Eircom announce speed upgrades for DSL services

Moriarty

PR announcement here.

Home starter, which is currently 512kbit is bumped to 1mbit.

Home plus/business starter, which is currently 512kbit is bumped to 2mbit.

Business plus is bumped from 1mbit to 3mbit.

Business enhanced is bumped from 2mbit to 4mbit.


New speeds will become effective as of April 8 2005. Prices are to remain the same as they are currently for each package.

Spacedog

good

Sarsfield

Congratulations to Smart Telecom for bringing this about

I note they don't mention upload speeds in the release. Hopefully that will be raised too. No mention of download allowances either. Excellent news nevertheless.

jesus_thats_gre

That is savage really..

koneko

Great news.
Yay

seamus

I'm eager to see the actual details re: cap and contention, and of course the response from Esat, NTL and IBB.

Sponge Bob

Cap same (probably) because contention exactly the same as the old package and port size out the back exactly the same , the 4096 product has 24:1 contention .

Its all here

http://webdev.eircom.net/eircomwholesale/dynamic/pdf/adsl_bitstream_pd_v4.pdf

SkepticOne

Sponge Bob wrote:

Cap same (probably) because contention exactly the same as the old package and port size out the back exactly the same , the 4096 product has 24:1 contention .

Its all here

http://webdev.eircom.net/eircomwholesale/dynamic/pdf/adsl_bitstream_pd_v4.pdf

If the contention ratio is staying the same then that means that the backhaul is being increased proportionately. I would expect some increase in caps.

damien

More Esat Details:

IOL Broadband jumps up to 1MB for the same price of EUR39 a month (33.15 bundled with voice). IOL Broadband Plus jumps up to 2MB for EUR47 a month (39.95 bundled with voice). The free broadband trial offer has been
extended till 31st March so if consumers get their order in by this date
they can enjoy the 1Meg/2Meg offer for three months (fourth month free if
they sign up after the trial).

Creamy Goodness

eircom will be shooting themselves in the foot if they don't up the caps.

wait a minute i will be me that will be shooting them, and probably not the foot either

Praetorian

As Gombin stated, the caps are never enforced, unless you rape them. They caught internet cafes using residential lines, and they punished them by enforcing their per meg surcharge. Don't worry about your cap Cremo.

Worry about the crappy upload speed we will all still have. Is 128 up even broadband at all? I never get any more than 12 k/b per second up... I used to get 14 k/b per second up when I had dual isdn

Emerson

So is the upload 256k now for home users or is it stayin' at stale 'ol 128k?

Praetorian

128

popinfresh

Yay. Although I'm still tempted to goto Smart. Just because I hate eircom sooo much. Smart's package is still cheaper and twice as fast.

Gremlin

Forgive me if I'm missing the point here.

I'm an eircom home plus customer ()In Dublin)

Eircom: 2MB for €55 plus €25 for line rental. Total €80
Smart Telecom: 2MB inc line rental €35.

This is great news for those outside smart's reach. But for those of us in the 'Smart Zone' there is no contest.

Bring it on Smart Telecom!

byte

Well, it's certainly a step in the right direction! Now if they could only enable my exchange!

ro2

Smart move by the heads down in eircom. No loss at all in revenue and only a slight increase in costs for bandwidth (just because people have more bandwidth doesn't mean they'll actually use it). This should provide some encouragement for ntl to implement their UK upgrades here..

eircomtribunal

ro2 wrote:

Smart move by the heads down in eircom. No loss at all in revenue and only a slight increase in costs

...and the usual PR spin, all the media will fall for.

"These latest changes mean that Irish Broadband users will enjoy one of the fastest connection rates for standard or entry level Broadband in Europe. eircom, BT, Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia will lead the European league table for the speed of their respective entry level Broadband products."

How ingenious! McRedmond has just invented a "European league table for the speed of entry level Broadband products", so that Ireland can finally lead, when we have in reality only caught up with the position the others were in since last year. As France telecom and the Nordic telecoms not just offer vastly superior broadband products, but also slower ones they are left behind in this new league table.

