Free local and national calls forever with Eircom??

WellyJ

Anyone else get this call today? Apparently certain customers are getting this from now on? When i realised it was Eircom calling i thought it was gonna be about my constant exceeding of the CAP. Makes a change to hear good news from them.

WellyJ

chorus techy

What are the details of the offer though? Do you have to buy an expensive monthly package, such as TalkTime? It's eircom after all - there has to be a very large catch!

WellyJ

I dunno, was rushing the guy off the phone cos im gettting ready for footy training. Its my dads account but he didnt mention having to get any new package or anything. Just said that from now on our local/national calls are free.

beller b

Come on This is EirCON!!! Lets see the details

Kristok

id be inclined to think it was someone taking the piss

WellyJ

Kristok, give me some credit please.

I can tell the difference between a hoax and a call from Eircom (Hoaxes are more professional ) , also, same number called last friday, had a missed call, and again on monday but this time i was there, asked for my dad, said he wasnt there, and they said they would ring back again during the week. This time i just said hes not here but i can pass on the message. I have no reason to make this up, and also have no way to prove it so maybe it was a mistake posting it

WellyJ

rymus

off peak & weekends only I presume.. as per UTV's talk option.

There has to be something in the fine print, like they get to take the first born male to toil in the underground call centres. I can't see Eircom giving anything away, especially a huge moneyspinner like local & national calls.

CyberGhost

if they think that will turn me back to eircom, they are very wrong

death to eircom!

capistrano

Are you sure they weren't just selling their new Eircom Talktime Anytime offerring? It's €39.99/month for line rental and all local and national calls.

Frankly, it's incredible that Eircom would offer this to anyone for nothing.

bk

No, this is Eircom just trying to offer you their Talktime packages.

Eircom talktime anytime: €39.99 for free landline calls at any time
Eircom talktime offpeak: €34.99 for free landline calls at off peak time
Eircom talktime basic: €27.99 for 300 off peak minutes and 120 call a friend mintues.

All include the cost of line rental.

Note UTV's Talk service is still much cheaper.
Just the cost of line rental (~€25) and you get free landline calls at off peak time (also to the UK). This is €10 a month cheaper then Eircoms equivalent package.

Infini

Never trust eircom for anything they're always trying to rip you off. If they were an Airline they'd probably have a slogan like one of the ads in GTA like
"We'll take you half-way round the world, then abandon you at the airport!"

Marcopolo85

bk wrote:

No, this is Eircom just trying to offer you their Talktime packages.

Eircom talktime anytime: €39.99 for free landline calls at any time
Eircom talktime offpeak: €34.99 for free landline calls at off peak time
Eircom talktime basic: €27.99 for 300 off peak minutes and 120 call a friend mintues.

All include the cost of line rental.

Note UTV's Talk service is still much cheaper.
Just the cost of line rental (~€25) and you get free landline calls at off peak time (also to the UK). This is €10 a month cheaper then Eircoms equivalent package.

Dead right!

I have UTV and it's excellent. My phone (calls) bill dropped by about 60-70%. When you get it, you train yourself to make only calls that you HAVE to make during the day, and use it off peak for the free time. GET IT!!

causal

VoIP is King.

My voice call cost:
Was : €60 per month to eircom (€25 line rental + €35 calls)
Now : €12 per month to blueface (€10 'line rental' + €2 calls) :cool:

...and it will only get cheaper going forward

causal

CyberGhost

hey I got the same brochure today,

Eircom Talktime anytime, what's the catch with that? I don't see it tbh.

gordonnet

I use SKYPE it is a LOT cheaper than eircom

Shane O' Malley

Yes it is Talktime
at €39.99 but that included line rental.

That is the only All-in deal they are doing at the moment.

fatherdougalmag

If Eircom were worth half the salt they have, they'd have come out with some kind of serious VoIP product while things are quiet. On the domestic front, Blueface are the only contenders. I think the fact that Eircom haven't come out with VoIP is admitting the fact that their infrastructure just isn't up to it. Eircom should be doing wireless 'net access at this stage. There's no air of enterprise about them at all. They should be grasping opportunities before they become commodity. But they're clearly too busy playing catch up. In fact, any ISP worth their salt should be offering VoIP as some kind of teaser to entice people. Especially those who don't rely on Eircom's landline network. At least NTL has got the ball rolling in that regard. When the likes of IBB can provide VoIP then Ireland will be a good deal closer to being truely online.

