Attn! Ireland - We are being ripped off!

Toiletroll

ven0m wrote: »

That's overly simplified & trolling, & you bloody well know it. My 12 years in telecoms tells me otherwise mate, & that was 12 years in several markets for several high profile companies.

Provisioning cost is based on way more than the manpower, & makes me wonder if you are infact merely a grunt in the industry, as opposed to someone who actually 'worked' in it & on provisioning from acq. up.

BT Ireland have quite a few ADSL2+ exchanges. Smart are in a lot of Irish Exchanges offering ADSL2+ on LLU lines.

Why talk about the past?

If you know so much, lets try to focus or energies on where those problems are. Considering your experience you should have some good information for us 'grunts' as you would like to call them. I work in a call center environment - I do not do the hardware installations etc. I have worked with 5 different depts within said call center and you get to see much more than your average bloke digging holes

Toiletroll

Namesco wrote: »

Toiletroll

Am I the only one after noticing this?

Yes - A clever username from a mmorpg that I used to play? Oh london is burning I have fire in my stove, I DID IT OH NO I DID IT! lol :P

ongarite

Toiletroll wrote: »

BT Ireland have quite a few ADSL2+ exchanges. Smart are in a lot of Irish Exchanges offering ADSL2+ on LLU lines.

BT are in Dublin exchanges with LLU equipment that is worth trying to make some money for them.
SMART are in tiny tiny amount of exchanges in M50 radius, they have no money at all and haven't upgraded any more exchanges in over 2 yrs.

Toiletroll

ongarite wrote: »

BT are in Dublin exchanges with LLU equipment that is worth trying to make some money for them.
SMART are in tiny tiny amount of exchanges in M50 radius, they have no money at all and haven't upgraded any more exchanges in over 2 yrs.

Not entirely true - I am in the northwest and have 15mb Smart connection and its very good. http://www.smarttelecom.ie/residential_package_broadband.html

They are all over the place. I know of another town where a friend of mine got a flyer in the door about Smart enabling their exchange...

Gurgle

ongarite wrote: »

If you want prices like that in this country, you will need Irish Government to step in and spend €1 billion like in Sweden and Finland to upgrade telecoms line with fibre and ADSL2+ upgrades

Eircom or any of the telcos have the capital or resources to upgrade network or sell products at UK prices. SMART tried and they went bust very quick. Eircom for all our complaining makes SFA profit from landline business, Meteor is the only thing keeping them afloat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_European_countries

Population density.
UK have it, we don't.

1huge1

eth0_ wrote: »

As for the eircom talktime...I have wireless broadband from Digiweb and I have a Skype subscription which gives me a dublin 'landline' number and unlimited calls within Ireland (not to mobiles) for €3.39 per month. For unlimited calls within europe it is €4.54, unlimited calls worldwide, €10.29

There is almost always an alternative to these "rip offs".

Ya its a shame that way too many Irish people take the ''easy'' route and just go with eircom.
It drives me up the wall.

Toiletroll

1huge1 wrote: »

Ya its a shame that way too many Irish people take the ''easy'' route and just go with eircom.
It drives me up the wall.

Finally - Great point. If more people were willing to try alternative providers then maybe the market could be bigger and more competition could develop.

Smart going bust 2 years ago wouldnt have helped the confidence in the marketplace

jor el

ongarite wrote: »

BT are in Dublin exchanges with LLU equipment that is worth trying to make some money for them.
SMART are in tiny tiny amount of exchanges in M50 radius, they have no money at all and haven't upgraded any more exchanges in over 2 yrs.

Smart are in lots of exchanges outside of Dublin. BT are only in a handful of exchanges, and at least one outside Dublin (Dooradoyle, Limerick). Smart haven't been doing much lately though. BT were the first company to unbundle lines in this country, and have done SFA in the years since they started it.

1huge1 wrote: »

Ya its a shame that way too many Irish people take the ''easy'' route and just go with eircom.
It drives me up the wall.

But what are the alternatives for most people? If you go with phoneline/DSL, then you are still paying eircom (even LLU operators pay rental to eircom). For non-DSL, you have wireless which varies from excessively expensive and crap, up to very good. In cable we have mainly UPC, which services about 1/3 of the households in the country with TV, and less with broadband.

The vast majority of people are lucky to have a single telephone/broadband provider, so there is no choice. For telephone only, you can go with BT, UTV, Imagine, Perlico, and a host of others, but many of them have dire customer service, can over charge and can cause all sorts of other problems that you have to deal with. In many cases, it's best to stick with eircom, even if they are robbing you blind.

