting up a framework for a shared "last mile" FTTH platform open to all competitors. It would provide competition and wide availability of high speed services in both urban and rural areas.

The case is even more urgent in Ireland than elsewhere, given the poor state of the eircom plant, and the poor financial (heavily indebted) condition of both eircom and its parent B&B, and the related SIV.

Babacock and Brown's share price fell a further 23.5% today to AUD 3.45.

.probe

yoyo

Serves them right , What does that mean for the furture of eircon though?

Nick

smellslikeshoes

yoyo wrote: »

Serves them right , What does that mean for the furture of eircon though?

Nick

Sold off ASAP I presume if **** has hit the fan like it seems is happening. Couldn't see many companies biting though with the way the world economy is and the fact that Eircom is in a lot of debt. The Ideal solution for the consumer is if a large telecommunications company with deep pockets took over, or possibly some sort of government backed solution.

Moriarty

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

or possibly some sort of government backed solution.

It's no longer the days where the government has a spare €2billion down the back of the sofa to splurge on vanity projects every six months. The only possible way the government would get involved in eircom again is if it's about to go down the tubes and there isn't a single backer making themselves available.

It's going to be an interesting few weeks for eircom

MunsterCycling

It's funny (not in the Ha Ha way obviously) Moriarty that you regard the nations communications infrastructure as a vanity project, the fianna failure Government should never have sold the infrastructure off in the first place, it should have been turned over to a state organisation to administer in the nations interest and only allow the service providers access to network services on a lease basis, we would know who to blame if the infrastructure was crap like it is now and there could be no passing the buck in good auld fianna failure style.


MC

telecomsman

probe wrote: »

I didn't suggest that broadband is a license to print money! What I am saying is that if you combine TV, VoD, telephone, internet, security and other services over a shared fat pipe, without duplication, a relatively sparely populated country like Ireland can still make it commercial. It is combining the concept of a multi-play installation, with shared last mile infrastructure + the combined marketing clout of multiple operators moving people over to the same shared fibre resource.

FTTH/B can be far cheaper to install in rural areas than in urban. They are using it in rural areas in several countries because it has reach (no DSL type loop length limitations), low maintenance costs and a long shelf life.

.probe

I always find it slightly surprising that people who generally have a good high-level technical knowledge of transport/transmission technologies, dont always see the bigger picture when it comes to providing services to run on these transport systems. As someone who has worked previously with large telecoms companies here and in mainland europe...let me deal with some of the services you have listed above.

Firstly, I agree with your argument that FTTH is where telecoms companies need to be going when putting next generation infrastructure in place. But to say that exchanges can be bypassed is slightly naieve. How do you think Fibre-Optic networks are accessed? You dont simply have an entry point to a fibre-optic ring on every street in the country. Additionally have you any idea of the cost of replacing the copper already under our feet with last-mile Fibre?

When a telecoms company like Eircom upgrades its access network, it need to invest in revenue-generating services that will provide ROI for both the network outlay and the application layer service. So lets look at the services you have suggested above:

Telephone - this seems like an easy one given the ever growing migration of users to VoIP systems. Eircom has a corporate VoIP product, much like some of the other companies here. However the key to this argument is the fact that Eircom is LEGALLY OBLIGED by COMREG to provide a consumer voice product that allows for certain legacy PSTN functionality. This voice product can be a SIP based VoIP offering or SS7 based circuit switched (as is current). So for Eircom to put in a consumer VoIP network, they also have to invest in a platform to provide this legacy functionality. I suggest you read up on PSTN Emulation/Simulation and IMS.


VoD - again Video on Demand requires a platfrom from which content is served. Content then needs to be purchased from media organisations, which doesnt come cheap. I suggest you read up on BTs IPTV and VoD offering....have a look at the forecasted return versus the capital + operating expenditure.

The Eircom model here is impossible to compare with similar incumbents in Europe, for the simple reason that there is no state-owned interest in the company. Thus the generating revenue will always take precedence over the "public good".

smellslikeshoes

Moriarty wrote: »

It's no longer the days where the government has a spare €2billion down the back of the sofa to splurge on vanity projects every six months. The only possible way the government would get involved in eircom again is if it's about to go down the tubes and there isn't a single backer making themselves available.

It's going to be an interesting few weeks for eircom

Your right and I agree I ment it more as an ideal solution rather than a probable one, saying that though its not completely outside the realms of possibility for them to get involved in some way.

PogMoThoin

MunsterCycling wrote: »

It's funny (not in the Ha Ha way obviously) Moriarty that you regard the nations communications infrastructure as a vanity project, the fianna failure Government should never have sold the infrastructure off in the first place, it should have been turned over to a state organisation to administer in the nations interest and only allow the service providers access to network services on a lease basis, we would know who to blame if the infrastructure was crap like it is now and there could be no passing the buck in good auld fianna failure style.


MC

:rolleyes: No point just blaming the Fianna Fail government, in fact the opposition were all for the sale of Eircom 2, blame ourselves for being a backward nation that couldn't predict that we might need to hold on to our network.

April Raine

probe wrote: »

Eircom is providing appallingly bad value for money to the Irish consumer, and they still retain about 95% of the DSL internet market in Ireland – by using re-invoicing companies to do a rebranding fiddle on consumers making them think they have competition.

Please can you expain what you mean by rebranding fiddle. Thanks!