UTV: Clicksilver Light(Time!)

juliuspret

Well UTV have decided to follow eircoms lead and introduce another Time product.
€15.99 for the first 6months and €21.99 thereafter with 3.5c excess charges a minute.
Like all clicksilver products in the past you must switch over to the UTV phone service.

Is Hight Speeed Internet* heading in the wrong direction?
All opinions welcome.

*This is not Broadband as it is not Always-On.

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New broadband offers are giving buyers more choice - at a price

IF YOU spend a lot of time on the internet, racking up considerable phone charges - particularly during peak hours when you pay about 5c a minute - the option of getting broadband has become more attractive.

Eircom has just introduced a new entry-level broadband deal called Broadband Time, available on a six-month contract from July 7 till the end of September.

For €19.99 a month (which is a 'promotional' price - the usual fee is €24.99), you get 20 hours of broadband time per month. That's an average of 43 minutes online per day, for 71c per day.

But given that standard internet charges during off-peak hours are about 1.2c each, the new deal does not appear to be very good value for many people who do all their surfing after 6pm and on weekends.

However, people who use the internet primarily to download music from websites, such as Apple's iTunes, will certainly save money because Eircom broadband time is 20 times faster than with an ordinary internet connection.

And if you are availing of the new trend in cheap phone calls courtesy of VoIP, whereby you make your calls through the internet, you will generally find that the sound quality of such calls is vastly superior if you have a broadband connection.

Or, if you want to sign up to the new service provided by Skytel (www.skytel.ie) and make all your calls through one of its VoIP offerings, you need to have broadband.

For anyone who surfs the net during the day, those 43 minutes spent online for 71c with Eircom's new deal would normally cost up to €2.15, or three times more.

Still, many people spend more than 43 minutes a day online. If you go over the 20 hours a month with Eircom Broadband Time, you pay 4c per minute, up to a maximum of €29.99 in excess usage charges.

If you rack up those excess charges after 6pm, you pay more than three times what you would pay with a standard internet connection, subject of course to the already mentioned distinction between the two types of connection.

Unless you already have one, there's also a charge of €49.99 for a broadband modem, or you can rent it for €2 per month.

Last week, Esat BT rowed in with their own broadband deal for first-time users with the launch of a €15 a month flat rate offer for the first four months, with the monthly fee rising to €30 after that promotional period. There's a 'set-up charge' of €50, and you sign up for a minimum of six months.

Esat BT's new broadband deal gives the same speed (1MB) as Eircom's new offer.

But unlike Eircom's new package, and for exactly the same amount of money (€120) over six months, Esat BT's new package puts no limit on the amount of time you can spend online - so customers will suffer no annoying excess usage charges. The new promotion will be available from July 11.

Another option is with UTV Internet, winner of the Best Service Provider award at the Digital Media Awards. Two new broadband offerings are about to be announced, both available from July 1 till September 30.

Clicksilver Light will directly rival Eircom Broadband Time, with 20 hours' broadband per week for just €15.99 for the first six months and €21.99 thereafter for the following six months.

Excess usage charges will be slightly lower than Eircom's Broadband Time, at 3.5c a minute. The second product is 'always-on' Clicksilver, relaunched with a six-month promotion of €15.99 per month rental, and €29.99 thereafter. It imposes no limit on the amount of time you spend online.

With both products, there will be a once-off fee of €29.99 that covers the cost of the initial connection and the modem, and you have to sign up for 12 months.

Like the new offers from Eircom and Esat BT, UTV Internet's new products run at speeds of 1MB.

While that may sound like an almost irresistible deal, there's a rather annoying catch. You also have to sign up to UTV's telephony service and make phone calls from your land line through the company.

Smart Telecom's current broadband offer costs €35 per month (no installation or equipment charges), with a 12-month contract. The download speed's twice as fast as the providers already mentioned.

But there's an irritatingly familiar catch: you also have to make your calls through Smart.

