It's A Two Horse Race For Meteor

Grow up, kids

jwt wrote:

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

As much as I'd like to take credit for it, it's not my graph. The research was conducted and published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (www.oecd.org). The graph was published in the Telegraph.

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.

Again, you're dead right. And guess what? That's exactly what the OECD did.

paulm17781

Grow up, kids wrote:

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.

You were right about what you said in the thread, I never said I disagreed. I also don't care what it would cost me in other countries. What I want is proof (which the networks will not provide even though they give ARPU) that the Irish talk longer.

jwt

Grow up, kids wrote:

As much as I'd like to take credit for it, it's not my graph. The research was conducted and published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (www.oecd.org). The graph was published in the Telegraph.



Again, you're dead right. And guess what? That's exactly what the OECD did.

emmm I had heard of the OECD

By your graph I meant the graph you quoted.

And I stand by the claim that factoring in cost of living distorts the graph. Is there a straight graph showing annual charges paid per subscriber by usuage?

ARPU to my mind is not relevant to which country has the most expensive calls. However seeing as its the accepted yardstick (anyone want to depate bb penetration figures ) if the ARPU in Ireland is some 50% higher than the average in europe (picking a figure out of the air) and the average profit made in Ireland iS 50% higher (again picking figures out of the air) and the average amount of calls are 30% higher (picking again) is it not reasonable to assume that overall a higher price is being paid in Ireland for the same service????

John

Grow up, kids

paulm17781 wrote:

You were right about what you said in the thread, I never said I disagreed....

Thank you. Others will still dispute it though, for no reason other than stubbornness.

What I want is proof (which the networks will not provide even though they give ARPU) that the Irish talk longer.

Call any Irish granny, the 2 hours she'll keep you on the phone should be proof enough. That, and my 5 hours on hold with Irish Broadband over the last 48 hours pushes the average right up. But seriously, it's not something that's disputed (except by a few in here, unsurprisingly). It might say it in that OECD report, I'll take a proper look tomorrow.

paulm17781

Grow up, kids wrote:

Call any Irish granny, the 2 hours she'll keep you on the phone should be proof enough. That, and my 5 hours on hold with Irish Broadband over the last 48 hours pushes the average right up. But seriously, it's not something that's disputed (except by a few in here, unsurprisingly). It might say it in that OECD report, I'll take a proper look tomorrow.

None the less O2 and Vodafone say Irish people spend roughly €542 per year (?) on their mobiles. If they both said this was X call minutes and Y messages, compared to other countries, this would be absolute proof they were not ripping us off. Why will they not do this? They have been asked.

Grow up, kids

jwt wrote:

if the ARPU in Ireland is some 50% higher than the average in europe (picking a figure out of the air) and the average profit made in Ireland iS 50% higher (again picking figures out of the air) and the average amount of calls are 30% higher (picking again) is it not reasonable to assume that overall a higher price is being paid in Ireland for the same service????

No, it's too simplistic - that's looking at it without market interference. It doesn't factor operator costs. For example, an operator in Ireland has to pay a hell of a lot more to purchase or rent land for their sites (masts, base stations etc) than an operator in Spain or Portugal, for example.

Even looking at it without market interference, you are correct in that it is reasonable to assume that a higher price is being paid in Ireland than SOME European countries. Not all though, not by a long shot.

Grow up, kids

paulm17781 wrote:

None the less O2 and Vodafone say Irish people spend roughly €542 per year (?) on their mobiles. If they both said this was X call minutes and Y messages, compared to other countries, this would be absolute proof they were not ripping us off. Why will they not do this? They have been asked.

Who has asked them? I remember (about 3 years ago) studying a report that had the average user of each of the 3 operators - right down to their age, job type, how many calls they made, how long the calls were etc. All compiled based on info provided by the operators. It's not in the operators' interest to hide their customer base profile. Even if they did, the info could easily and accurately be compiled by a Gallup poll.

SparkyLarks

I though about this thread last night and came up with this.

things in areland are more expensive. Why? we're the rich bas***ds of europe.

Remember in the 80's germany was really expensive. everything was expensive beer food rent everything. Things in Ireland were cheap. But loads of Irish moved to germany. Why the germany economey had money. Now it's the other way around.

The Irish have one of the highest net incomes in the EU. So we have cash. Irish people don't look at price and make proce sensitive choices. So people will charge as high a price as they can. And rightly so. If I was selling apples and People would pay me €10 for an apple I'd charge it. I wouldn't say that's a rip off. If people are prepared to pay a price is it a rip off.

However that aside, it is expensive to do buisness in Ireland.
Wages in Ireland are higher than other countries in the EU.
Insurance is much higher( due to the compo culture that existed with very high payouts, though it does seam to be diminishing)
High property prices lead buisness to have either high mortgages or high rent.
There are other factors.

In Ireland the Cost of providing services is more expensive than in the rest of europe, however as we are make more calls, that should bring the cost per minute down as the fixed costs are spread out over more minutes. Except there are probably more minutes in total used in the UK though they have more fixed costs too.
In my opinion to determine if we are being ripped off, the key factor is profit per user.

IF company XYZ has an ARPU of 40 and an average Cost per user of 39 then that's hardly a rip off 2.5% Profit
If a company has an ARPU of 100 and an average Cost per user of 39,they make profit of 41%

So before we get this post up to 1 gazillion posts of why we are/arn't being ripped off, (Personally I thing we're being overcharged by a moderate amount)Can we agree on how to determine a fair price for a service, in this case Mobile phone calls. Putting up different graps of things and going "see we're top/bottom" can be very misleading.