Everybody's got their super duper upgrades over the past few months, now we all begin to wonder what's next. Even Euphony are talking about VoIP products. Maybe we just don't have the info but there are plans already afoot ...

capistrano

fatherdougalmag wrote:

If Eircom were worth half the salt they have, they'd have come out with some kind of serious VoIP product while things are quiet. On the domestic front, Blueface are the only contenders...

I disagree. Basically, at this stage Eircom would be cutting their own thoats to offer a decent VoIP service. Just like they weren't offering broadband while there was no serious competition - and they were milking it on diallup! Now they are milking it on PSTN charges so why would they offer VoIP. BlueFace is great - but for most people, who aren't very technical, it's not really an option. Believe me, Eircom will offer VoIP but not until it is absolutely a commerical imperative, and at that state they will still have their corporate muscle to attract a lot of customers.

causal

Shane O' Malley wrote:

Yes it is Talktime
at €39.99 but that included line rental.

That is the only All-in deal they are doing at the moment.

According to the eircom website they have 3 offerings (all including line rental):
- talktime anytime - €39.99
- talktime off-peak - €34.99
- talktime basic - €27.99


Significantly though - they're not FREE calls they're PREPAID calls.

As for VoIP:
Eircom already offer business VoIP as do others.
Residential VoIP rollout has already been announced by NTL, Digiweb; maybe others, but certainly they'll all get in on the act.

causal

Solair

eircom's network's actually very well suited to VoIP. They've been quietly investing in various ericsson multi-service access products, like Engine and making a lot of changes in their core network.

I don't think VoIP would present much of a problem to them but, why would they launch a VoIP product? They've no reason.. VoIP's only a big advantage to a small start up telco who needs a cheap and easy way to access customers premisis i.e. over broadband. Eircom already has direct access into every home in the country over copper wires and have a vast network of circuit switching equipment and ATM gear. They've no real reason to go VoIP ... Eircom would have no reason to start offering cheap calls via another technology at the moment. If they wanted to offer cheaper rates they could easily do it over exsiting infrastructure without having to roll out VoIP at all.

You might, eventually, start to see eircom products that use VoIP for the last mile connection to the exchange i.e. your voice and data all goes down the one "pipe" to the exchange. This would mean you could chuck your analogue voice line and use the full bandwidth of the copper pair for DSL. So, in theory you could for example plug a whole office PABX into a single DSL line and it could just provide lines at will using VoIP technology to interface with the eircom network.

The big old telcos may also start to make some use of IP in their backbone networks. They already make massive use of ATM, which isn't really unlike IP in many ways.

fatherdougalmag

Believe me, Eircom will offer VoIP but not until it is absolutely a commerical imperative

Exactly the point I was making about them having no air of enterprise. If you wait till it's equitably viable then it's usually too late. Eircom have a lot of presence in everyone's lives - whether you hate them or love them, you know what they're offering at any time because they advertise it. This is what marketing is all about. Anticipating growth before the competition. We all hate marketing people (except marketing people) because they sh1t in order to win and put people under pressure to deliver, but they have balls. Just like a car salesperson, they need to oversell a product in order to win interest. That's a fact of life. Similarly with Eircom. If they are to survive they have to be enterprising and be one up on the competition. Eircom are the IE of the browser world. They had a monopoly but now the underdog is up and coming. The Firefox's of the Irish telephony world are up and coming but there's nothing new. XoIP is the way forward (where X is a variable for Voice, Fax, Video, etc.). A great deal of inter-country telephony already takes place over the same infrastructure as a TCP/IP packet. Euphony has VoIP in the pipeline. Why shouldn't Eircom?

fatherdougalmag

This would mean you could chuck your analogue voice line and use the full bandwidth of the copper pair for DSL.

.
Exactly. That's what the problem is here in Ireland: you could. Esat/BT already do this by allowing you a reduced line rental for data only (on certain exchanges). Eircom should be backing this up by (at least) offering reduced line rental and VoIP to their BB customers.