UTV get into the Timed and Fined Broadband Product Market

damien

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=299&si=1425170&issue_id=12683

The first line is hilarious:

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.

ednwireland

where eircom go the rest of the sheep follow especially if they think they can make a few bucks :mad:

doesn't matter what they introduce i get get any broadband at all so i'm not sure how anyone is going to get my business

PiE

If the report is accurate, UTV have turned into a complete joke. I'll wait til they officially launch this crap before literally laughing my ass off as I email my cancellation request.

parasite

very disappointing

bealtine

damien.m wrote:

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=299&si=1425170&issue_id=12683

The first line is hilarious:

Yes what else would you expect from one of Tony's rags...emm newspapers?

jwt

From eircom it wasn't that suprising.*

From UTV.......well lets just say it confirms some of the commentary surrounding their current attitude to customers. Pity really, it wasn't that long ago they were the leading light in customer care, feedback and innovation.

Ah well, their loss.

John

*It was suprising that they could plumb new depths of customer gouging. We need a new prize for eircom, bit like the Nobel but the exact opposite

dahamsta

Parallel thead in Broadband, complete with my opinion.

adam

lucernarian

I read the full article in the paper earlier on today and to be fair the author (Eddie Lennon) claims that Eircom's new broadband "time" offer "does not appear to be very good value for many people who do all their surfing after 6pm and on weekends", and criticises it at length and then points out BT's €15 a month for broadband offer. Personally I thought it was a pretty good article.

But I havent heard of these Digital Media Awards before. That sounds like a load of cock-and-bull to me and I'd love to know who decided who was the best ISP in Ireland.

I wouldn't be too bothered about what UTV offer as I wouldn't expect anything more from a company which has yet to be innovative in the broadband marklet I feel. UTV's time offer is pretty stupid because it's pretty likely that any people who go for the time-restricted offerings are already eircom customers but dont want to change to another company for whatever reason ("There's no free dinners in life" so my mother said :rolleyes: ). Some of these customers want eircom as a service provider but don't like a €40 charge for broadband. Point is that I can't see anyone who bothers to change their telephony provider to get better value, buying a broadband package that's bad value for money.

UTV will very likely make money out of it anyway as there is going to be people interested in this. If they get over 1500 subscribers to it I'll be very suprised.

MJET

dahamsta

To_be_confirmed wrote:

I wouldn't be too bothered about what UTV offer as I wouldn't expect anything more from a company which has yet to be innovative in the broadband marklet I feel.

I really don't think that's fair. They were the first company to take the consumer market seriously, they were the first company with major flat-rate and broadband advertising campaigns, and they were the first company to really take a chance on margins with a long-term view. They just seem to have lost the plot along the way.

I honestly thought until today that they had given up on the ISP side of things and were working towards pulling out. It seems now that they've decided to continue, and in my opinion they've gone completely the wrong way. I can't see them being a player in 2006 unless they drastically rethink their approach. You can't be consumer-oriented and totally not consumer-oriented at the same time.

adam

lucernarian

originally posted by dahamsta
I really don't think that's fair. They were the first company to take the consumer market seriously, they were the first company with major flat-rate and broadband advertising campaigns, and they were the first company to really take a chance on margins with a long-term view. They just seem to have lost the plot along the way.

I just feel that it takes more than a low price for a broadband service to be innovative. Their free calls to all Irish and UK landlines offer, now that's innovation. Simply having low prices is not necessarily going to attract people to their products. They needed to be more creative, like what BT have done with a €40 offer on b/b and line rental combined.

If what you say about what UTV did is true then I can't see why they would throw away their advantage that they had a year and more ago. They need a wake-up call if they think that half-hearted efforts will expand or even keep the good start they had.

Mr_Man

UTV are getting left behind in the telecomms sector in Ireland. Whether this is by choice or not is hard to tell. For a company that once promised so much in terms of listening to the users, and of offering competitive products they have gone down hill badly.

The complaints about accessing their support, about the caps on the product, and about forcing customers to sign a new 12 month contract when the specs of the product changed are numerous. Now following Eircom's pathetic lead on the time based product is really a sad indictment of the company.

Just goes to show that if you don't innovate you get left behind (unless you're a monopoly).

M.

PiE

New 'offers' are up: http://u.tv/utvclicksilver/ - Just as Carl said on the newsgroup, all caps staying the same.

Do UTV not notice that no other ISP is jumping on this 'Time' bandwagon?

Stark

PiE wrote:

Just as Carl said on the newsgroup, all caps staying the same.

Ah so we finally got our "big announcement on caps" that they've been promising for the last 2 months? That's absolutely brilliant with cherries and cream on top(floor moist with sarcasm as I speak).

Solair

I assume this timed product is available to any ISP who wants to roll it out from eircom's wholesale division ?

damien

From a thread on the Broadband forum are the T&Cs:

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)

So, you get 12.5 hours more on this service per month before they suspend you.

32.5 hours for €42.24. What a joke. This makes me wonder then whether the same applies to eircom time. 32.5 hours a month for €50. Youch.

So, right now with this UTV product if you sign up it means you are restricted to an hour a day at most and they force this on you for 6 months. How can people honestly enjoy broadband then?

Blaster99

I'm sure this has been beaten to death in other threads, but would it not have made infinitely more sense to have launched a 512kbps basic product for €20 a month or some such?

SkepticOne

It is based on the Eircom wholesale innovative "Kronos" package. It is just 1 meg broadband with a special metered time and cut out feature added in.

Their (Eircom's) reasoning might be that they offered 512k unmetered too many people would migrate down from more expensive products and they would lose revenue.

This way they can gain some customers without losing revenue by the innovative techique of crippling the product in some way. From the users point of view it doesn't make sense but since Eircom are still the monopoly we need to get used to this sort of thing.

RuggieBear

well this is the straw that's broken the camels back in my case...utv you've lost at least this customer as a consequence of offering this product and not rejigging your real ones.

dub45

The basic Clicksilver product is relatively close in price to the Eircom time one so I am baffled as to why they did not use it to have a real go at the Eircom product.

Some time ago they seemed to change from being innovative to just wanting to get people into 12 month contracts at all costs. I was lashed repeatedly here on boards for criticising them for it (when they refused to pass on lower prices without an additional 12 month contract) but I really do think that it is a move that has come back to haunt them.

I dread to think what they would be like without Carl - he seems to be the only one nowadays that is actively concerned about helping customers and it is not even part of his job to do so!!

damien

dub45 wrote:

I dread to think what they would be like without Carl - he seems to be the only one nowadays that is actively concerned about helping customers and it is not even part of his job to do so!!

BT should offer him a job.

dub45

damien.m wrote:

BT should offer him a job.

I dont think that even Carl could sort out their billing dept? :rolleyes: