It's A Two Horse Race For Meteor

bealtine

Grow up, kids wrote:

Ok, have a look here, Vodafone Spain:

12c just to initiate a call, and then 15c per minute after that.

Still makes it cheaper than here...

E19 per month and 30c per minute, after the first 30 minutes.

(My Spanish is crap)

Grow up, kids

dahamsta wrote:

Now you really are being silly. Stop wasting people's time.

I'm not wasting time. Seriously, how does another player in the market with a better offer suddenly prove that Ireland is one of the most expensive in Europe? How does it prove that ARPU is not the correct statistic to use to measure this. Please, enlighten me, I'd like to hear your wisdom on this.

Grow up, kids

bealtine wrote:

Still makes it cheaper than here...

Not all plans it doesn't.

How about texts? 15c per text nationally in Spain, and 75c internationally.

bealtine

Grow up, kids wrote:

Not all plans it doesn't.

How about texts? 15c per text nationally in Spain, and 75c internationally.

ehhh?

I think you are scratching the bottom of the barrel here...

Get over it Voda and O2 have been ripping us off no end
for years and years.

All attempts at fancy "footwork" while trying to explain
why ARPU here is so high just doesn't cut it.

Let the mobile operators release the figures and let us compare.

blackadder

nice to see such a mature and reasonable level of debate here.

i lived in spain for 18 months (until just recently) and used mobile phone networks for all my local calls and texting. i was with vodafilth and then later, movistar.

telecommunications in spain are an outrageous rip-off and considerably more expensive than in the republic of ireland.

some examples:

a text message is 15 cents.
an international text message is a whopping 75 cents
a mobile to mobile phone call during peak hours is betwen 70 and 80 cents a minute.
the same call after 8pm is 25 cents a minute.

ask any spanaird living here in dublin and they will confirm what i have said.

also, i would have thought that folks would be a touch smarter at this stage than to believe the total bull**** that the marketing departments of vodafilth and 0scum tell you.

Grow up, kids

bealtine wrote:

Let the mobile operators release the figures and let us compare.

The figures are THERE. They're called TARIFFS.

Fancy footwork? Would you like me to explain to you in detail what ARPU is so you won't be wrong-footed?

bealtine

Grow up, kids wrote:

The figures are THERE. They're called TARIFFS.

Fancy footwork? Would you like me to explain to you in detail what ARPU is so you won't be wrong-footed?

The usual excuse is "irish people talk more" therefore they pay more,
however most people I know are still very aware of how long they
spend on a call.
They generally try to get off the call as quickly as possible
(unless they are on corporate price plans)

ARPU = how much the mobile players can extract from their
hapless customers whilst making vast profits.

Any more exiting price plans for us to compare with so we can
assess your assertion that Irish users are not being ripped off?

blackadder

i don't believe he ever asserted that we weren't being ripped off. but in comparison to espana we have it good.

Grow up, kids

You're wrong about ARPU, but I'll go on anyway.

Ok, forget about countries, I'll make this real simple for you.

Tommy is with ABcom.
Billy is with XYcom.

Tommy pays 10c per minute.
Billy pays 11c per minute.

Tommy spends 100 minutes on the phone per month.
Billy spends 50 minutes on the phone per month.

Tommy's bill is €10 (100 x 10c)
Billy's bill is €5.50 (50 x 11c)

Tommy's monthly ARPU is €10.
Billy's monthly ARPU is €5.50.

By your logic, and that of most people in this thread, Tommy is being ripped off because his bill is higher than Billy's, even though he pays less per minute than Billy.

How's that for you?

bealtine

Grow up, kids wrote:

You're wrong about ARPU, but I'll go on anyway.


How's that for you?

How do we know that Billy spends more time on the phone than X Y or Z?
We only have Voda's or O2's assertion that this is so.

blackadder

is that, like, math?

paulm17781

AFAIK the operators wont release the minutes per call which is why people are dubious of these statistics.

I also wonder, if they are making more from Irish people, should Irish people not pay lower rates?

Grow up, kids

bealtine wrote:

How do we know that Billy spends more time on the phone than X Y or Z?
We only have Voda's or O2's assertion that this is so.

Get Billy's bill. Divide it by the price per minute. Voila.

Or are Vodafone and O2 invlolved in a big conspiracy where they're adding minutes onto people's bills? Quick, someone call the gardai!

Grow up, kids

paulm17781 wrote:

AFAIK the operators wont release the minutes per call which is why people are dubious of these statistics.

Of course they do. Have you ever got a bill from either? They give exact details including when the call started and how long it lasted.

paulm17781

Grow up, kids wrote:

Of course they do. Have you ever got a bill from either? They give exact details including when the call started and how long it lasted.

Now it seems you don't understand ARPU, Average Revenue Per User. The average amount of revenue each customer generates.