The new Eircom offer – nothing to do with the "recent speed tests", but simply taking away some of the artificially applied restrictions on foot of competitive pressure from Smart – with its slow upstream speed and its severe cap, does still not compare well with our EU neighbours.

Here is the piece in the Eircom press release which needs to be addressed, it's about the dismal end-user availability of broadband:
"eircom also recently set targets to exceed the average EU penetration level by December 2007 (with 500,000 connections) and to achieve 100% broadband coverage (with eircom providing at least 90% coverage)."

So Eircom promises "to achieve 100% broadband coverage", ahem "with eircom providing at least 90%" of that, not by end 2005, not by end 2006, but in three years time by the end of 2007. This statement makes nonsense of eircom's claim in the last weeks to provide 90% dsl coverage by March 2006. The latter being of course a lie, which journalists need to expose by asking for exact figures on current and planned end-user dsl availability.

Currently Eircom does not make its dsl available to more than 60% of population and has no plans to go over approx 70% by next March. The profits it can make from dial-up customers, with huge numbers still tricked into remaining in obsolete "net subscription" services are much to sweet to change that. And there is no competition and no functioning regulator to help those 40% of the population.

P.

damien

Those IOFFL guys are always press releasing...

Consumer group IrelandOffline welcomes eircom announcement but says it
doesn't go far enough.

Speaking this morning, IrelandOffline chairman Damien Mulley stated
"IrelandOffline welcome eircom to the 21st century. Eircom's announcement
of increased speeds over their bitstream ADSL service is welcome but
doesn't go far enough. Eircom completely failed to address the pricing
issues, which means Ireland will continue to be one of the most expensive
countries in the OECD for entry level broadband services, while continuing
to fall behind in high speed access.This announcement would have been
impressive if it was made two years ago, but instead we are now left
playing catch-up once again while most other countries start to break the
10mbit barrier for cheap broadband services. Eircom are besotted with
squeezing as much money out of the consumer with the double barrelled
pricing structure of over-inflated wholesale prices and a line rental 8
euros higher than the EU average"

While 2mbit services are standard in most EU countries, a number have
significantly passed this figure. Standard services in France now exceed
8mbit with a new 20mb service being offered for €35 per month, while BT in
the UK and Northern Ireland are planning to increase their standard service
to 8mbit later this year. 100mbit services - 50 times faster than eircom's
new services - have been available in Sweden for more than a year at
similar pricing to eircom's current offerings. Meanwhile, eircom will
struggle to ever exceed 2mbit in many places due to the poor quality of the
network.

Spokesperson Aidan Whyte said "While this announcement is good news for
those that can already receive broadband services over their phone lines,
more than 20% of people that are connected to enabled exchanges still fail
minimum line quality standards. This is an extraordinarily high figure,
when you compare it to the likes of the UK and Northern Ireland where the
number of lines failing the test is less than 1%. This announcement will
ring hollow for the tens of thousands that are unable to take advantage of
any ADSL service because eircom simply fail to maintain their network to
basic international standards. In fact, this increase will further
exacerbate the digital divide that plagues Ireland at the moment. Rural
Ireland is left to suffer dial up while eircom once again uses the cheapest
option to stymie competition."

Whyte added "Eircom recently appealed a ComReg decision to the High Court
in an attempt to further disrupt and delay true competition via Local Loop
Unbundling (LLU). It is no coincidence that eircom have produced these
speed increases within weeks of Smart Telecom announcing their forthcoming
services that operate over LLU. This is an obvious example of how eircom
will use every trick in the book to try and sustain their dominant position
in the broadband sector. Now more than ever ComReg need to make sure that
competition is possible and sustainable in the sector."

damien

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/15/eircom_broadband/

I love the subheader: "Too little too late, says IrelandOffline"

seamus

A tagalong that takes up half of each article about eircom's announcement. Gotta love it.