SMART Telecom have been taken over

kaizersoze

I for one welcome our new broadband overlords.......

deigo008

Excellent news..

kippy

Steffano2002 wrote: »

You're probably happy with Digiweb (and IBB previously) because your broadband expectations are "low" (for lack of a better term). You can't play online with Metro. You can't download that fast. The connection can be erratic. The download caps unrealistic in this day and age. That's why users complain. Not because "they just like complaining".

But again, I hope I'm worng...

I've been an IBB, Eircom, Magnet, NTL and SMART broadand Customer. Smart and Magnet set the bar pretty high. I don't think Digiweb can follow through here...

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2055730893

Is this the bar Magnet set?

I am only pointing out that you'll generally hear those with issues the loudest.

bk

Just look at Digiwebs caps on their Bitstream DSL service, incredibly restrictive:

http://digiweb.ie/home/broadband/dsl/

1mb -> 10GB
3mb -> 20GB
7.6mb -> 40GB
12mb -> 70GB

Basically we have a company with a tradition of very restrictive capping policy taking over a company with a tradition of no or very non restrictive capping policy.

Plus Digiweb's pricing looks awfully uncompetitive, 3mb DSL + anytime calls with a 20GB cap costs €56, the same but with a 40GB cap from Vodafone costs €45!

Smart gained most of it's customers based on three things:

1) No cap
2) Excellent speeds and quality of service
3) Competitive pricing

Up until now, Digiweb fails on two of those three points. All I'm saying is that Digiweb's culture will need to change with regards to capping and pricing on Smart or Digiweb could end up losing most of the Smart customers they have just bought to Magnet and UPC.

And perhaps that is the plan, perhaps they are only interested in Smart for it's network and business customers. I hope not.

As a person who has no choice but to be on Smart (FTTB Smart monopoly development) I'll be watching closely.

bk

kippy wrote: »

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2055730893

Is this the bar Magnet set?

I am only pointing out that you'll generally hear those with issues the loudest.

In fairness, Magnet actually have a forum here on boards and actively engage with their customers, like Smart use to do on their forum.

I'm sure Rory will sort this guys problems, he always does. Most likely this guys issues are with Eircom, Eircom never make it easy to transfer to other operators, once he is with Magnet, he probably won't have any issues.

kippy

bk wrote: »

In fairness, Magnet actually have a forum here on boards and actively engage with their customers, like Smart use to do on their forum.

I'm sure Rory will sort this guys problems, he always does. Most likely this guys issues are with Eircom, Eircom never make it easy to transfer to other operators, once he is with Magnet, he probably won't have any issues.

Exactly,
The majority of people signing up for digiweb have no issues.....once they know what they are signing up for.
Just standing up for other operators here, whom I believe sometimes get a lot of unfair stick and criticism.

Steffano2002

kippy wrote: »

To be fair, my expectations are met by the product. I got my product based on my expectations and am happy to pay for that service.
If you have higher expectations then you should be willing to pay more for the service to achieve them.

My expectations are much higher. And I do pay more (€80 EUR per month for broadband only).

I never had Digiweb Metro but I did have IBB Breeze. Wireless Broadband is, IMO, useless. It "can" work, but the conditions must be perfect.

And I do realise Digiweb has happy Customers!

I'm aslo saying that SMART also has happy Customers right now and these Customers have higher expectations than Digiweb Customers. That's why we're worried!

But again, all I'm asking is to be wrong and see absolutely no changes to the service I am currently receiving, unless these changes are for the better i.e. lower price, lower contention ratio, higher speeds, higher caps (even though I don't download much it's nice to not have to worry about it).

Steffano2002

Moriarty wrote: »

Just to displease you, obviously.



Then you don't know what you're talking about, since the only other real option would have been your service being disconnected which would be materially worse for all Smart customers.



Metro has lower latency than DSL connections provided by eircom. Are you able to play online with DSL?



Can you download fast on DSL? Metro packages provide equal or greater bandwidth for the same amount of money compared to DSL.



Can a DSL connection be erratic?



That's not what the above demonstrates.

I'm not going to quote each of your sentences to disagree with you point by point. You're entitled to your opinion and I'm entitled to mine.

