Irish Line Rental - Highest in EU - nice chart

damien

You've heard us harping on about this for a while, here's our source from an official EU publication. In the last ComReg quarterly report they compared business line rental prices not consumer prices. Tricky.



I got this from page 81 of the Commission Staff Working paper on EUROPEAN ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS REGULATION AND MARKETS 2004
(10TH REPORT)

You can get it here:
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/topics/ecomm/all_about/implementation_enforcement/annualreports/10threport/index_en.htm

Sponge Bob

Comreg at least are consistent.

We pay the Highest Line rental in the EU and have the Highest Line Failure Rate for DSL services in the EU as well.

This means that we pay the most for our lines and have the worst lines in the EU for our money . In addition, OVER 20% of Residential Lines are paid for in full by the Taxpayer thru Social Welfare schemes, almost 300,000 in a country with some 1.4 Million Residences , see Here .

No other EU country subsidises so many of its fixed lines in full, no matter how low the line rental .

Notwithstanding this ongoing subsidy to Eircom from the Taxpayer Comreg refuses to entertain the concept of Consistent Universal Service despite the fact that we ALL pay for this subsidy .

In Ireland More is Truly Less

Paddy20

I bet that most of those in receipt of the Free Line rental allowance are perfectly entitled to this, and are more honest than the vast majority of politicians in this blatantly corrupt capitalist Christian ! society :rolleyes: .

P.

dahamsta

I doubt that Sponge Bob is suggesting that people in receipt of line rental aren't entitled to it, but that Irish people are in fact paying more than the already ridiculously high line-rental charges, via their taxes.

adam

Sponge Bob

I am fully in favour of the expenditure but totally against a subsidy which :

a) Is determined by COMREG and EIRCOM not the Minister of Finance and the Dáil
b) Is handed straight over without a tendering process
c) Where the Mobile Operators cannot tender for a €20 Bundle for pensioners which could be more useful to many of them and cost exactly the same to the taxpayer .
d) Where the Department of Social Welfare does not contractually require compliance with Universal Service Norms for what is in effect a Universal Subsidy .

By all means give our pensioners the subsidy Paddy but giving it straight to George Soros For our pensioners is surely an abrogation of the norms of good government and for Comreg to ignore this subsidisation effect on the provision of Universal Service is intolerable?

bealtine

Sponge Bob wrote:

Comreg at least are consistent.

We pay the Highest Line rental in the EU and have the Highest Line Failure Rate for DSL services in the EU as well.

Why let a few mere inconvienent facts spoil a good party?
It is far easier to ignore the situation and hope it will "go away"
(using my Comreg patented rose coloured specs of course) than to
actually address the issues...

Like :
Why do we have the highest line rental?
Why do so many lines fail?
What is paying the extortionate line rental for?

So by ignoring the issues Comreg don't actually have to do anything
worthwhile for the hapless telecomms consumers of Ireland.

Way to go!

De Rebel

Have we anybody with an A3 colour printer to print that off and sent it to the Minister's office with a compliment slip.

Or could we get it framed and presented for him to hang on the wall of his office.

Could we "present" copies of it to ComReg for them to adorn their office walls and act as a daily reminder of the wonderful job they are doing?

dahamsta

Didn't Soros cash in his Eircom chips a while back?

EDIT: De Rebel, that'd give us a lovely feeling an' all, but since all they'd do is trash it, it wouldn't achive anything. However sending a large version to the major newspapers and tv and radio stations might get a little coverage. Perhaps if IrelandOffline drafted up a press release, people could pick a local media outlet and send in the pic, the release, and their own note about the issue? Be cool if there was a corresponding graph about failure rates or equipment depreciation or something, does such an item exist?

adam

Sponge Bob

dahamsta wrote:

Be cool if there was a corresponding graph about failure rates or equipment depreciation or something, does such an item exist?

According to the Freedom of Info request sent out to IoffL by Comreg we have hard evidence that Comreg are currently in possession of at least

800 blank A4 pages of data

on line quality and failure rates in Ireland .

I wonder if they would share that with the EU Commission

thejollyrodger

I have always thought the line rental in Ireland was the biggest rip off in Europe. The graphic just highlights it more so.

The fact that Eircon can charge so much money for a poor service is incredible. Im going to forward the picture on to Today FM, with just a few lines about having the highest line rental, having so many lines fail and asking why are we paying the extortionate line rental for.

I wouldnt mind nearly as much if I could actually get broadband. If you take all the factors in, this must be one of the most crappest services offered by any telco.