Toiletroll

jor el wrote: »

Smart are in lots of exchanges outside of Dublin. BT are only in a handful of exchanges, and at least one outside Dublin (Dooradoyle, Limerick). Smart haven't been doing much lately though. BT were the first company to unbundle lines in this country, and have done SFA in the years since they started it.



But what are the alternatives for most people? If you go with phoneline/DSL, then you are still paying eircom (even LLU operators pay rental to eircom). For non-DSL, you have wireless which varies from excessively expensive and crap, up to very good. In cable we have mainly UPC, which services about 1/3 of the households in the country with TV, and less with broadband.

The vast majority of people are lucky to have a single telephone/broadband provider, so there is no choice. For telephone only, you can go with BT, UTV, Imagine, Perlico, and a host of others, but many of them have dire customer service, can over charge and can cause all sorts of other problems that you have to deal with. In many cases, it's best to stick with eircom, even if they are robbing you blind.

Wow amazing post - Great insight.

How efficient are ComReg? Are they anywhere near like Ofcom in the UK? I would doubt it, even though Ofcom are not great either.

If they copied the regulations Ofcom have in the UK or at least the ones that could be applied to the vast majority of the current technology & services in Ireland then we could have a far better and all round system. They have been doing it a lot longer so why can we not learn from their mistakes?

If eircom are not making any profits on their current prices or very little then where the hell is the money going?

Cost PLUS++, anyone?

Toiletroll

Another thing to look at - Telecoms are part of the backbone of any economy. If we are to try to gain back our competitivness in the world economy we should be trying to lower the costs for the EU. These are important services for our business and bringing their costs down could only help imho.

dudara

Keep the sarcasm in your pants guys. It's not doing your arguments any favours.

dudara

Toiletroll

Well I think I might have a few too many this evening. Its all a bit of fun in the end thouhg

craichoe

Hahahahaha .. what a rip off .. i pay 20 euros / month, including line rental for 20mbit down and 1.5mbit up, 1:1 Contention and no Cap :P

Cabaal

what a pointless thread, everyone knows line rental in Irerland is most expensive in Europe, Toiletroll I would suggest that if your going to compare you actually give the right price on things...

Eircom line rental is €25.36 not 26.00

In relation to DSL and Broadband, I believe you'll find that BT Wholesales IP-Stream Network and Eircom Wholesales Bit-Stream Network are NOT the same, coverage by BT Wholesale in the UK is about 98% of pop and provides upto 8MB for the past 2 years or so and is now moving to 16MB as well as rolling out the 21CN in 2009+.....Eircom have only changed to upto 7.6MB in the last two months on some exchanges.

The other major factor in Ireland is line quality is alot poorer that then of the UK.

Oh lets also go abit further sure....most LLU providers in the UK (CPW being the largest) still only cover about 60-70% of UK pop, however in Ireland LLU providers are ONLY in large citys and covers alot less....oh look at that...again not the same :pac:
Its also worth noting that ALOT of the "free" Broadband packages or those at low prices such as £9.99 per month are ONLY available in LLU area's in the UK and if your outside of these area's then expect to pay £5 to £10 extra a month on top of this "low" price. This is very common practice among LLU providers in the UK.

In addition people bitch about caps, you'll find the basically all the top 5 ISP's in the UK now have caps or FUP's as part of there Broadband packages.

We're not comparing like with like at all here,

As already mentioned:

Gurgle wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_European_countries

Population density.
UK have it, we don't.

Gurgle talks much sense!

justcallmetex

Toiletroll wrote: »

Finally - Great point. If more people were willing to try alternative providers then maybe the market could be bigger and more competition could develop.

Smart going bust 2 years ago wouldnt have helped the confidence in the marketplace

Hence why eircom cut off their services in the first place

sunny2004

The op may have his sums wrong but we do in fact get overcharged for just about everything.. so cut the guy a break..

Toiletroll

Cabaal wrote: »

what a pointless thread, everyone knows line rental in Irerland is most expensive in Europe, Toiletroll I would suggest that if your going to compare you actually give the right price on things...

Eircom line rental is €25.36 not 26.00

In relation to DSL and Broadband, I believe you'll find that BT Wholesales IP-Stream Network and Eircom Wholesales Bit-Stream Network are NOT the same, coverage by BT Wholesale in the UK is about 98% of pop and provides upto 8MB for the past 2 years or so and is now moving to 16MB as well as rolling out the 21CN in 2009+.....Eircom have only changed to upto 7.6MB in the last two months on some exchanges.