Vodafone and O2 say we spend the most time on the phone. I can verify what I spend on the phone but I can not do this for Vodafone's other 1.7m subscribers.

If vodafone have 1.7m subscribers. They get there active subscriber numbers for each month A. The total amount of minutes each month B.

B/A = ARPU.

If I multiply my bill by 1.7m this will not tell me whether or not Irish people spend longer on average on the phone.

How's that for you?

zuma

What are the chances that Grow up, kids works for a mobile telco company...possibly Vodafone or O2???

I think this thread should be closed now as Eircom now own Meteor.

A new thread could be started about bitching on hight mobile charges...but it should not continue in this thread!

blackadder

Grow up, kids

paulm17781 wrote:

I can verify what I spend on the phone but I can not do this for Vodafone's other 1.7m subscribers.

No, but you can tell exactly how much they pay per minute. You can tell exactly how much every other European pays per minute, it is 100% transparent. Why can't you understand this? THIS is how you measure how expensive something is - BY THE PRICE. Not by the amount of time you spend on it.

Zuma, I do not work for Vodafone or O2, and never have.

Grow up, kids

paulm17781 wrote:

Now it seems you don't understand ARPU, Average Revenue Per User. The average amount of revenue each customer generates.

By the way, I know only too well what ARPU means, I've studied and worked with it for years. I was dumbing it down for Bealtine so that the two sample companies had a single customer each, in the hope it would sink in. Alas, if he and others can't understand it when talking about 1 customer, they never will when talking about a market of over 3million.

oscarBravo

Grow up, kids wrote:

No, but you can tell exactly how much they pay per minute.

Exactly how much do they pay per minute?

Grow up, kids

oscarBravo wrote:

Exactly how much do they pay per minute?

That depends on their price plan, doesn't it? You could go to vodafone.ie or o2.ie to find out, but I'll help you along if you like.

Those who are on the vodafone social life plan pay:

To Vodafone Ireland mobiles and Irish landlines 50c (peak) 15c (off peak)
To other Irish mobile numbers 65c 30c
Text messages 13c 13c

Those who are on the vodafone work & leisure plan pay:

Vodafone to Vodafone 32c 19c
Vodafone to landline & other mobile networks 45c 19c
Text messages 13c 13c


As I said, go to the websites for the rest. They're not hidden away.

dahamsta

Grow up, kids wrote:

THIS is how you measure how expensive something is - BY THE PRICE. Not by the amount of time you spend on it.

Absolutely. Price is king. Only a fool would take into account those silly little factors stupid beardy economists come up with, like producer surpluses and economic rent.

adam

Grow up, kids

Producer surpluses and economic rent are a totally different entities, and have no bearing on measuring whether customer A is being charged more than customer B for an identical service.

oscarBravo

I'm still confused. Exactly how much do Irish people (and other Europeans) spend per minute on mobile calls?

Grow up, kids

Tarifica did an independent survey recently which put at least 6 or 7 European countries above Ireland in terms of cost of mobile telephony.

You can purchase the survey here if you wish: http://www.tarifica.com/tariffs/benchmarks.html#benchmarkM

In the meantime I'll have a look for an extract or article on it.

Grow up, kids

Here we go. Note this picture starts with the least expensive at the top:

Mobile phone users in Britain pay some of the highest charges in Europe, according to an industry report seen by The Telegraph.

Only Germany and Spain have more expensive tariffs in western Europe, the study shows.

The value-for-money league table, prepared for the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, ranks Britain 22 out of 29.

However, the industry regulator Ofcom says that despite the apparently high tariffs, prices are falling in Britain and customers are benefiting from healthy competition.

The figures, compiled for the OECD in April, compare the annual costs faced by a typical "medium user".

The basket of services used in the study includes the monthly charge, the costs of local and national calls, calls to other mobiles and text messages. The results are then adjusted to take into account national variations in the cost of living.

Denmark is the cheapest place to own a mobile phone with an annual cost of around £130. The most expensive is Poland, at more than £520. Britain has an annual cost of around £310, according to the OECD report.

The statistics reveal a strong link between competition and prices. Countries with the cheapest phone services tend to have more operators. Those at the expensive end of the table have just two or three.

At the time of the study, Britain had five networks, plus another six "virtual" operators such as Tesco that share networks with established phone companies.

Ilkka Lakaniemi, an economist with the mobile phone manufacturer Nokia, said Britain's high prices could be slowing down the move from fixed line calls to mobile.

He believes that half of all voice calls globally will be made on mobile phones by 2007. Yet in Britain, the switch from landline to mobile is unlikely happen before 2009.

Ofcom insisted that British consumers were not being ripped off. "Our research shows that prices are coming down as a result of competition," a spokesman said. "Competition, and the lack of a dominant position for one operator, is good for consumer choice."

