Will eircom be be closing shop soon?

cathpa

Just it seems to be a lot of stories of staff layoffs, staff wage cuts and the company being in a lot of debt.

Does this mean that eircom could be gone soon?

If that was the case could UPC move in? Im in a dsl only area :mad:

corny

They owe 2.5 billion euro if i'm not mistaken and didn't they inform the ISE that they could possibly default at a later date. They're doomed if you ask me.:)

Sponge Bob

10% pay cut across the Board. That will keep them alive for a while.

They are losing averaged 20k lines a quarter and this is sort of linear as in not getting worse or better. It was 22k in the last quarter but they had quarters like that before.

They have dropped from 1.7m lines once to 1.43m now. UPC added 15k Internet and 9k Voice customers ( most are BOTH) during the same quarter. UPC know that eircom cannot defend their market share in the cities anymore.

ninjasurfer1

Sponge Bob wrote: »

UPC added 15k Internet and 9k Voice customers ( most are BOTH) during the same quarter. UPC know that eircom cannot defend their market share in the cities anymore.

Given that UPC appear to be the dominant/incumbent player in the Fibre arena, is it possible for eircom (or other operators) to become wholesale resellers of UPC fibre in much the same way that eircom are obliged to share their copper network?

Sponge Bob

Not yet, expect silly bleating noises from eircom when UPC double in size meaning they are probably the largest Residential BB Provider in the main cities.

This is a few years away though and UPC do not have a good network in business rich areas, only residential.

ninjasurfer1

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Not yet, expect silly bleating noises from eircom when UPC double in size meaning they are probably the largest Residential BB Provider in the main cities.

This is a few years away though and UPC do not have a good network in business rich areas, only residential.

Do Comreg not differentiate between copper and fibre though? (thought i read that on IOFL before). If so, DSL and fibre consumers will be treated seperately regardless of each operators overall consumer numbers (if i got my wires crossed, ignore my comment!!).

Sponge Bob

Simplistically Comreg believe that Fibre is competitive (as in large capacity circuits) and do not regulate it.

watty

And Comreg regulate DSL, Fixed Wireless, Mobile differently?

Sponge Bob

watty wrote: »

And Comreg regulate DSL, Fixed Wireless, Mobile differently?

They pretend to regulate these as distinct from explicitly not regulating them.

ingen

cathpa wrote: »

Just it seems to be a lot of stories of staff layoffs, staff wage cuts and the company being in a lot of debt.

Does this mean that eircom could be gone soon?

If that was the case could UPC move in? Im in a dsl only area :mad:

they owe a lot of money... phone lines are too long, and eircom dont seem to be doing anything in the area, of shortening phone lines, such as fiber to the cabinet etc etc. ( i heard something about a trial, in a small area in sth dub ages ago).


they had plenty of chances to sort the issue out, but now i think it may be too late, as they are loosing lost of fixed lines.


i wish upc was available in my area.

Sponge Bob

It is too late for them, their VDSL cabinetisation experiment in Dundrum is not yet live...supposed to go live in May I think but they trialled VDSL 10 years ago and more recently again in Dublin so WTF are they trialling it for again.

The Wexford town fibre to the home project is not exactly galloping along either...lucky UPC never got to Wexford eh!!

Best thing to do is let the whole financial crapheap collapse sooner rather than later and deal with it post restructuring when they might be inclined to listen .

Yakuza

They'll be losing me from next week. I got the GSM unit for phonewatch installed today, and UPC are coming next week. Their (Eircom's) recent "leave by March 10 or be locked in for ever" letter I got a few weeks ago was the impetus I needed to finally make the move. Maybe I was being a tad glib there, but the fact is I will be paying less money for a faster service (almost twice as fast as my (up to) 24Mb line never seemed to sync at more than 15Mb and now I will be getting close to 30. I'll be up on the deal after 6 months as I'll be saving €25 a month on line rental but I had to shell out €150 for the GSM unit.

Bulmers

am thinking of doing the exact same as above,UPC in area now so got the cable in last week. I have eircom phonewatch too so was putting it off but heard about the GSM thing so can switch.

Just reading up on UPC now to see what service is like,bb i get from Voda at moment is 5mb,for same price i could get unlimited download at 30mb,seems like no brainer really.

Eircom have had their day and are in serious trouble i think.

watty

There is no unlimted (though Magnet is likely not distiguishable)

Many ISPs claim unlimited and it's 30Gbyte.
Typical Cap is 10G to 30G
Digiweb have 60G on higher packages. More if you pay.

UPC has 120Gbyte and 240GByte options, but not any true unlimited. That's as big as you get other than Magnet Fibre.

yuloni

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Hogzy

UPC is offering services that are 66% faster than Eircom at the moment. What Eircom need is a major investment to supply the fitting of true Next Generation broadband and not the relabeled DSL they are selling at the moment.

At the end of the day a phone service is a phone service. What will win customers is Broadband quality and possibly the inclusion of TV.
Unless they were to strike some deal with Sky but i seriously doubt Sky would do that because UPC are absolutely no threat to them whatsoever.

