Eircom Business Starter only connecting at 1mb

eircom: Tony

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Wait a minute, you didn't direct me to a document, you directed me to ComReg's home page!

Yes and on that home page there are the numerous documents detailing the numerous regulations involved. You can understand how I would be unable to paraphrase these.
Tony

lucernarian

eircom: Tony wrote: »

Yes and on that home page there are the numerous documents detailing the numerous regulations involved. You can understand how I would be unable to paraphrase these.
Tony

Hold on, I asked for a specific regulation on a very specific policy involving long lines and connections (i.e. Amber Programme) and you just link to the ComReg website? I mean, you say "guidelines" exist and I ask for specifics on the particular guideline that stops you from increasing line speed for the customer. Now, you could claim that eircom are not allowed by ComReg to sell a product to customers who may not receive it at all or not reliably. But that's not an issue here as it's already been proven that the line can handle higher speed. So if we recognise this fact, there must be some other reason. Have the technicians you spoke to lost their senses when they say it may handle up to 2 mbps but with instability?! The OP has already demonstrated it can receive higher than 2 mbps. He's hardly making it up. This is what I'm confused about, you claim business guidelines and regulations are in place which prevent this but I've seen no evidence heretofore of what guideline or regulation stops eircom wholesale from upping the speed back to what it was before.

It would nearly be easier to ask an eircom linesman as a favour to manually reclassify the line. just so that the connection speed would be reinstated.

Apologies for the double post; the OP says here that their connection is now provided by eircom. In the first point, you say the line is not provided by eircom. These two statements appear to be contradictory so I'll wait for clarification first.

Matt Bauer wrote: »

Hello,

Our connection used to run at 2-3mb until recently. Switched to Eircom Business Starter (8mb), and the broadband always connects at exactly 1mb now.

Could you please look into this? The phone number the broadband is on is 0949632558. Could you change the profile to 8mb down/1.1mb up and see how fast it will connect at? There's no phone connected to that number, hence I'm posting it here.

Matt

eircom: Tony

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Apologies for the double post; the OP says here that their connection is now provided by eircom. In the first point, you say the line is not provided by eircom. These two statements appear to be contradictory so I'll wait for clarification first.

No problem.
Yes line is by another provider, Broadband service is provided by eircom.

lucernarian

eircom: Tony wrote: »

No problem.
Yes line is by another provider, Broadband service is provided by eircom.

My points have only been dealing with the DSL connection so when I say "line" I'm talking about it with regards to DSL only. Eircom wholesale in any case would be responsible for fixing DSL or voice faults according to ComReg.

shinzon

eircom: Tony wrote: »

Broadband service is provided by eircom.

As a compromise to all of this and as the customer is facing difficulties why not just up the speed and extend the cooling off period for him, it if does destabilise then he can just go back down to 1 meg, youve trialled it your not breaking any regulations as far as i can see and at least youve helped the customer and either

A) Given him the speed he asked for

b) proved the lines degraded to where he cannot receive the service he had previously

Seems logical to me

Shin

lucernarian

I had suggested this but Tony was mainly dealing with my other points. I think it's the quickest way to solve this is to just enable it. Tony has already said that there's more to it than just flipping a switch but eircom have increased line speeds when I dealt with them on behalf of a family friend before, within 30 minutes of me asking.

I cannot see how the lines have degraded at all just because the likes of Vodafone instead of eircom or UTV provide voice, when the line has a signal margin of 22dB and eircom wholesale look after the equipment in the exchange anyway. But a trial of the higher speed would at least rule it out once and for all.

bkehoe

I'm shocked at the response of Eircom here. Why has it suddenly become impossible to alter line profiles? I'm aware there have been some admin changes in the wholesale system as to how the profiles are selected - I understand that nowadays Eircom automatically cap a lines potential speed at that the prequal test determines rather than the current real world conditions but is is still possible to bypass this...

Last year I was in the same situation on a line which prequals at 2MBit. Had a small bit of hassle getting Eircom to sell me the 8MB business service but a nice girl happily did a 'manual order' as she termed it as the system wouldn't let her sell the package. 24hrs later and I was happily synced at 5MBit and was able to ring up support and get them to put me on the 8MBit profile and let me router negotiate the optimal rate and give me full upload speed of 800k. Result was a perfectly stable 6MBit sync on a line which the prequal database said would only do 2MBit.