Blaster99

Not that it really matters, but I think the line rental subsidy should be scrapped. If you're gonna start looking at every little detail about somebody's spending, where will it end? The social welfare, or similar, should cover the basics. If the receiver wants to get a prepaid phone and spend the rest in the pub, let them.

eircomtribunal

ComReg are quite smug about our line rental pricing and bring forward an absolutely idiotic argument for the "rebalancing":
page 33:

"...it was felt that a cap of CPI-0%, with the removal of the sub-cap on access, would achieve a number of desired objectives; it would prevent consumer prices overall from rising at above the rate of inflation, while allowing some necessary rebalancing of rental and call charges and also allowing further competition to develop on calls, which in itself would act as a check on prices. ComReg is currently consulting on the market reviews of retail calls and access under the new EU regulatory framework. It considers that the line rental charge is now fully rebalanced,..."

The removal of the subcap directly lead to a substantial more-than-inflation price rise for the lower quartile of users (that is the quarter of users with the lowest bills) (as the antidote of the vulnerable user scheme was a bluff), the high line rental made it harder for the competition to compete and get a foothold in the Irish market.Comreg is now introducing a new subcap on the line rental, not because it "considers the line rental to be now fully rebalanced", but because the gov made it clear to them that a further damaging line rental increase was out of the question. That is of course nothing you'd ever find in a ComReg document.

P.

jwt

Sponge Bob wrote:

According to the Freedom of Info request sent out to IoffL by Comreg we have hard evidence that Comreg are currently in possession of at least

800 blank A4 pages of data

on line quality and failure rates in Ireland .

I wonder if they would share that with the EU Commission

If you have ever seen documentaries on the CIA, MI5 and KGB you'll have seen documents where pages have black lines through then usually leaving only the odd word and date of the document.

ComReg went one better and left us nothing. At least the KGB left in the odd word or phrase! Makes you wonder just how secretive Ireland really is.

And we have "special" contacts through whom all correspondence must go (evening Tom, oops I think I blew his cover )

we even have special code words that mean nothing like you think they mean as follows

Coverage – Nothing to do with availability but sounds good
USO – non universal, limited service, non compulsory
Functional – Might work some of the time for some of the people
AskComReg – Unless its a real question in which case we won't ask it
Broadband – Narrowband
Lack of Demand – Huge pent up demand
Active Regulation – Consultations, meetings, press release, guff, huff and puff
Consultation – Talk about something but don't do anything, also postponing an unpleasant task
EU Directive – Someone else does it
Directive – Mild request but feel free to ignore it
Fine – Nominal monetary penalty never used in real life
Consumer – Mythical being
Incumbent – Boss
SMP (Significant Market Power) – Solicitors Money Power
IOFFL – Not a lobby group
Consumer Panel – Group of non consumers (them being mythical beings you see)
Bilateral Discussion – We talk you listen, when it suits us
Unilateral Discussion – Its good to talk
Multilateral Discussion – We all talk
Competition – Unknown possible slang term for something nasty
Penetration – Rude term used to describe incumbents action to consumers
Regulation – Bureaucracy
Line Rent – Money for old rope

John

De Rebel

jwt wrote:

we even have special code words that mean nothing like you think they mean as follows

Coverage – Nothing to do with availability but sounds good
USO – non universal, limited service, non compulsory
Functional – Might work some of the time for some of the people
AskComReg – Unless its a real question in which case we won't ask it
Broadband – Narrowband
Lack of Demand – Huge pent up demand
Active Regulation – Consultations, meetings, press release, guff, huff and puff
Consultation – Talk about something but don't do anything, also postponing an unpleasant task
EU Directive – Someone else does it
Directive – Mild request but feel free to ignore it
Fine – Nominal monetary penalty never used in real life
Consumer – Mythical being
Incumbent – Boss
SMP (Significant Market Power) – Solicitors Money Power
IOFFL – Not a lobby group
Consumer Panel – Group of non consumers (them being mythical beings you see)
Bilateral Discussion – We talk you listen, when it suits us
Unilateral Discussion – Its good to talk
Multilateral Discussion – We all talk
Competition – Unknown possible slang term for something nasty
Penetration – Rude term used to describe incumbents action to consumers
Regulation – Bureaucracy
Line Rent – Money for old rope

John

Scarey. So accurate. So close to the truth. Are you a ComReg insider that you have such an insight? Have we a mole in our midst?