I would love to be in a position to get UPC but they wont install it in our house despite all our neighbours having it.

Solair

Eircom's debt situation's rather complicated and it seems they've accumulated debts that are nothing to do with their telecommunication business. They haven't been splashing the cash on that at all.

Eircom, which is a Singapore Government owned company, has only got the ability to operate here subject to a franchise granted by ComReg.

I am sure that if they become insolvent or are unable to operate the logical steps would be:

1) ComReg pull their licence.
2) The licence is put up for immediate auction.
3) Someone else will take over the rights to operate the network and the Singpore semi-state company trading as eircom would be forced to sell off any assets to that company, other companies and/or the state in a fire sale.
It would be a good opportunity for the state to take over some of the local network assets if eircom were liquidated.

There is absolutely no reason why the state should bale eircom out, it made its own bad business decisions and it now has to suffer the consequences without destroying our national telecommunications networks in the process!

The state's only concern should be with ensuring that there is no disruption to, or continuing damage to the national telecommunication network.

Arguably, eircom's lack of ability to carryout serious investment has been very undermining to the Irish economy.

Hogzy

Solair wrote: »

Arguably, eircom's lack of ability to carryout serious investment has been very undermining to the Irish economy.

It doesnt make it better that its had so many owners in the previous 10 years. It is a sinking ship that will probably never be salvaged. I cannot see their subscriber numbers increasing in anyway unless they either slash their prices (whcih they probably wont do due to their debt) or invest to provide better services (which they wont do due to their debt)

They are only getting what was coming to them. Charging massive amounts for a service that is dated is going to have repercussions when your competitors have a better service than you for the same money.

If Eircom could find an investor who is willing to inject a large enough investment so that Eircom itself would have its own network that they themselves could lease to other companies such as Vodafone then Eircom could make a killing. But finding that investor would be tough.

All they have to do is better UPC's Service. Easier said than done

yuloni

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Hogzy

But is the current copper network an actual asset of Eircom?
Do they own it outright.

I am sure they have some sort of agreement saying they have to maintain it and lease it. Therefore they do not own it out right and cannot do what they want with it. Am i right in saying this?

Solair

Hogzy wrote: »

But is the current copper network an actual asset of Eircom?
Do they own it outright.

I am sure they have some sort of agreement saying they have to maintain it and lease it. Therefore they do not own it out right and cannot do what they want with it. Am i right in saying this?

Unfortunately, yes they own it outright. However, they are still subject to a Comreg operator license.

The state will most definitely have to intervene in this mess.

Ideally, I would like to see the state getting control over the physical local exchanges (at least the distribution frames, ducts and cabinets) while some competent international telecommunications player should really be running eircom's retail operations, not some investment fund / bank.

yuloni

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Sponge Bob

Eircom Wholesale operates it but Eircom the mothership owns it outright as ever. The only live infrastructure they sold off was their towers some years back. They sold a redundant Satellite ground station and a redundant transatlantic cable station ( both in Cork) too.

watty

Only the street cabinets and copper from them have significant value.
The ducts to the cabinets may be worthless if Wavin pipe and no space for fibre as in many cases the outer insulation of multipair of copper to exchange may have stuck to pipe?

The Exchange sites are only of value as land or buildings. The MDFs and actual Exchange Electronics are now worthless.

yuloni

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watty

if you cut rural cable at 1.5km from house and fit cabinet...

Rural Cabinets fed by fibre can feed Radio link (40km), coax (10km) or copper pair (1.5km) to have 20Mbps minimum.

non-rural is actually over 70% population. (villages are not really rural if you plonk a fibre fed cabinet in the middle).

Solair

I just want to clarify that there are distinctly different problems and challenges going on in urban and rural areas when it comes to eircom's broadband infrastructure.

In urban areas (cities and large/medium towns), eircom have failed to invest in fibre-to-kerb technology which would involve rolling out fibre rings and replacing the existing junction boxes (cabinets) with MSANS (multiservice access nodes) which would essentially move the exchange closer to the customer shortening the lines and making VDSL possible.
This kind of technology is comparable to what UPC are doing.
This rollout has been entirely held up by lack of funds / lack of investment by eircom and is a consequence of its poor financial position.

In rural areas, the exchanges are practically cabinets as they are. Many of them are absolutely tiny. If you've ever seen a village exchange, it's typically housed in a small green, airconditioned container or a small building, not much bigger than a storage shed. Inside, you'll just find a small distribution frame and an RCU (Remote Concentrator Unit) which is just the line cards and other local subscriber equipment. This sends all that data back, usually over fibre, to a large Ericsson AXE or Alcatel E10 exchange in a major town which controls everything. There would also be a small DSLAM for DSL access. Some of these systems are no bigger than an office phone system (PBX) in terms of the number of lines they handle!

There are still a few remaining RCUs which still do not have DSL services available. These need to be installed as a matter of urgency as it's ridiculous not to have them at this stage. The costs have dropped substantially as DSLAM equipment's much more competitively priced than it was when the technology first launched, so a non-DSL enabled exchange is pretty inexcusable at this stage.