The other major factor in Ireland is line quality is alot poorer that then of the UK.

Oh lets also go abit further sure....most LLU providers in the UK (CPW being the largest) still only cover about 60-70% of UK pop, however in Ireland LLU providers are ONLY in large citys and covers alot less....oh look at that...again not the same :pac:
Its also worth noting that ALOT of the "free" Broadband packages or those at low prices such as £9.99 per month are ONLY available in LLU area's in the UK and if your outside of these area's then expect to pay £5 to £10 extra a month on top of this "low" price. This is very common practice among LLU providers in the UK.

In addition people bitch about caps, you'll find the basically all the top 5 ISP's in the UK now have caps or FUP's as part of there Broadband packages.

We're not comparing like with like at all here,

As already mentioned:


Gurgle talks much sense!

Some fair points but you do under-estimate the LLU in Ireland. I live in the back-arse of nowhere (though not too far from the exchange) and I am getting Smart 15mb. I live at least 50 miles away from the nearest thing you might even consider calling a city and about another 20 miles from civilization

EDIT - And its not a pointless thread you clown, unless you have benifiting shares somewhere If we dont talk about the high prices and just sit back and take them they will never go away. Talking about it wont do much but its better than doing absolutely nothing

Cabaal

Toiletroll wrote: »

Some fair points but you do under-estimate the LLU in Ireland. I live in the back-arse of nowhere (though not too far from the exchange) and I am getting Smart 15mb. I live at least 50 miles away from the nearest thing you might even consider calling a city and about another 20 miles from civilization

You must be the exception then, there are many people who post on a daly basis that live only 4km from their local exchange and they still can't get any Broadband and thats not even from LLU providers.

Smart and BT LLU for the most part is only available onm City exchanges, for example Waterford, Cork, Galway, Kilkenny etc but not in small towns outside of these citys

EDIT - And its not a pointless thread you clown, unless you have benifiting shares somewhere If we dont talk about the high prices and just sit back and take them they will never go away. Talking about it wont do much but its better than doing absolutely nothing

It is a very much pointless thread, first off your not comparing like with like which I've proven and bitching about it all on some message board isn't going to do a thing unless your actually do something outside of some posts on a board.

So its pointless unless you actually do something more useful, talk to me when you have

Toiletroll

Cabaal wrote: »

You must be the exception then, there are many people who post on a daly basis that live only 4km from their local exchange and they still can't get any Broadband and thats not even from LLU providers.

Smart and BT LLU for the most part is only available onm City exchanges, for example Waterford, Cork, Galway, Kilkenny etc but not in small towns outside of these citys



It is a very much pointless thread, first off your not comparing like with like which I've proven and bitching about it all on some message board isn't going to do a thing unless your actually do something outside of some posts on a board.

So its pointless unless you actually do something more useful, talk to me when you have

Again - I live in a small town with Smart 15MB LLU... None of the above. Also that town is in the north west which in itself is the back-arse of nowhere lol.

Yes posting on here doesnt do anything so to speak but it might get someone in a better position to do something about it, or to think and suggest.

I didnt come on here claiming to know how to solve the issues, if I knew that hell id have them solved already!

ven0m

LLU is decided on return-on-investment by these companies, although Smart are not as their name implies & have a T-50 running around Dublin that doesn't even terminate anywhere of any bloody use LOL

LLU is a cherry-picking exercise in Ireland, & ALL those involved share equal blame with eircom. Some of the stories I could tell you (but can't) about LLU would see some very very different attitude changes about eircom ......

eircom are not the bad guys as much as many people try to make out, & no - I don't currently work for them.

MOH

Toiletroll wrote: »

Some fair points but you do under-estimate the LLU in Ireland. I live in the back-arse of nowhere (though not too far from the exchange) and I am getting Smart 15mb. I live at least 50 miles away from the nearest thing you might even consider calling a city and about another 20 miles from civilization

EDIT - And its not a pointless thread you clown, unless you have benifiting shares somewhere If we dont talk about the high prices and just sit back and take them they will never go away. Talking about it wont do much but its better than doing absolutely nothing

How much are you paying for your Smart 15Mb?
And why are you comparing Eircom with BT UK in your OP without even mentioning that you're on Smart?