Steffano2002

kippy wrote: »

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2055730893

Is this the bar Magnet set?

I am only pointing out that you'll generally hear those with issues the loudest.

That's one isolated incident... I was an extremelly happy Magnet Customer. They're bang-on!

kippy

Steffano2002 wrote: »

My expectations are much higher. And I do pay more (€80 EUR per month for broadband only).

I never had Digiweb Metro but I did have IBB Breeze. Wireless Broadband is, IMO, useless. It "can" work, but the conditions must be perfect.

And I do realise Digiweb has happy Customers!

I'm aslo saying that SMART also has happy Customers right now and these Customers have higher expectations than Digiweb Customers. That's why we're worried!

But again, all I'm asking is to be wrong and see absolutely no changes to the service I am currently receiving, unless these changes are for the better i.e. lower price, lower contention ratio, higher speeds, higher caps (even though I don't download much it's nice to not have to worry about it).

Wireless broadband works for me and has worked for me 99% of the time, perfect or imperfect conditions.........Not working for me means no connection or connection speed less that adequate for browsing webpages, watching youtube and the occassional download I am willing to wait for.
Is you are paying 80 quid a month now, you obviously are paying for a service that suits your needs. I am paying 30 and it more than suits my needs.
If Digiweb turn smart into something that you dont like, move providers. Smart had an unsustainable business model, a model that Digiweb will probably have to change to make is sustainable.

Steffano2002

kippy wrote: »

If Digiweb turn smart into something that you dont like, move providers. Smart had an unsustainable business model, a model that Digiweb will probably have to change to make is sustainable.

That's exactly what I'm fearing. Having to change providers because Digiweb bungle it up for me.

And I disagree with the "unsustainable business" statement. SMART is finally profitable and the economy of scales of merging the services with Digiweb means they should become even more profitable. I don't want Digiweb to use this as an excuse in order to implement their renowned restrictive policies.

kippy

Steffano2002 wrote: »

That's exactly what I'm fearing. Having to change providers because Digiweb bungle it up for me.

And I disagree with the "unsustainable business" statement. SMART is finally profitable and the economy of scales of merging the services with Digiweb means they should become even more profitable. I don't want Digiweb to use this as an excuse in order to implement their renowned restrictive policies.

You're getting the wrong idea there.
Digiwebs profit making arm, the existing company, will not be able to sustain a loss making arm, the new company. So no doubt items will have to change.
They SHOULD probably leave existing packages as they are and introduce cheaper packages for their smart customer which may be a bit more restrictive.
Choice is what it is all about, and being preparted to pay for that choice as a consumer is something we all have to be prepared to do.

RangeR

kippy wrote: »

You're getting the wrong idea there.
Digiwebs profit making arm, the existing company, will not be able to sustain a loss making arm, the new company. So no doubt items will have to change.
They SHOULD probably leave existing packages as they are and introduce cheaper packages for their smart customer which may be a bit more restrictive.
Choice is what it is all about, and being preparted to pay for that choice as a consumer is something we all have to be prepared to do.

Stayed out of this until that comment. Smart made a profit this quarter. Unless we can all see into the future, Smart are no longer a loss making business. They have trimmed their expenses to the bone and have removed a lot of non core operations.

Kinetic^

Good move, hopefully works out well for both parties and creates more competition for Eircom.

kippy

RangeR wrote: »

Stayed out of this until that comment. Smart made a profit this quarter. Unless we can all see into the future, Smart are no longer a loss making business. They have trimmed their expenses to the bone and have removed a lot of non core operations.

They made a profit this quarter as they probably spent feck all in preparation for a buyer to come in and save them.
They were a predominately loss making firm, if they were that good at making profits they wouldnt have found themselves in the position they were in.

RangeR

kippy wrote: »

They made a profit this quarter as they probably spent feck all in preparation for a buyer to come in and save them.
They were a predominately loss making firm, if they were that good at making profits they wouldnt have found themselves in the position they were in.

They are in the position they are in due to mis management and Oisin Fanning. That management is now largely gone and spending has been drastically reduced and non core operations terminated.