Long lines in rural areas are unavoidable in most cases as almost every village has an exchange / RCU as described above. Rolling out fibre-to-kerb in these areas has extremely limited potential, other than perhaps in the odd small village that has no existing exchange/RCU although this would be pretty unusual in Ireland.

Because of Irish development patterns, the only viable way of serving those areas that cannot be reached, is by using wireless technologies. It's just a terrible shame that the Government picked such a slow technology i.e. 3G mobile phone's data service for the rural broadband scheme as it's pretty slow compared to some of the fixed-point wireless techs out there e.g. the type of thing that Digiweb Metro uses.

What should have been done was a wireless local loop replacement technology like that, and then provided bitstream access for all the DSL ISP providers to give end users choice.

Key to all that would have been to get fibre out to masts in rural areas and ensure the backbone infrastructure is in place to support decent wireless broadband, whatever technology is being used. If you have masts with fibre access and neutral/open co-location space (a secure, airconditioned shed) at the end, then you can get services up and running fast.

The reason rural broadband services are poor is more to do with bad Government decision making than it is to do with eircom's infrastructural deficits.

As for which bits of eircom are valuable:

1) Meteor Mobile / eMobile - this is the most valuable part of eircom and could be sold off without any impact on the national infrastructure.

2) Fixed line assets i.e. landlines, local exchanges and all the ducting. Despite what's being said above, the local voice exchanges are still a valuable revenue stream as they switch all of the landline traffic in Ireland pretty much and also provide access to other players e.g. Vodafone at Home etc etc.

3) Eircom's long distance fibre trunks and international fibre connectivity. They've quite a serious amount of that although it's no longer unique to eircom as it's duplicated by other networks in Ireland and there are extensive alternative options for routing over international fibre networks nowadays.

What I would do is designate eircom's local exchanges and the local fibre networks that are not duplicated e.g. to rural exchanges / some urban exchanges as vital state assets and secure them in any liquidation. These need to be re-launched as an open/neutral network.

The rest can go to the highest bidder as it has no relevance to the Government or is just one of a number of competing services.

What we must absolutely avoid doing is baling out Eircom, the company.

We should only protect our interest as tax payers and end users i.e. the access networks.

Btw: this would give you some idea of what's involved with subloop unbundling and installing services at street-cabinet level : http://www.relay-rutlandtelecom.co.uk/lyddington/index.html

yuloni

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Freddie59

Yakuza wrote: »

Their (Eircom's) recent "leave by March 10 or be locked in for ever" letter I got a few weeks ago was the impetus I needed to finally make the move.

is this true? How can they do that?

Sponge Bob

Freddie59 wrote: »

is this true? How can they do that?

They can't but while you can leave eircom easily right now you must give 30 days notice IN WRITING from the 10th of March onwards.

Solair

Condi wrote: »

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Ireland could go a stage further than the UK. At present in the UK BT Openreach, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of BT owns the local loop access infrastructure. We have the opportunity to totally split off the local loop from the incumbent teleco, eircom or whoever that happens to be in the future.

Sub-loop cabinet unbundling is ideal for Ireland in urban/suburban/housing estates in the sticks type places.

However, our true rural networks are a bit different to the UK because they were largely installed from scratch in the 1980s. The UK, and most of Europe, had pre-existing electromechanical switching systems which would have been more centralised on large towns with long lines feeding small outlying villages. So, many small villages would not necessarily have an exchange at all. Ireland only ever had electromechanical switching in urban areas. Our rural areas in the 1960s-1970s were stuck firmly in the 1920s in terms of telecommunications technology i.e. wind-up telephones without dials and local operators in the post office.

Ireland's network was so bad in the 1970s that P&T/Telecom Eireann had to re-build it from scratch and it jumped a generation of technology going from manual (with operators sticking plugs into boards!) to digital switching. This allowed a much greater degree of de-centralisation as RCUs could be placed in pretty much every village.

Given the network topology, there should be absolutely no issue with rural village broadband in Ireland as there is plenty of fibre, ducting and there is an exchange (RCU) of some sort in pretty much every single village.

Couple that with the fact that the state rolled out MANs (seperate fibre optic networks) and extensive fibre rollouts along railway lines, along ESB lines etc etc and you would really wonder what's holding it back!

I find it utterly baffling that village broadband was ever any issue in Ireland. It just underlines how important it is that the local networks are fully opened up to competition as eircom was strangling development over the last decade or so.

To me, the telecommunications problems in Ireland mirror the property development sector. It was all about milking as much money out of the system as possible and providing very poor service. The Government was either so incompetent that it couldn't see what was going on, or it was complicit by being too close to vested interests. Or, more likely, a bit of both!

We need to be *very* careful that the Government doesn't just take the same option that it took with the banks i.e. pump money into a mess.

Incidentally, eircom's debt is closer to € 4 billion, not €2.5.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0224/1224290732957.html