So stop treating the prequal database like its the bible, give Matt the higher profile and let him see if it works (which we all know it will) and resolve this shocking lack of customer service.

lucernarian

So I take it our suggestion of trying the higher speed profile to see if it works, is not an option?

Matt Bauer

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

So I take it our suggestion of trying the higher speed profile to see if it works, is not an option?

Eircom are telling me Comreg won't allow them to change the profiles anymore. Before it was no problem, and I had a much faster connection. I'm in the following situation now: the Eircom engineer said my line can support 2-3 MB no problem, but Eircom are telling me Comreg won't allow it.

In case people haven't read my previous posts, before "upgrading" to Eircom Business, I had a 100% stable 2 MB profile, and my Vodafone modem had reported a maximum sync rate of nearly 3 MB. As you can probably guess, I regret upgrading my line now to a "faster" connection now.

shinzon

Matt Bauer wrote: »

Eircom are telling me Comreg won't allow them to change the profiles anymore. Before it was no problem, and I had a much faster connection. I'm in the following situation now: the Eircom engineer said my line can support 2-3 MB no problem, but Eircom are telling me Comreg won't allow it.

In case people haven't read my previous posts, before "upgrading" to Eircom Business, I had a 100% stable 2 MB profile, and my Vodafone modem had reported a maximum sync rate of nearly 3 MB. As you can probably guess, I regret upgrading my line now to a "faster" connection now.

Next step is then to contact comreg about it and ask them outright why there banning Eircom from changing line profiles when people have perfectly good SNR margins and connections on higher speeds before chnaging over to a different package

Im sure youll get a completely different story to the one Eircoms giving you TBH

Can only but try

Shin

Matt Bauer

Spoke with ComReg, they claim they will never and are not going to prevent Eircom from putting my line on a higher profile, and I should advise Eircom that they are allowed to put me on a higher profile.

So Tony, could you please look into this again? ComReg are telling me they are allowing you to put the line on a faster profile, for example the 2mb profile it was on for years before with never a problem.

The only reason the connection is stuck at 1mb right now is not because of the length of the line, but because of the profile. That's also why there's a noise/signal margin of ~20db. This could be much lower.

eircom: Tony

Matt Bauer wrote: »

Spoke with ComReg, they claim they will never and are not going to prevent Eircom from putting my line on a higher profile, and I should advise Eircom that they are allowed to put me on a higher profile.

So Tony, could you please look into this again? ComReg are telling me they are allowing you t, for example the 2mb profile it was on for years before with never a problem.

The only reason the connection is stuck at 1mb right now is not because of the length of the line, but because of the profile. That's also why there's a noise/signal margin of ~20db. This could be much lower.

Hi Matt Bauer
my apologies if I was not clear, however when I corrected your post stating the above point, I attemted to explain the issue. If we determine that a line can only deliver a certain speed we can not sell a package that promises more than that line can deliver.
I at no stage stated that Com Reg would not allow any telco raise customers speed or profile, however there are regulations that control business practices particularly the selling of services packages.

What I said in my post was

'Technically speaking we can only sell our BB to customers who reside within the specified DSL guidelines / limits. In this case, we would be bending the rules laid down by Com Reg to attempt to provision higher grade service'.
ComReg do not control the speeds that can be provided but do regulate the market to provide a fair playing field for other telecom providers and to ensure that customers get the best service. Your line speeds indicate to us that any faster package would not be stable and that it would not be proper business conduct to sell a higher package.
This is a business regulatary issue rather than any curtalling of technical development.
As you are currently on a 1Mb package the only way we can raise your profile is to place you on a higher package, say 3Mb, for which you would be charged more, as our systems and technicians state that you cannot get more than 1Mb we would be knowingly selling a service outside the specified DSL guidelines.

