Eircom Broadband Douglas Cork

gordonnet

Has any one in the douglas (cork) area had problems getting broadband. I have being trying to get it for the last 15 weeks, eircom claim my line isnt connected up to the "testing" system!, does any one know is this actually a problem or is another excuse by eircom, also does anybody know the technical details of how are the tests performed?

joe.

http://mmm.eircom.ie/maps/default.asp

may be useful

SparkyLarks

Where in Douglas are you??
any idea which exchange your comming off.

I'm in douglas and I've had broadband from eircom since christmas no problems with it at all

dahamsta

Five months is a long time in the comms world.

gordonnet, I mentioned to someone in the biz yesterday that I was concerned there might not be a port available in my exchange, and he mentioned that although I should be fine, the Douglas exchange was well and truly b0rked.

adam

gordonnet

according to eircom i am the douglas exchange area, 2 of my neighbours have it installed for at least 2 months. eircom say that my line is not connected to the "testing system" therefore they cannot test the line!

parasite

by b0rked, do you mean it's reaching capacity ? or the quality of the cabling etc .. ?
bah.

dahamsta

parasite wrote:

by b0rked, do you mean it's reaching capacity ? or the quality of the cabling etc .. ?

I understood it to mean the former, although there may be an element of the latter. I think basically you're going to need to wait until a port become available.

adam

Solair

I've heard that the broadband uptake in the Douglas area is extremely high so it's not really supprising that they may be waiting for new capacity to be installed. They are expanding the number of DSL ports available on a number of the exchanges around Cork at the moment (including Douglas)

However, I've got to say that eircom's service in the Cork area in my experience has been nothing short of excellent.
I'm connected to the Wellington Road exchange and have always had unbelievably fast installation times:

First phone line : Took a couple of days.
eircom HiSpeed: 24 hours from date of order (several years ago)

Downgrade to PSTN : ordered in the morning, I was on a PSTN line by 6pm that evening.
Initial DSL order: 3 working days.
extra line for fax (a few weeks ago) : 2 working days.

Any call management service / voicemail type product I've ever ordered seems to become active on the line with hours of the order too.

I've noticed a lot of eircom-bashing on this site however. It seems that the quality of service varies enormously from area to area.

I've also heard from an eircom engineer that there are some really big problems in the far flung commuter-belt housing estate type places that are popping up, particularly outside Dublin.

The local rural exchanges and infrastructure were never planned to cope with this kind of development. The house prices in dublin have sky rocketed over a short period of time and they've suddenly had to provide thousands of lines off very small exchanges so it's taking them a while to catch up with themselves.

I know they may be underinvesting compared to the way telecom eireann spent money in the 1980s.. but, I'd lay the blaim for all this stuff totally at the feet of the Government.

It's all bad planning of infrastructure and development, a regulator that's been hog tied by poor legislation and unlike during the Telecom Eireann years (during the 1980s massive roll outs of infrastructure) there is relatively little government money or attention being focused on Telecommunications infrastructure.

NI has full broadband coverage for one very simple reason: the UK Government lashed a huge amount of money into it.

Our Government seems to have adopted the same approach to telecommunications that the Tory party adopted to railway infrastructure. It's privatised, so it'll all fix itself by magic with no further public spending.

They also seem to be living in "la la land" and seem to think that eircom PLC are some sort of a public sector company who actually care about the state of the Irish economy rather than an underperforming, debt ridden mess that's desprerately trying to claw its way back to profitibility at the expense of its customers.

Sorry about the rant but I just feel that Ireland Off-Line's forum contributers are focusing too much energy on bashing eircom (a for profit organisation that is doing what any right-thinking private company does) and ComReg, (a well intentioned regulator that's been given no teeth) when they should be bashing the Minister for Communication .. (and whatever else his portfoilo contains thesedays... )

I'd like to hear answers to some of these questions from Bertie Ahern or Mary Harny, it's just another case of total mismanagment of key infrastructure.

Afterall, there are two things Ireland (As an island) needs: (1) World class highly compeditive telecommunications infrastructure and (2) Well managed airports!

Do we have either?!

I think the whole thing went horribly wrong when someone stupidly let eircom & Esat swallow up all of the independent ISPs.. we used to have a plethera of little ISPs (IOL, Indigo, Eircom.net, Eirenet, Internet Eireann, etc). The result: no competition, no differenciation and we're all being ripped off ever since.

Fingers crossed eircom or BT don't finish off Smart telecom by simply purchasing them.

We also seem to have sold off all of our cable companies to UnitedGlobalCom which sounds like it should be run by Charles Montgomery Burns

Do we ever learn!?

dahamsta

Solair wrote:

Sorry about the rant but I just feel that Ireland Off-Line's forum contributers are focusing too much energy on bashing eircom (a for profit organisation that is doing what any right-thinking private company does)

There's nothing "right-thinking" about Eircom, unless you've redefined the term to mean "selfish and destructive". They have no qualms about f*cking the consumer and their competitors up the ass at every available opportunity. We have every right to bitch about them at every available opportunity until they clean up their act.

