Eircom for sale

PogMoThoin

funnyname wrote: »

Schools not on the fibre network are bring provided 100mb connections via FWA so why not make this available to all people off the fibre network? At a reasonable cost I might add.

Because everyone can't have a 100mbit wireless connection, there just isn't the spectrum. You can only connect to a fibre where it ends, there is no tapping in.

Also, this connection to the schools is uncontended and shouldn't be shared.

Sponge Bob

Dearie Me

http://siteassets.eircom.net/assets/static/pdf/IR/Investor%20Update%2009_02_2012.pdf

basically the Senior Lenders told Eircom not to make a due payment to the Junior Lenders and eircom agreed. This is what is called a DEFAULT!

No wonder the Meteor data breach story broke...pure distraction that.

ERC Ireland Finance received notice yesterday that ERC Ireland Holdings Limited’s senior
lenders have exercised their rights to suspend payments by ERC Ireland Holdings and its
subsidiaries of amounts that fund FRN coupon payments, including the payment scheduled
for 15 February 2012.

Solair

Voltwad wrote: »

Privatizing it fully in the first place was a shocking decision. The British state retained a substantial stake in BT, including the lines and look at up North, 99% broadband enabled.

Are you sure about that?

The UK Government privatised 50% of BT in 1984 and sold off the rest of it in 1991-1993. It was one of the first Euro PTTs to be entirely sold off.

The problem with eircom wasn't really privatisation. Rather, that it wasn't run as a telecommunications company, but instead it was bought and sold for speculative value.

Investors cashed in, took it private and extracted maximum profits out of it leaving it as a lifeless corpse.

Poorly designed regulation also allowed eircom to maintain a strangle-hold on the market during the earlier days of broadband. That coupled with what was then a weak cable operator, led to a lot of inertia and eircom didn't innovate or invest in technology at all. It just sat and sweated its assets.

When the market became more functional and when UPC entered in a big way, eircom took an absolute hammering as they were totally uncompeditive.

BT on the other hand is a PLC, it was run as a telecommunications company with investors living off the income, not the speculative value of the shares.

Eircom, as a small telco, was bounced around from private equity fund to private equity fund none of whom seemed to have had an interest in actually developing the company as a serious telco.

From a national perspective, the best we could hope for now is a speedy and orderly wind-down of the entity that is eircom and a firesale of its assets to companies who can actually develop the telecommunications network.

Bailing eircom out is just not even something the state should consider. Its only interest should be in protecting the viability of the telecommunications infrastructure of the state.

Also, a bail-out will not be allowed under EU law as it would probably be illegal state aid and market distortion. So, eircom will more than likely have to just deal with the mess it's in.

It's probably not a bad fit for the likes of BT or Orange (France Telecom), Telefonica (O2) or Deustche Telekom (T-Com).

I wouldn't be surprised if BT picked up the fixed line / network assets and some bigger player like Orange, who aren't already in the Irish market, picked up Meteor.

To be perfectly honest, it's questionable as to whether small EU telcos like Eircom can really function at all in what is increasingly a global market. They don't really have the economies of scale, global reach, etc etc. Increasingly EU telcos are merging and swallowing each other up. E.g. Vodafone, O2 (Telefonica) and even UPC are all massive international corporations.

Eircom, unlike some other small telcos like Teledanmark (TDC), Portugal Telecom (TP), Telenor (Norway), Telia-Sonera (Merged Swedish-Finnish former PTT),, never really expanded outside its home market either. It was surprising that it never even managed to get a serious foothold in the UK.

The big Euro telcos Telefonica (Espana), Orange (France), T-Com/T-Mobile (Germany) and Vodafone UK are now by far the biggest players in Europe and even globally. They even make BT look like a mino.

Eircom's an absolutely tiny operation in comparison.

arctan

Spot on !!

Eircom is also still profitable, people just dont want to buy it because of the debt burdon..

re: Eircoms size, I've heard if being compared (infrastructurally) as similar size as Birmingham, just over a wider land mass ... as you said, tiny