I accept your statement that Com Reg have 'allowed' us 'to put the line on a faster profile' but not sure I can arrange this. I will put this to broadband support but as you know I have chased this and posted on this extensively.
If this can be done we will do so. Will let you know this week, hope to have some info on this by Thursday.
Tony

Matt Bauer

Tony, you had sent me a message, and I quote:

eircom: Tony wrote:

In this case, we would be bending the rules laid down by Com Reg to attempt to provision higher grade service.

I had understood that to mean that ComReg were not allowing you, without bending the rules as you put it, to provision a higher speed. ComReg have told me categorically that this is not the case, and they will not prevent you from doing so, neither do they have any rules in place that you would need to bend (in this case). I don't have that in writing from them, but they did say so over the phone.

Matt Bauer

All I am asking for is to get the same or similar speed that I was on before, and which worked perfectly: 2+ MB. I am not asking you to give me an 8MB connection or work any other kind of miracle, which I realise would not be possible on this particular line. At least not without new investment in the network.

Saying that the line is only capable of 1MB is untrue. If that were true, how could the line have reliably supported double that speed before? And why would your own Eircom engineers tell me that this line can support 2-3MB?

eircom: Tony

Matt Bauer wrote: »

Tony, you had sent me a message, and I quote:



I had understood that to mean that ComReg were not allowing you, without bending the rules as you put it, to provision a higher speed. ComReg have told me categorically that this is not the case, and they will not prevent you from doing so, neither do they have any rules in place that you would need to bend (in this case). I don't have that in writing from them, but they did say so over the phone.

Matt Bauer wrote: »

Tony, you had sent me a message, and I quote:



I had understood that to mean that ComReg were not allowing you, without bending the rules as you put it, to provision a higher speed. ComReg have told me categorically that this is not the case, and they will not prevent you from doing so, neither do they have any rules in place that you would need to bend (in this case). I don't have that in writing from them, but they did say so over the phone.

I'm not sure what else I can say on that particular issue Matt Bauer. Regulations and codes of business practice apply to all business as you would imagine and within telecos packages, services and pricing are particularly regulated. This is a quote from their website

ComReg monitors the retail and wholesale prices of any operator who has been designated as having significant market power on their network. This is to ensure compliance with regulatory obligations imposed following detailed analyses of those markets. Such obligations include price controls such as, Price Caps specifying how prices move over time, detailed reviews of actual costs incurred, and affordable pricing under the Universal Service obligations. Such pricing controls are generally to protect consumers from any harmful market power which could lead to excessive prices...

Still chasing and will get back to you hopefully by Thursday. Received your PM and have responded.
Tony

shinzon

Matt

if i were you id give up with the eircom reps here they are towing whatever company line eircom is telling them to

Heres the eircom CEO's e-mail address

pdonovan@eircom.ie

Fire off an e-mail to him and see where you get, I really am baffled with Eircoms business practices, Broadband should never be restricted straight off the bat, you had 2 meg before and with your line stats there is no reason on earth why you cant have it again

Shin

shinzon

eircom: Tony wrote: »

ComReg monitors the retail and wholesale prices of any operator who has been designated as having significant market power on their network. This is to ensure compliance with regulatory obligations imposed following detailed analyses of those markets. Such obligations include price controls such as, Price Caps specifying how prices move over time, detailed reviews of actual costs incurred, and affordable pricing under the Universal Service obligations. Such pricing controls are generally to protect consumers from any harmful market power which could lead to excessive prices...

Tony

In all honesty what has pricing got to do with changing the line profile, comreg has said they dont restrict you yet you keep quoting things on there website, making any argument you have null and void.

Just answer this as a simple yes or no, can you change this persons line profile or not, dont quote comreg as a shield, just a simple yes or no will suffice, so matt can go further if he wishes


Shin

eircom: Tony

shinzon wrote: »

In all honesty what has pricing got to do with changing the line profile, comreg has said they dont restrict you yet you keep quoting things on there website, making any argument you have null and void.

Just answer this as a simple yes or no, can you change this persons line profile or not, dont quote comreg as a shield, just a simple yes or no will suffice, so matt can go further if he wishes


Shin

Hi Shinzon
I have posted extensively on this issue and made the issue clear, it is not as you put it a pricing issue. As you will see from my last post I am in contact with this customer and will not discuss his situation further. The customer is free of course to post any action we may take.
Tony

lucernarian

But "action" by eircom doesn't appear to include upping the line profile to a higher speed as a trial, just to clarify what's going on for once and for all. A number of us have suggested this and most importantly Matt Bauer appears interested in this solution but this appears to make no difference.