ComReg, (a well intentioned regulator that's been given no teeth)

If Comreg was well-intentioned, they wouldn't lie to and mislead the public at every available opportunity. Until they clean up their act, we have ever right to call them a bunch of useless, excuse-generating wasters at every available opportunity.

when they should be bashing the Minister for Communication

This would be the same Minister that says he has no authority over ComReg?

adam

Solair

There's nothing "right-thinking" about Eircom, unless you've redefined the term to mean "selfish and destructive". They have no qualms about f*cking the consumer and their competitors up the ass at every available opportunity. We have every right to bitch about them at every available opportunity until they clean up their act.

They're a company owned by shareholders in the interests of those shareholders. They're behaving EXACTLY as they should do to maximise profits for those shareholders. It's up to the state to regulate the market to ensure quality of service. If necessary, by splitting eircom in half to ensure that the market is compeditive.
They may have no morals, but what's that got to do with anything? It's up to the regulator to act in the public interest.

They didn't so we're suffering the consequences.

I honestly doubt that most members of the Government, or the dail for that matter, actually comprehend how serious this situation is. I doubt most of them would know what broadband actually is.

Of course the minister has authority over ComReg!!! That's utter nonsense.

That's like the Minister for Health saying she's nothing to do with the Health Service Exec. or the health boards!

If people don't start putting serious pressure on FF and the PDs i.e. make it an election issue next time around. We are not going to see any real improvement.

I'm really amazed that FG and Labour haven't started to champion this issue of poor communications infrastructure. They're oddly silent ... there's loads of good political milage in it!

SkepticOne

dahamsta wrote:

There's nothing "right-thinking" about Eircom, unless you've redefined the term to mean "selfish and destructive". They have no qualms about f*cking the consumer and their competitors up the ass at every available opportunity. We have every right to bitch about them at every available opportunity until they clean up their act.

While it is everyone's right to blow off steam, I think a lot of bitching achieves very little in terms of pressurising Eircom to clean up their act. At the end of the day they are a private company with responsibility to their shareholders only. Eircom don't care about their customers mainly because those customers, for the most part, have nowhere else to go. It is Phil Nolan and McRedmond's job to keep it that way to the greatest extent possible.

dahamsta

Solair wrote:

They may have no morals, but what's that got to do with anything?

You're asking why people are bitching, I'm telling you why. You're recommending that people should stop. Why? Why should they just sit mute when the company continues to rape the country to the tune of €60m a year. And that's just one contract.

SkepticOne there argues that it probably won't achieve anything, and he may be right, but conversely, what kind of position would we be in if people didn't bitch when they were f*cked over by the company? In my opinion, there would be a hell of a lot less people that know about the Eircom issue. This is a bad thing?

Of course the minister has authority over ComReg!!! That's utter nonsense.

You should be ashamed of yourself, saying in public that a Government Minister is talking nonsense. How is that going to improve matters?*

adam

* Irony.

eircomtribunal

Solair wrote:

Of course the minister has authority over ComReg!!! That's utter nonsense.

That's like the Minister for Health saying she's nothing to do with the Health Service Exec. or the health boards!

ComReg is independent of the DCMNR, Noel has just repeated that in today's Galway broadband event speech. The communications act of 2002 obliges Comreg only to report to the -sorry lads- useless Oireachtas Communications Committee. The minister can issue policy directions, which ComReg can and does disrespect at will, see latest blog on www.comwreck.com. "There is a silver bullet"
I have seen the reporting Comreg was required to send back to the minister after the April 2004 policy direction (on whole sale line rental and broadband progress) and found it amazing how they mislead the minister about their "success".
On top of that Comreg is, or is regarded as being outside the oversight of the Ombudsman's office, too.

By the way, you speculated earlier about the "huge amount of money" BT was given to 100% bb enable NI. Today in Galway David McRedmond, when he put out his begging bowl to the minister, showed how the UK government had paid for bb enabling in Scotland, Wales and NI. He claimed and showed on his slide that BT had got 14 million euros for the NI job.

P.

De Rebel

Solair wrote:

I honestly doubt that most members of the Government, or the dail for that matter, actually comprehend how serious this situation is. I doubt most of them would know what broadband actually is.

Wrong.

Read this. Writen by members of the Dail. In their own words. It doesn't come much more explicit. The members of the Dail understand all right. Unfortunately, the relevant member of the Government is incapable of the necessary action that was spelled out for him in clear and precise english by his peers.

You suggest that NI has extensive broadband coverage because somebody lashed money at it. That’s the small part of the story. The big part is that somebody DECIDED that NI was to have extensive broadband coverage and then got off his ass and organised the necessary resources. Lashing money around is no problem to the people we have in government at present. They are excellent at that. Where they fall down is their ability to make and implement clear focussed decisions. This is quickly proving to be one of the worst administrations in the history of the state. And unfortunately Communications has one of the administration's least effective ministers.

And to answer a question you posed in another post, why don’t FG/Lab rise to the challenge? Because they are not up to the job either. Simple as that.

I do agree with you that the eircom bashing is pointless. They are nothing more than a cash creating vassal of the Great O’Reilly, and have no public service remit whatsoever. The crux of the issue is a failure of the executive (Government): As a Nation we have a problem - The economy and our society at large need broadband. It will not be delivered in a comprehensive and equitable way by the private sector. Therefore we need clear and concerted leadership by Government to fill the gap. And what do we get? After 12 months in office. Disappointment Dempsey. The man who delivers Nothing.