If you'd started off saying Eircom are way overpriced (which i agree) and that you can get a far better deal on Smart, you would have had a much netter aargument than comparing against a different country.

copeyhagen

just to give people ideas of different broadband providers etc, i was paying 40€ a month for 3mb with eircom which was decent enough. then they decided to give the people on the 3 meg package an upgrade to 7.6 meg. following the upgrade my dsl broadband was disconnecting every 2 minutes and i was only getting 5 meg of the 7.6 meg. this was due to a number of factors but theyre irrelevant. i switched to ntl cable broadband (20 meg) for the same price i was paying for the crappy eircom on saturday aand havent been disconnected once.

there are alternatives out there to being ripped off.

watna

I wouldn't say you were being completely ripped off in Ireland.

In NZ, Our line rental, broadband with crappy 1mb speed (with 10G data limit - that's upload and download) and free local calls is $100 per month. That's about €50. Factor in the much lower salaries here and its basically the equivalent of paying €90 - €100 at home....

.... and we had to wait two weeks for them to come and flick the broadband on AND we had to buy our own router. With eircom they turned the broadband on remotely and sent us a free router and we had free national calls whereas here it's only free local calls and we had a 10GB download limit not a 10GB download and upload limit.

OP Your comparisons are far too simplistic and not taking a lot of things in to account.

It looks like we pay less in NZ but with the average salary (which is €20,000) and all the other stuff we don't really pay less.

and don't even get me started on the gas company. They don't even have central heating here and there's been loads of news articles about how people can't afford their gas bills. We got accidently sent a $1,000 bill the other day and spent an hour on the phone trying to sort it out. We only have a gas cooker and our bills here are higher than they were in Dublin and there we had full heating and a warm toasty house. The grass is always greener folks, I'd give anything to have bord gais as my gas company again!

ven0m

copeyhagen wrote: »

just to give people ideas of different broadband providers etc, i was paying 40€ a month for 3mb with eircom which was decent enough. then they decided to give the people on the 3 meg package an upgrade to 7.6 meg. following the upgrade my dsl broadband was disconnecting every 2 minutes and i was only getting 5 meg of the 7.6 meg. this was due to a number of factors but theyre irrelevant. i switched to ntl cable broadband (20 meg) for the same price i was paying for the crappy eircom on saturday aand havent been disconnected once.

there are alternatives out there to being ripped off.

DSL & Cable Broadband delivery are two very very different things, & NTL recently signed a deal with DigiWeb for their broadband delivery, as they too have their own problems.

UPC/NTL/Chorus have a 20 year old plus infrastructure in most of their service areas that is incapable of delivering broadband services, hence their deal with DigiWeb.

Nevermind the fact that UPC/NTL/Chorus have a worse customer service track record than eircom, & their internal politics makes eircom's look nice & sweet in comparison.

JohnG18

Toiletroll wrote: »

Hi fellow Irishmen who are considered to have so much money in our pockets that we will pay anything for anything. Here is one damn fine example:

---

Eircom Line Rental (Ireland) €26

---

BT Line Rental (UK) £10.49
=============================
Eircom Talk Anytime (Ireland) 40.99 (<- I mean WTF is is that crazy b@st*rds)

---

BT Talk Anytime (UK) £4.95
=============================
Eircom Broadband (Ireland) €25 (for a STUPID 3mb)

---

BT Broadband (UK) £16 (nobody in their right mind in the UK are with BT for this. 8mb though)

---

Total for Eircom Ireland per month: €92
Total for BT UK per month: £30.44



Now just for 1 minute look at this deal

The same package as above with 8mb broadband anytime calls and line rental is 14.99 for the first 3 months and 19.99 thereafter with VAT included.

Why are we so stupid and agree to pay stupid amounts of cash for a service that is SOOOOOOOOOOOO cheap to provide!.... We are a bunch of idiots all round when it comes to price. We need to step up and sort this mess out. Its not just phone packages, gosh no, that would be irrelevant. This applies to almost everything!

Actually all Eircom TalkTime packages INCLUDE Line Rental.
And you can Bundle BB with TT for just €56 per month.

craichoe

Total B*llocks.

A. Your comparing Eircom to BT - Can't compare at all really.
B. Eircom are notorious for being expensive, you have choice, GO USE SOMEONE ELSE.


I could really understand if you had no choice except Eircom, but you don't (unless you live in the back of beyonds)

Its the same Deal in Holland with KPN, they're expensive and crap.

If thats what you think, go move to the UK and sleep with BT while your at it :P

ardmacha

Yes, the basic line rental in ROI is the most expensive in Europe or thereabouts. Broadband though can be compared with the UK. Look at UTVInternet who operate North and South. A service with 20GB download is £19.99/month in the North, the highest service in the South, which has a 20GB download limit now operates at 7.6Mb/sec (i.e. similar to the resold UK BT product) is €23.99.