However, the company is offering free line rental (value €23 per month) "forever" to the first 100,000 people who sign up online.

If you don't want the hassle of connecting to broadband via your land line (or if you don't have a land line), Dublin-based company Clear Connections (01-8327811) is offering a variety of wireless broadband products from €36 a month.

If you plan to download lots of music or videos from the internet, or listen to internet radio stations, it's worth shopping around for a bigger download allowance. Otherwise you may have to pay excess usage charges.

Eircom broadband time imposes no limit on the amount you can download; UTV Internet's monthly limit is 8GB: and Esat BT's is 12GB.

� More details of Ireland's broadband services are listed at www.broadband.gov.ie.

In the Don't Askaboutmoney section of the popular and informative website askaboutmoney.com, there's an interesting discussion about several broadband products.

Got above from Irish Independent, Business Section Page11

kaizersoze

gotta link

PiE

Can't find anything on the utv site, but if it's true (which I have to say, it probably is) it shows just how out of touch UTV have become. If they'd just taken a tiny peek at the reaction here to the eircom's Time product, they'd know it's their most retarded action to date.

Gegerty

juliuspret wrote:

Well UTV have decided to follow eircoms lead and introduce another Time product.
€15.99 for the first 6months and €21.99 thereafter with 3.5c excess charges a minute.
Like all clicksilver products in the past you must switch over to the UTV phone service.

Is Hight Speeed Internet* heading in the wrong direction?
All opinions welcome.

*This is not Broadband as it is not Always-On.

Have you got a link? It'd be interesting to see if their offer is Republic of Ireland only. I'd imagine this offer is aimed at parents who are sick of their kids nagging them to get broadband. The kid gets broadband and the parents can be happy they can only spend a limited amount of time on it per month, that's assuming it can be setup to suspend the account once the limit is reached.

Definitely a step in the wrong direction but its the same direction its always been going. All the ISP's are as bad as each other. I can't get my head around their stupidity and ignorance. If they would just provide a decent service they'd make loads of money, they don't need bull**** offers like this which are clearly designed to catch unwitting parents off guard and charge the bollox out of them when their kids go over the limit....

juliuspret

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Added the article above from Irish Independents unison.ie website.
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Gegerty

€16 a month for the first 6 months is a pretty good offer. That makes it €22.99 a month overall, they're obviously getting worried about the mass exodus I could be just overly optimistic but if they're dropping the price of their main product then could it mean they have another product in the pipeline? I wonder if the same offer applys to clicksilver plus.

Valentia

Apart from the special offer, where is the price drop? €29.99 is the current charge for the 1Meg product. No increase in caps either. Yuk!!

It's a no brainer then for non cabled areas. SMART, if available, or BT.

Eircon wholesale seem to have them by the goolies. How can BT do such a better deal in their non enabled exchanges?

I'm with UTV a long long time and feel almost as if I am being forced out!

juliuspret

UTV have made no changes with their 1Mbit Broadband package.
As it is you get 3months trial..theyve only reworked the costs and made it look cheaper.
After 12months you will end up with the exact same costs...do the math.

Yeah UTV dont give a fiddlers about new products, they didnt even return to CAP parity with BT...just left it as is!

Gegerty

juliuspret wrote:

UTV have made no changes with their 1Mbit Broadband package.
As it is you get 3months trial..theyve only reworked the costs and made it look cheaper.
After 12months you will end up with the exact same costs...do the math.

Yeah UTV dont give a fiddlers about new products, they didnt even return to CAP parity with BT...just left it as is!

This is true I forgot about the free trial period. I think it's safe to say they're out of the broadband race along with eircom. When are we going to see broadband down the electricity lines!

kaizersoze

Well I'm glad I made the switch to BT and didn't wait any longer for UTV to announce that rubbish
Those offers make absolutely no difference to existing UTV subscribers. It's all aimed at attracting new customers and getting them into 12 month contracts.
There also doesn't seem to be any mention of a cap on the excess charges for the UTV product like Eircom have so when you exceed your time you can bend over.

juliuspret

Yeah kaizersoze, I also just noticed no mention on an excess charges CAP.