Steffano2002

RangeR wrote: »

Stayed out of this until that comment. Smart made a profit this quarter. Unless we can all see into the future, Smart are no longer a loss making business. They have trimmed their expenses to the bone and have removed a lot of non core operations.

My point exactly. Smart is no longer a loss-making company.

kippy

Steffano2002 wrote: »

My point exactly. Smart is no longer a loss-making company.

Listen,
Would Smart have survied without this buy out.
The simple answer is NO, they wouldnt, hence they were overall a loss maker. To the tune of 70 million as far as I am aware.
Smarts business model, as it were, was NOT sustainable.

Ardent

As a smart customer of about 4 years, I am happy at this news. I'm happy that my excellent service will remain uninterrupted.

If however, Digiweb decide to change the contention/pricing/cap/etc of my service, I'll have to do what I thought would never happen - succumb to UPC's incessant spam.

Steffano2002

kippy wrote: »

Listen,
Would Smart have survied without this buy out.
The simple answer is NO, they wouldnt, hence they were overall a loss maker. To the tune of 70 million as far as I am aware.
Smarts business model, as it were, was NOT sustainable.

Agreed. SMART was a loss-making company and racked up a €70 million Euro debt. BUT, at present, they are no longer losing money. Can we at least agree on that?

kippy

Steffano2002 wrote: »

Agreed. SMART was a loss-making company and racked up a €70 million Euro debt. BUT, at present, they are no longer losing money. Can we at least agree on that?

Previous to the buy out they were 70 million down, that too me is loosing money, and I would suggest one of the few reasons they made money this quarter was in preparation for the takeover, when they didnt put as much money into staff/support/advertising costs as normal.

At present, they are part of Digiweb.


Ah no,
you're partially right.


Either way, lets hope this is good for the consumer.

RangeR

kippy wrote: »

Previous to the buy out they were 70 million down, that too me is loosing money, and I would suggest one of the few reasons they made money this quarter was in preparation for the takeover, when they didnt put as much money into staff/support/advertising costs as normal.

At present, they are part of Digiweb.

That's billox. Smart stopped advertising, in or around the time, when eircom tried to shut them down. At the time, they pulled out of a contract with RTE [or maybe TV3] for sponsoring the weather. Not quite sure if they had to pay the channel a small sum to get out of it. Anyway, they have been financially ****ed for a long time and have been cutting costs [and management, not withstanding that chancer Ois!n doing a legger] since then, NOT since Digiweb started poking around to pick up the pieces.

Even the BOLD part isn't correct. Smart are NOT part of Digiweb until the courts say so. Competition rules and all....

Rattlehead_ie

Jesus lads, you can't even Budget right.
Steffano is right.
Smart were a loss making company.
The got into a 70m deficit
The cut a lot of expenditure
They then got a level of where they were no long a loss making company
They still had the 70m deficit to look after.
They could not invest as had no money, but at least they weren't going further into deficit.
Digiweb bought em out.

So as I said Steffano is right, they were a loss making, then they stopped the fall, then Digiweb bought them & now with Digiwebs investment they can start selling and spending money investing to get out of the 70m deficit. Anyway why are you even arguing about this.

Going forward, its a pity to lose a competitor in the market that needs it and the pressure it puts on the government/incumbent but I think Digiweb and Smart together should be interesting to see where this goes.
TO answer someone else comment about how if you are not going to change their products how will you make Smart a serious profit maker. Think about it in the case of Digiweb have their core infrastructure already build, if they meld the Smart infrastructure into that i.e DNS servers, LNS servers, RADIUS and CRM then get rid of the monthly cost of Smarts equivalent then you have started a big push towards profit already

kippy

I really find it tough to see how people dont realise that Smarts Business plan was flawed. If it wasnt they wouldnt be in this position.


Anyway,

Great to see Digiweb and not Eircon pick up the pieces. This country needs sustained and financially viable investment in bb infrastructure.

pizzahead77

RangeR wrote: »

At the time, they pulled out of a contract with RTE [or maybe TV3] for sponsoring the weather. Not quite sure if they had to pay the channel a small sum to get out of it.

Actually, I believe they didn't even win the contract to sponser RTE TV's weather and they sued RTE in the High Court over it.

http://www.courts.ie/judgments.nsf/6681dee4565ecf2c80256e7e0052005b/1a0da9e1971785dc8025718e0051bf24?OpenDocument

bk

I think what people are missing is a little history about Smart.

