BT Ireland and Vodafone announce partnership

ardmacha

Broadband and mobile can converge. Voda can offer home service via the broadband on the mobile handset. One bill €50 or so for all calls and broadband.

O2 are looking at this sort of thing

http://www.airvana.com/products/products_559.htm#what_femtocell

Sierra Oscar

Cabaal wrote: »

This could be a very positive move in relation to an actual real threat to Eircom as BT both use LLU and Bit-stream products which will now be combined with Vodafones Perlico offers of ADSL and Vodafones offers of Midband products.

Seems more like BT want to off-load the hassle of its Irish market to Vodafone.

Cabaal

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Seems more like BT want to off-load the hassle of its Irish market to Vodafone.

Given there changes in the UK this still makes sense, why continue with something with you don't really want to do the front end stuff anymore...its much easier instead to transfer things over to a company that is looking to expand its offerings

watty

Why would a Company that has profitable Infrastructure in Ireland want break-even/loss-making Irish Retail?

This makes no difference at all for customers, except eventually they will get Vodafone mobile bundle offers and makes BT more profitable.

I think "partnership" is a curious name for it, perhaps to ensure existing Direct Debits and Contracts are valid. It will be interesting to see what company's name is on the bill in a years time. It's a transfer of BT Ireland retail to Vodafone.

It really makes Vodafone ultimately the 2nd biggest in terms of Retail customers, however this is NOT competiton to eircom as most of the profit is eircom wholesale with eircom retail or vodafone/perlico/bt-retail fixed line business (LLU or not) only close to break-even. LLU also only eircom really makes money.

Now if eircom wasn't having to spend it all on servicing Debt we might get somewhere.

Cabaal

While it may not be 'real' competition its still competition none the less as the likes of Eircom generate alot of revenue from calls and if Vodafone take enough customers it will affect eircom's revenue.

What we need is the UK model in Ireland, split Eircom into Eircom wholesale and Eircom Retail as completely separate company's.
This would create a more level playing field as Eircom Wholesale would have to deal with Vodafone, Eircom etc all equally

In addition it would mean Eircom Retail would have to get on on its own

rebel.ranter

Cabaal wrote: »

What we need is the UK model in Ireland, split Eircom into Eircom wholesale and Eircom Retail as completely separate company's.
This would create a more level playing field as Eircom Wholesale would have to deal with Vodafone, Eircom etc all equally

Yea the government messe up here at the time. They learned their lesson though with the ESB splittting them into the ESB Networks & ESB Supply.

Eircom have a stranglehold on this country's telecom resources. Everything seems to tbe a struggle with them to move things along. In other countries like Spain they are running fibre directly to the home, meanwhile a friend of mine cannot even get 1Mb BB 10 miles outside Cork city!

rebel.ranter

Just spooted this thread, looks like I was way ahead of myself back then!

http://wwww.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055065876

watty

It only really affects eircom revenue if people switch to Mobile for calls and Internet and cancel the phone line.

(Or cable, Fixed wireless)
Mobile, Fibre, Fixed Wireless, Cable (3 companies) and two way sat is real competition that hurts eircom. They would still be #1 in before debt repayment profits if every fixed line customer was on a different supplier. That's why BT Ireland is getting out of fixed line retail. The margin is too small to non-existant.

This is why Sky is not here.

Rather_b_diving

Absolutely agree with Watty - low margin product with loads of whiny customers complaining about their broadband bill - who needs them.

BT also signed a deal with O2 for national backhaul and now they have Vodafone so they get to fill up their network without having to support 1000's of customers.

Almost all of the 170K customers that are now with Vodafone are bitstream and WLR so eircom still retain the line rental plus the bitstream revenue plus every inbound and outbound call is revenue for eircom.

Real competition is needed not more companies reselling eircom

Vunderground

Got an offer in the post from BT yesterday offering 50% off the next 2 month bill if we sign up for another 12 months. But BT is no more! Bit confusing?

Scruff

So my and everyone else's bill payments remain unchanged and still go to a BT account. I wonder how much hassle Vodafone will have with their billing of BT to get the money of them

Rather_b_diving

Vunderground wrote: »

Got an offer in the post from BT yesterday offering 50% off the next 2 month bill if we sign up for another 12 months. But BT is no more! Bit confusing?

What a great idea !! You sign up to 12 more months so when they screw up the billing migration or DD changes you can't cancel - ingenious

Cabaal

Rather_b_diving wrote: »

What a great idea !! You sign up to 12 more months so when they screw up the billing migration or DD changes you can't cancel - ingenious

That depends, if BT/Vodafone change the wording of the agreement for the service then you can cancel

That's 'if' they do this

T&C's state:

15.4 BT reserves the right to alter any terms of this Agreement upon 30 days notice to the Customer. In the event of any such alteration, the Customer shall have the ability to terminate the Service without penalty, by giving notice to BT within 30 days of notification by BT of such alteration, subject to payment by the Customer in full of all charges due prior to the date of receipt of such notice by BT.

http://www.btireland.ie/tncb.shtml

watty

I think this is EXACTLY why the in reality transfer of BT Ireland Retail to Vodafone is presented as a Partnership and why the same billing etc will remain. What happens when the minimum contract period ends for "BT" customers will be interesting. I don't beleive any existing contract during existing term will migrate anywhere.

Rather_b_diving

That's just it the service won't change cos its mostly bitstream - probably IP addresses will remain BTs but migrating from a flaky BT billing system to vodafone could create Billing / DD issues. This was my main reason for cancelling with BT and I could ONLY do this after the initial 12 months were up.

Ts&Cs don't say anything about being able to cancel if they screw up your bill and take a large DD payment. They will say we'll fix it over the next 2 months but you can't cancel (I've been a victim of this as are many other)

So what better way of retaining the customer base who might be out of contract than to resign them ensuring they have 12 months to get their act together.

thund3rbird_

I know it's early days but does anyone know what effect this will have on BT BB only customers (ie landline still with eircon)?

according to Voda's T&Cs it looks like you can't have BB without transferring the line as well:

The Contract is for the provision of the Service for a landline & fixed broadband Internet connection or a landline only package.

also,
voda's limit on the 7.6M is 30G
bt's is unlimited (with throttling kicking in around 100G according to other posts on here)
will the 'unlimited' usage still stand??

watty

Should make no difference. The BT T&C is what applies to existing BT retail even though they are now Vodafone's (Like Perlico).

The unlimited isn't unlimited. Expect the fine print of FUP / T&C to be applied in the future.

cyburger

There's an FAQ up on the BT site now I see...

http://www.btireland.ie/vodafone_partnership_faq.shtml

thund3rbird_ wrote: »

voda's limit on the 7.6M is 30G
bt's is unlimited (with throttling kicking in around 100G according to other posts on here)
will the 'unlimited' usage still stand??

as Cabaal pointed out earlier, it looks like if there is a change in service or the T&Cs, (which a change in download limit would be?) that anybody who would be effected and isn't happy, would have 30 days to decide if they want to move etc.

zil

I'm currently a bt bb only (eircom landline customer) and this definatly sounds worrying, especially considering the 30 gig cap the vodafone imposes, might have to make that switch to magnet afterall.

Cabaal

zil wrote: »

I'm currently a bt bb only (eircom landline customer) and this definatly sounds worrying, especially considering the 30 gig cap the vodafone imposes, might have to make that switch to magnet afterall.

Thing is at this time what your saying is nothing but speculation, if they did change the terms of the package this is also a change of your contract and as such you'd be free to go at this stage

No point worrying about something that will likely not happen...atleast not anytime soon, take Perlico as an example they've actually put up some of the caps on some of the packages since vodafone took over