However, mobile phone operators have been found guilty of uncompetitive practices. In June, Ofcom ordered networks to reduce the cost of calls to rival operators.

The phone companies have also come under fire from consumer groups for offering confusing service packages. Some offer a dozen or so different deals, making meaningful comparisons between firms almost impossible.

The operator O2 said international comparisons of charges were unreliable. "The way mobiles are used varies enormously from country to country. Bundles of services are very popular in Britain, but less so in the rest of Europe," a spokesman said.

"Over the last few years prices have come down considerably and there is increasing choice for customers."

Orange said: "The UK is one of the most competitive mobile phone markets in Europe. It is one of the countries that needs the least regulation."

Article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/12/10/ndog10.xml

paulm17781

None the less we do not know why we spend the most on calls. I would like to see Vodafone and O2 publish the average minutes per month per user for every country in the EU along with the spend. If the Irish really do talk/text more then I am sure everyone here will stop complaining. Until the operators show this people will never be convinced.

I know what my calls cost per minute, I know how often I use my phone. However I have no proof that Irish people use their phones more than Europeanns do. Perhaps they do or perhaps Europeanns get more freebies.

Show us the proof.

jwt

An interesting thread...

Grow Up, your graph is a graph showing differences after national cost of living doesn't quite do it for me.

The cost of living in Ireland is second ?? highest in Europe now so by that token all prices are good. Put another way, and to take it to the absurd, if everyone and every company rips off Irish consumers equally then Irish cost of living gets so high that the rip off prices look good??

The basic problem is that it is incredibly difficult to work out all permutations of pricing plans for all operators for all countries and thus derive the actual cost per minute on average charged in Ireland relative to the rest of the EU.

Just because operator X charges 10c per minute doesn't mean you are charged 10 euro for 100 min of calls.

There are free minutes, differing times for peak off-peak etc. Discounts on phones differing text prices, roaming charges etc

Probably the only way to do this is to take some representative figures for actual calls made, say 1, 10 min peak 20 min off-peak, 2 20 min peak 50 min off-peak etc etc and apply them to all tariffs across the board and see which countries work out cheaper.

However this would be much easier if the companies themselves made these figures available. That way we could say company x charged 21.12345c per min peak and 9.4321c per min off-peak for the last three months and compare that against other countries.

To quote your example earlier.

Ok, forget about countries, I'll make this real simple for you.

Tommy is with ABcom.
Billy is with XYcom.

Tommy pays 10c per minute.
Billy pays 11c per minute.

Tommy spends 100 minutes on the phone per month.
Billy spends 50 minutes on the phone per month.

Tommy's bill is €10 (100 x 10c)
Billy's bill is €5.50 (50 x 11c)

Tommy's monthly ARPU is €10.
Billy's monthly ARPU is €5.50.

What if Abcom charge 10c and XYcom charge 50c

Tommy spends 1 min per month
Billy spends 1000 min per month (being silly here I know but bear with me)

So
Tommy spends 1 x 10c = 10c
Billy spends 1000 x 50c = 500Euro

However when questioned why Billy spends soooooo much more than Tommy the answer given is that Billy spends way more time on the phone.

Well yes he does, BUT he is also being ripped off.

My tuppence to this thread

John

Grow up, kids

paulm17781 wrote:

None the less we do not know why we spend the most on calls. I would like to see Vodafone and O2 publish the average minutes per month per user for every country in the EU along with the spend. If the Irish really do talk/text more then I am sure everyone here will stop complaining. Until the operators show this people will never be convinced.

I know what my calls cost per minute, I know how often I use my phone. However I have no proof that Irish people use their phones more than Europeanns do. Perhaps they do or perhaps Europeanns get more freebies.

Show us the proof.

It's not up to the operators to spoonfeed you other nation's costs. If you're that interested, calculate it yourself how much it would cost you in other countries. Check their websites. Use babelfish if you need to. My gripe in this thread was when it was claimed that Ireland has the most expensive mobile calls in Europe. This is a completely baseless claim, and I've shown that.

Grow up, kids

jwt wrote:

Tommy spends 1 min per month
Billy spends 1000 min per month (being silly here I know but bear with me)

So
Tommy spends 1 x 10c = 10c
Billy spends 1000 x 50c = 500Euro

However when questioned why Billy spends soooooo much more than Tommy the answer given is that Billy spends way more time on the phone.

Well yes he does, BUT he is also being ripped off.

Of course he's being ripped off in your example, you're dead right. In my example though, his calls were cheaper, even though his bills were higher. Which is what the original claim about ARPU was based on - that because his bill is higher, he must be being ripped off, regardless of his per minute charge.

Don't think for a minute that I don't believe many goods and services in Ireland are overpriced. Of course they are. Mobile calls may be one of those services. That doesn't make the claim that Irish mobile calls are the highest in Europe true. They are not. It was a false claim.