Will eircom be be closing shop soon?

watty

Rural copper pair 20Mbps per person 1.5km max, virtually with no contention possible.
Rural Coax cable 1Gbps + (shared to all connected) up to 10km easily. (at 10:1 contention thats 200 houses at 50Mbps).
Rural FIXED wireless, 10:1 contention , 20Mbps min up to 40km.
Fibre. Can get anywhere ESB can get, if you prepared to pay. 10Gbps and 50km easily per user.

Absolutely Solair, I rate Rural Villages same as Suburban for VDSL2. 20Mbps (1.5km) to 200Mbps.

Solair

Let's not forget this was the same Government that allowed property developers to isolate apartment blocks from the entire world of competitive telecommunications and force them to use the property management company's cable system for phone, television and broadband. They allowed them to banned dishes, would not allow cable companies or eircom to get access etc etc

And, almost without exception they with abysmal overpriced service to locked-in customers.

Very little in the last 10 years was done for the sake of the public good!

I sincerely hope that things improve with the new Government. We cannot afford any more of this nonsense. It's literally bankrupting the country.

MASTER...of the bra

Solair wrote: »

Let's not forget this was the same Government that allowed property developers to isolate apartment blocks from the entire world of competitive telecommunications and force them to use the property management company's cable system for phone, television and broadband. They allowed them to banned dishes, would not allow cable companies or eircom to get access etc etc

And, almost without exception they with abysmal overpriced service to locked-in customers.

Very little in the last 10 years was done for the sake of the public good!

I sincerely hope that things improve with the new Government. We cannot afford any more of this nonsense. It's literally bankrupting the country.

Expect improvements just before the next election. I'm not holding my breath.

ingen

watty wrote: »

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.

eircoms broadband advanced package has a 250gb limit.

watty

Thanks ingen

How much?

Of course on average the speed will be only 3Mbps to 8Mbps (based on average line lengths, crosstalk etc). UPC is 15Mbps 30Mbps and higher no matter how long the coax is, unless you are in area not yet upgraded from Chorus/NTL days.

ingen

watty wrote: »

Thanks ingen

How much?

Of course on average the speed will be only 3Mbps to 8Mbps (based on average line lengths, crosstalk etc). UPC is 15Mbps 30Mbps and higher no matter how long the coax is, unless you are in area not yet upgraded from Chorus/NTL days.

hi watty, well its €39.82 per month for NGB broadband advanced up to 8mb, with the (unlimited ) 250GB download allowance.

when you add in line rental that comes to €65.18 per month without any calls..

im sure it may be cheaper in a call package, but only by a few euro!

edit:
i see they have an offer on their site now for offpeak calls, broadband advanced 250gb download allowance and line rental included for €56.93 for the first 6 months and then €61.73 per month.

roast

UPCs usage limits are actually 120GB for the 10Mb connection, 250GB for the 20Mb and 30Mb connection, and 500GB for the 100Mb connection.

Hogzy

ingen wrote: »

hi watty, well its €39.82 per month for NGB broadband advanced up to 8mb, with the (unlimited ) 250GB download allowance.

when you add in line rental that comes to €65.18 per month without any calls..

im sure it may be cheaper in a call package, but only by a few euro!

edit:
i see they have an offer on their site now for offpeak calls, broadband advanced 250gb download allowance and line rental included for €56.93 for the first 6 months and then €61.73 per month.

That's crazy money. I'm paying Vodafone 60pm for up to 24mb and free anytime local & national calls

the_syco

Hogzy wrote: »

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.

Eircom is reulated, and has to offer it's lines to it's competitors at a better rate than to it's own customers to bolster competition, does it not?

Sponge Bob

ALL of eircoms peers such as BT , Deutsche T , France T etc are regulated. It is just that they have not chosen to bankrupt themselves with unststainable debts and are able to invest and leverage their scale.

eircom spends that money paying off their bondholders. They cannot even maintain their network never mind emulate their peers.

The last wheeze they had was to tap the government for funds, somewhere between €500m and €800m IIRC in order to do FTTx around 3 years ago. They intended to do the '10 ( well actually around 15) largest' towns ...including Tullamore naturally :cool:

They pimped this jolly wheeze around the regional media but it was turned down by the government. The thing even had a name "Fibre Ireland" . It was ditched some time later with a load of cabinets left lying around south Dublin unused ever since...Stillorgan area I understand.

That is exactly the sort of plan that BT are able to deliver in the UK from their own resources and the fact that eircom cannot keep up to any extent is why they are utterly utterly irrelevant.

eircoms problems with their bondholders, their constant loss of customers who cannot afford their €26 a month line rental...still the highest on the planet, their dismal dismal customer care, their inability to protect their most lucrative urban markets and then seeking government funds to compete with UPC.

These are their problems there is no reason why the entire country should suffer this any more if there is an alternative. Something entirely new is needed, meanwhile eircom corp will die when the main €2.5bn trance of debt comes up for full refinancing in early 2014 and something will have to be done about the debt around then.

In the interim they may continue to stagger along...doing sweet **** all just like they have been doing for the past 3 years. On the other hand they may bolt into a prepacked structured default.