It's extraordinary to claim that I kept shifting from one issue to the next when I had to waste much time in finding out why ComReg had anything to do with this issue on top of repeatedly pointing out that so-called "guidelines" which may or may not come from ComReg or higher eircom management don't stand up to the absolute certainty that the line had worked at over 2mbps before! A proper answer as opposed to a patronising link to ComReg's website and now quotes from said website would have been far more welcome:(


I agree with Shin, an email to Paul O'Donovan could be very useful, with a link to this thread for some of the public reaction to this ongoing nonsense with line prequals and "amber lines" etc.

I also think that a cc to the odd local representative and also e.g. todaypk@rte.ie who have dealt with broadband availability in the past, would be useful. They would also be interested to hear of eircom artificially limiting the speed of broadband connections for those who need the speed the most! Those on longer lines who are limited to 1 mbps even if they're slightly too far for an ordinary "pass".

As a comparison, I'd like to mention that BT do not limit connection speed at any stage whatsoever, what they do is to see what the line can manage over a period of a few days or a week or two or something like that. Then they put a limit based on real-world readings, not some bloody prequal. Vodafone have told me that my family's line reports an attainable speed of slightly over 3 mbps from the DSLAM but the prequal prevents over 1 meg from being applied.

shinzon

eircom: Tony wrote: »

Hi Shinzon
I have posted extensively on this issue and made the issue clear, it is not as you put it a pricing issue. As you will see from my last post I am in contact with this customer and will not discuss his situation further. The customer is free of course to post any action we may take.
Tony

Tony the Piece you linked from the Comreg site has pricing plastered all over it, so its not "As I put it", its as you linked and im pointing it out.

Im not sure what systems Eircom use, but surely some sort of rudimentary Dynamic Line management is in operation on your systems, where you can change line profiles and if it does disconnect it simply puts the profile down to the next lowest speed, its to really just test the customers line, fire it up see what it can hanlde and then put it back down either manually or automatically if it cant handle the speed its put upto, which in this case it simply will with the stats on display

I cant see how this is not possible within eircoms processes

Shin

bkehoe

I suspect Eircom may have been the target of complaints from other DSL resellers over their practices in the past, e.g. my ease at getting them to put through a manual order and increase the line profile a year ago. Other DSL resellers didn't have the means to circumvent the system like Eircom used to quite happily and easily do.

Last year: "So you want to try a higher profile sir, no problem at all, what one would you like?"
The support staff actually worked with me while we tried various profiles before eventually leaving it at the highest one and let the router sort out the best speed, which as TBC says is how its done automatically in other countries.

This thread and this situation is all in all a terrible way to treat supposedly valued customers.

lucernarian

The ultimate question is why there was a block put on lines of a certain distance by Eircom Wholesale?? Now neither eircom nor the OLOs can offer over 1 mbit on these lines irrespective of their actual speed capability, even if that capability is empirically and objectively proven.

yangzone

Having had a 5.1Mbit Vodafone connection for 18 months I decided to renew my contract a few weeks ago (to save a few Euro with a new package).

My connection fell to 1.5MBits causing me big problems here and, if I cannot get this fixed, I will have to move.

Vodafone tell me that the new connection fell on to a different Eircom Exchange server that can only deliver a maximum of 2MBits.

My number is 07495 62688 and I am in Ranafast, near Annagry, Donegal.

Is there anything that can be done?

lucernarian

You'll need to start a thread in the talk to: Vodafone forum to see if they can explain this.

Btw, speedtests are not so accurate for telling you the speed of your connection. The actual speed that your connection gets is found on the router's webpage. E.g. at 192.168.1.254. If it's limited to 2 mbps, the modem should report a connection of 2048/256.



I suppose eircom still have done nothing about the poor customer left with a 1 mbit connection when the line handled 3 mbps before?

eircom: Mark

yangzone wrote: »

Having had a 5.1Mbit Vodafone connection for 18 months I decided to renew my contract a few weeks ago (to save a few Euro with a new package).