Knowing UTV there wont be one and bills in the hundreds of €€€ could be makeing their way out to gullible families in 2months time.

A virus could keep a Time connection ticking away at 1k/second so that a possible 10minute disconnect wouldnt mean sh!t.

Unless you have a program like NetLimiter it would be very difficult to track you connection time accurately.

I wonder if UTV will have the nerve to introduce this Timed sh!t to their main customer base in the UK...not likely as OfCom? would tear the sh!t out of it!!!

PiE

"Another option is with UTV Internet, winner of the Best Service Provider award at the Digital Media Awards"

Hahaha.

Maybe in Bizarro World.

dahamsta

UTV have gone from trailblazers to complete assholes in a very short space of time.

adam

juliuspret

Hey, they're learning from the best (€ircon).

rymus

I ♥ UTV

again.. in bizzaro world..

Hip

As soon as my contract runs out it's goodbye UTV.

iano

dahamsta wrote:

UTV have gone from trailblazers to complete assholes in a very short space of time.

adam

I don't like to dance on anyone's grave but UTV really have fallen apart over the last 8-12 months.
Their infrastructure is creaking (unexplained slowdowns, regular DNS failure, e-mail problems for months, webspace regularly down), their tech support is disgraceful, they strictly enforce download caps and they insist on a new 12-month contract for any small change.
One honourable exception is Carl Stinson who does his best to keep the band-aids in place, but he is fighting a losing battle.
Shame

Stark

I just love the quotes on the website.

Ideal for medium bandwidth users who require large download capacity

Super Fast surfing speeds, great for Gaming

Perfect for high bandwidth users who require intensive download capibilities

Lightening fast surfing speeds, perfect for all requirements especially online gaming

They should have a little asterix that states "Please invert the meaning..."

juliuspret

This looks even better:

CANCELLATION TERMS:
The cancellation charge of your broadband service in the first six months will cost €59.99, otherwise it will cost €29.99 thereafter.

Unbelieveable they have actually increased the cost of their 1Mbit broadband package from €29.99 to €31.99...???

UTV 1Mbit(BB+Line Rental)
31.99+24.18=€56.17
BT 1Mbit(BB+Line Rental)
€40
That cant be right...can it???

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Just saw this little jem at the bottom of the screen in very light grey

**** We advise ALL customers to switch off their modem and PC when NOT in use to avoid being charged for over usage. If you go over the 20 hours per month, we will charge you 3.5 cents per minute up to a maximum of 750 minutes per calendar month (€26.25). Once you reach this cap the service will be suspended until the beginning of the next calendar month. The maximum you will be charged based on the first 6 months charged at €15.99, will be €42.24 (per calendar month).

How nice!!!

kaizersoze

Unbelieveable they have actually increased the cost of their 1Mbit broadband package from €29.99 to €31.99...???

UTV 1Mbit(BB+Line Rental)
31.99+24.18=€56.17
BT 1Mbit(BB+Line Rental)
€40
That cant be right...can it???

Thats if you don't want the UTV Talk phone service.
That's optional now .

damien

If you go over the 20 hours per month, we will charge you 3.5 cents per minute up to a maximum of 750 minutes per calendar month (€26.25). Once you reach this cap the service will be suspended until the beginning of the next calendar month. The maximum you will be charged based on the first 6 months charged at €15.99, will be €42.24 (per calendar month)

Woah, 750 minutes is 12.5 hours. So, you are only allowed 32.5 hours max on this product before it is suspended ! Holy shít. This is not broadband.

juliuspret

UTV: Clicksilver Light(Time!) = High Speed Dial-Up

Shouldnt something like above have been introduced a couple of years ago ~2001 to get people interested in Broadband speeds and then move then up to untimed proper broadband???

I feel eircom/UTV are going backwards and not forwards!!!