Solair

I would like to see an analysis of where exactly this huge €4 billion debt came from because it sure as hell didn't come from spending on their networks.

Eircom has all the hallmarks of a company that has been stripped of all of its cash by vultures.

It still has good revenue streams, and should be healthy. I don't fully understand where the money has gone but, I would really like to see a detailed explanation.

€4 billion of debt for a company like eircom is just utterly ludicrous.

Liquidation is looking like an ever more likely option, particularly in the current economic climate in Ireland, increased competition from more technically competent companies, changing technology etc i.e. their revenues can only fall. Couple that with the international credit crisis and the fact that Ireland in general is considered a risky place to invest and I don't really see where they can go.

Will its parent, STT, really be willing to slosh billions into it? I would have my doubts!

Sponge Bob

Solair wrote: »

I would like to see an analysis of where exactly this huge €4 billion debt came from because it sure as hell didn't come from spending on their networks.see where they can go.

It came from covering dividends paid to the Union/Valentia and Babcock...all of it. It was clocked up between 2002 and 2006 in the main.

Will its parent, STT, really be willing to slosh billions into it? I would have my doubts!

They only paid €120m for it so they can easily make that back at a rate of €40m a year on the central procurement and 'services rendered' side. 3 years I would say and they are quids in, after that it is profit.

They may see a way to maintain a minority stake in a restructure but eircom is not quite the same as Global Crossing...whom they also took over and whose Bondholders they burnt spectacularly For starters eircom owes 'loan notes' in the main ....not bonds.

Meanwhile we cannot wait for the inevitable default. We still have a semblance of an economy.

Yakuza

Freddie59 wrote: »

is this true? How can they do that?

My tongue was in my cheek when I wrote those words, but I didn't like their changing from just cancelling over the phone to having to write in (and the notice period only starts from when your letter is received by them (and that's probably likely to be at least a week until they acknowledge it). In short, it's a mealy-mouthed attempt to squeeze extra revenue from a customer who's leaving. Come the 10th, I'll cease to be one.

dub45

Yakuza wrote: »

My tongue was in my cheek when I wrote those words, but I didn't like their changing from just cancelling over the phone to having to write in (and the notice period only starts from when your letter is received by them (and that's probably likely to be at least a week until they acknowledge it). In short, it's a mealy-mouthed attempt to squeeze extra revenue from a customer who's leaving. Come the 10th, I'll cease to be one.

I think that no matter who the company is that you are dealing with it is in everyone's interest to cancel a contract in writing. There is nothing to stop the customer writing in advance to ensure that the cancellation takes place from the date they want.

grumpygit

Solair wrote: »

I would like to see an analysis of where exactly this huge €4 billion debt came from because it sure as hell didn't come from spending on their networks.

Eircom has all the hallmarks of a company that has been stripped of all of its cash by vultures.

QUOTE]

try this link It might give a better idea where it all came from http://www.ictu.ie/download/pdf/learning_from_the_eircom_debacle.pdf

watty

More scholarly
pg 22 following

http://regulation.upf.edu/dublin-10-papers/6J2.pdf

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

watty

Now you know why even FF mused it might be bad to sell ESB Networks? (They happy to sell the Power Stations and Retail).

We wonder what Enda Kenny's list of Strategic Infrastructure is? (Stuff to be not sold).

Eircomm debt excluding pension liabilities and other such stuff was €3.9Billion just before STT bought it. Other liabilities perhaps 800Million giving €4.7Billion.
So €3.5 billion + profits trousered.
Enough to buy Universal Fibre to every home with 200Mbps to 1Gbps speed and 1500 mast High Speed LTE 4G network.

UPC bought Chorus and NTL because they envisaged no competition. They were right.

Solair

It says a lot for Irish company law and the reckless, short-sighted, self-imploding business practices that existed here though considering that all of the rest of Europe's former "Telecom" companies were also privatised and none of them appear to have managed to strip themselves of all their assets.

Telefonica, BT, France Telecom/Orange, Telia/Sonera (Sweden/Finland merger) Deutche Telekom, TeleDanmark/TDC, KPN, Portugal Telecom (PT), Telecom Italia etc etc etc

All of these companies are doing just fine. Some of them e.g. France Telecom/Orange, Deutche Telekom / T-Com/ T-Mobile, and Telefonica (Movistar/O2), Telia-Sonera are absolutely enormous and did fantastically well, expanding globally.

Sounds like eircom was run by the same kind of quality management that ran Irish banks and certain insurance companies i.e. all focus was on short term gains and maximising shareholder revenues, ignoring the fact that the company's very viability was at risk.

While there are some great Irish companies out there, there are a lot of high profile examples of corporate failures which are pretty terrifying and show a level of poor management that is embarrassing. They really underline that there is something seriously wrong with an aspect of Irish business culture. I would sincerely hope that it is addressed because, otherwise, we could have our international reputation utterly destroyed (it probably already is).

Strangely enough, all of these tend to be companies that the state / banks / "the cronies" had their fingers in.

Companies, particularly big utilities, insurers and banks, which are utterly systemic, cannot be run for the sake of a few shareholders making an absolute short-term killing.