My connection fell to 1.5MBits causing me big problems here and, if I cannot get this fixed, I will have to move.

Vodafone tell me that the new connection fell on to a different Eircom Exchange server that can only deliver a maximum of 2MBits.

My number is 07495 62688 and I am in Ranafast, near Annagry, Donegal.

Is there anything that can be done?

Hi yangzone

I am afraid To_be_confirmed is right, you need to talk to Vodafone regarding this issue as we do not have access to look into your broadband connection.

Thanks, Mark

bkehoe

eircom: Mark wrote: »

Hi yangzone

I am afraid To_be_confirmed is right, you need to talk to Vodafone regarding this issue as we do not have access to look into your broadband connection.

Thanks, Mark

Ahh come on Mark, the least you could do is tell the customer that his line only prequals at 2048 (2MBit) on Eircoms systems seeing as he gave his number.

This artificial limitations of attainable rates based on the prequal test needs to be revised.

I can answer the OPs question as to exactly what happened his broadband. When he renewed his contract and selected a new package Vodafone used Eircoms wholesale system to select the appropriate profile for his line and the highest available was 2048 because Vodafone do not have the capability to override this with the Max Attainable speed any more due to the restrictions Eircom have imposed.

The fault here is the same as Matts problem, my own problems and who knows how many other thousands of customers that have not realised their speed is being artificially limited by Eircom for some reason.

eircom: Tony

bkehoe wrote: »

Ahh come on Mark, the least you could do is tell the customer that his line only prequals at 2048 (2MBit) on Eircoms systems seeing as he gave his number.

This artificial limitations of attainable rates based on the prequal test needs to be revised.

I can answer the OPs question as to exactly what happened his broadband. When he renewed his contract and selected a new package Vodafone used Eircoms wholesale system to select the appropriate profile for his line and the highest available was 2048 because Vodafone do not have the capability to override this with the Max Attainable speed any more due to the restrictions Eircom have imposed.

The fault here is the same as Matts problem, my own problems and who knows how many other thousands of customers that have not realised their speed is being artificially limited by Eircom for some reason.

Hi bkehoe
as customer is still on same exchange he should still be able to get previous speed. As customer is not an eircom customer we do not have access to his line/broadband details, this is in keeping with fair business policey. As I had suggested to another poster the best course of action is to contact your provider and insist that the situation be re-examined and have that case put to eircom. This request must come through the provider.
In regards to Matt's case, which I have had investigated intently, the situation is slighly different, although I do admit equally frustrating.
If anyone with any provider feels that speeds could be improved they should report this to provider along with any relevant information.
Once this case has been passed over to eircom we will be happy to investigate and hopefully improve speeds.
Tony

lucernarian

Is Matt Bauer's downstream signal margin of 22dB not enough to warrant an investigation and resulting improvement of speeds? Never mind the fact it successfully worked at 3 mbps in the past?!

eircom: Tony

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Is Matt Bauer's downstream signal margin of 22dB not enough to warrant an investigation and resulting improvement of speeds? Never mind the fact it successfully worked at 3 mbps in the past?!

Hi To_be_confirmed
Please read previous posts on this matter, which have explained the situation, this is not a technical issue and I have spoken with and PM'd customer on this matter.
Tony

bkehoe

eircom: Tony wrote: »

Hi bkehoe
as customer is still on same exchange he should still be able to get previous speed. As customer is not an eircom customer we do not have access to his line/broadband details, this is in keeping with fair business policey.
Tony

Tony,
If this is the case then why when anyone changes package with any ISP or gets upgraded to NGB then they get dropped down to the prequal value for the line? It's happened many people I know, my parents, Matt, yangzone and who knows how many others.

So maybe that is your policy but it just took me 10 seconds to go to YOUR website and get the prequal result for the posters line...at the end of the day YOU, not the resellers, are responsible for the artificial speed limits being imposed on lines countrywide so the least you could do is tell the OP that you limited his line speed, not Vodafone.

All the providers can do is report that Eircom has limited the lines to this value and have no ability to take further action. There is no fault with these lines so it's not possible to report a line fault. When are you going to give us back the speeds our lines are capable of?