Smart entered the market with a big bang, they were the first to really do LLU and they spent an absolute fortune on advertising and therefore racked up massive debt that they simply couldn't maintain any more.

Yes this business model simply wasn't sustainable.

However over the last year or so, they have cut out most of this rubbish and have instead focused on their core business and have managed to get into a profitable state, just like others like Magnet and Digiweb are in.

However unfortunately they weren't making enough profit to pay off the interest on the debts they had built up in the old days and that is why they went looking for a buyer.

You can bet that Digiweb won't be taking on the majority of this €70 million debt, most of it will be written off.

bk

kippy wrote: »

If Digiweb turn smart into something that you dont like, move providers. Smart had an unsustainable business model, a model that Digiweb will probably have to change to make is sustainable.

Why would they do that, overnight they would lose 90% of the customers they just spent millions buying, that makes no sense at all.

kippy wrote: »

They SHOULD probably leave existing packages as they are and introduce cheaper packages for their smart customer which may be a bit more restrictive.
Choice is what it is all about, and being preparted to pay for that choice as a consumer is something we all have to be prepared to do.

No, that would be a bad idea. They need to improve the existing products to compete with UPC and Magnet and focus on the high end of the market.

The low end of the market is a complete shark fest, they would stand little chance there.

In the low end of the market you have Eircom for the people who are too lazy or afraid to move and then you have all the 3G mobile companies with their €20 products. In addition you have UPC with their cheap triple play products and Vodafone with their aggressive pricing.

Plus LLU's cost structures don't tend to lend itself to cheap braodband, no the low end of the market is a suckers game and Digiweb don't have the strength to compete down there.

Better to focus on the high end of the market, where people want excellent quality, big or no caps, etc. There is a lot less competition there, just UPC and Magnet.

Cut out all the ad rubbish, just maintain a high quality network, with high quality products at decent prices and build up a reputation for quality and customers will come to you via word of mouth. They just have to be careful not to leave the typically restrictive policies of Digiweb into Smart, otherwise they will blow Smarts good reputation and be left with no position in the wired broadband market.

Steffano2002

Couldn't agree with you more bk!

Marlow

kippy wrote: »

I really find it tough to see how people dont realise that Smarts Business plan was flawed. If it wasnt they wouldnt be in this position.

That's because you don't seem to realize, that Smarts Business Plan half a year ago is so much different from what it was when spending was massive. Or you just absolutely want to try to bring your point across that no cap isn't sustainable.

Whatever your agenda is, it's a fact, that Smart actually was doing really well in the last year, especially when you look at the business and government contracts. They just didn't do well enough to get rid of some of the legacy debt, that has been generated. That issue is solved now.

The way they've done business as of later, by focusing on their core markets and cutting the crap out, is very sustainable in the form that Smart is doing business lets say the last 6 months.

/M

lawrenceSummer

Marlow wrote: »

That's because you don't seem to realize, that Smarts Business Plan half a year ago is so much different from what it was when spending was massive. Or you just absolutely want to try to bring your point across that no cap isn't sustainable.

Whatever your agenda is, it's a fact, that Smart actually was doing really well in the last year, especially when you look at the business and government contracts. They just didn't do well enough to get rid of some of the legacy debt, that has been generated. That issue is solved now.

The way they've done business as of later, by focusing on their core markets and cutting the crap out, is very sustainable in the form that Smart is doing business lets say the last 6 months.

/M

im not trying to be "smart" here but have you any figures to back up what you are saying,

how much profit did they make?
what is their operating costs versus turnover?
how do you know that it wasnt just trimming all and sundry to make them appear a more cost effective company? and when the new owners take over their opertaing costs are going to go back up?

If they got that much into debt through expansion, advertising, and chasing market share then what are they going to do different this time around to increase market share, make the existing exchanges more profitable and invest in new ones?

its fair to say thats it has been a flawed business model, (or at best a badly implemented and managed one) LLU may work better in europe where there is higher density housing thus more end users but its not a business model that is working here for smart and what im wondering is what are they going to change to be viable?