And remember more and more people are using mobile phones more and more. Mankind surviced for years without moble phones. They are not a necessity but many people are happy to pay more and more on them. Either the charges aren't too expensive for most people or Irish people are fools, and we know what happens to a fool and his money.

paulm17781

Grow up, kids wrote:

Who has asked them? I remember (about 3 years ago) studying a report that had the average user of each of the 3 operators - right down to their age, job type, how many calls they made, how long the calls were etc. All compiled based on info provided by the operators. It's not in the operators' interest to hide their customer base profile. Even if they did, the info could easily and accurately be compiled by a Gallup poll.

It was 3 years ago so I'm not to clear but I think some news papers and comreg/ODTR asked and the operators would not give them out. IIRC they initially would not give out the ARPU (could be wrong on that though).

Solair

The APRUs are a factor of the amount of competition in the market (2 fully fledged networks and a half builtout one that launched too late)

3 Ireland so far don't look very exciting in terms of their pricing / offerings and won't change things until they do.

The other factor in APRUs is, as stated above is economics and demographics.

Ireland has relatively high incomes, booming economy and a very young population who will be more likely to download ring tones, send texts, media messages and talk to their friends on a mobile than your average 65 year old German grandmother.

There's no question that the Irish market's lacks serious competition at the moment but even with more competition these companies will make far more money per user here than they will else where simply because it's a very boyent market for mobile communications products.

---

Grow up, kids

Solair wrote:

Ireland has relatively high incomes, booming economy and a very young population who will be more likely to download ring tones, send texts, media messages and talk to their friends on a mobile than your average 65 year old German grandmother.

There's no question that the Irish market's lacks serious competition at the moment but even with more competition these companies will make far more money per user here than they will else where simply because it's a very boyent market for mobile communications products.

---

Very true. Where there's money, people will spend it. The fact that Irish people spend so much time talking/texting is actually a factor in driving per minute charges down too, if you think about it.

They'll fall further, but remember, it's only 8 years since prepaid calls in Ireland were £1 per minute.

paulm17781

Grow up, kids wrote:

They'll fall further, but remember, it's only 8 years since prepaid calls in Ireland were £1 per minute.

They've been lower that that for about 4 years though.

Did we have prepaid phones 8 years ago? I thought they only came in about 98/99.

SparkyLarks

98 was 7 years ago, january 98 was 71/2 years ago

so it's close enough to 8 years isn;t it

scary that 97 was 8 years ago though

Grow up, kids

The old Motorola StarTacs, remember them? Eircell got a load of them in for cheap, because they were single band phones only (GSM900), while the rest of Europe was moving to Dual Band (GSM 900 and DCS1800). Thus began the prepaid revolution.

They were in one of the Bond movies at the time, now they look comical.

paulm17781

Eircell did Pre-paid with 088 which weren't even GSM IIRC. Were these not the motorolla ones?

bringitdown

Indeed Eircell believe it or not were one of the first operators in the world to offer pre-paid and they did it on a noddy old TACS system

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_as_you_go

Grow up, kids

Yeah, 088 was analogue. Not sure if they had StarTacs for this, unless they had different models, one for digital, one for analogue. My mother had one, it still works in GSM900 areas. Rock solid little thing.

TimTim

Grow up, kids wrote:

Yeah, 088 was analogue. Not sure if they had StarTacs for this, unless they had different models, one for digital, one for analogue. My mother had one, it still works in GSM900 areas. Rock solid little thing.

Ahhh, the fun to be had with a radio scanner....

Grow up, kids

Just ask Princess Di. If you're clairvoyant, that is.

dahamsta

bringitdown wrote:

Indeed Eircell believe it or not were one of the first operators in the world to offer pre-paid and they did it on a noddy old TACS system

That's incredible, fair dues to whoever in Eircell came up with the idea.

Solair

Nothing amazingly different about whether it was GSM or Analogue. The 088 system may have been an analogue signal over the air, but it was digitally switched using technology that's similar to any GSM network or your home phone line.

You can easily add prepay to any digital phone system and Ready to Go was indeed one of the very first such applications of that technology.

dahamsta

If you're replying to me, I was commenting that it's incredible/admirable that Eircell was (it appears) first to market with such an innovative and ultimately hugely successful product. Not the technology, the product.

adam

Grow up, kids

Ireland's been at the forefront of many things in the development of GSM. Sure the headquarters for the GSM Association is in Deansgrange. It was in Blackrock for years before that. As far as I can remember, the first ever successful AMPS call was made in Ireland too, and the first successful international mobile call was made from Ireland.

bminish

Grow up, kids wrote:

As far as I can remember, the first ever successful AMPS call was made in Ireland too

Nope! AMPS is the old American analog system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Mobile_Phone_System

Ireland / UK used TACS. The UK had 2 TACS networks for a number of years before Eircell appeared on the scene.

NMT450 has been around since 1981 for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Mobile_Telephone

and the first successful international mobile call was made from Ireland.

I rather doubt it! I don't recall the UK system having any bar on international calls and I remember making a call back to Ireland on an AMPS phone (in America) in the early 80's

.Brendan

Solair

Also Eircell and Vodafone had some of the first examples of international roaming. It was possible to roam, once you had the service set up on TACS although the service was limited in terms of what it could do and wasn't quite as transparent as modern GSM roaming.

I was also commending them on their early adoption of various technologies. I think Eircell also launched the world's first prepaid WAP products and were pretty fast to launch WAP too. Although, it wasn't exactly mind blowing content or speed in the early days it was a start.

I'm quite happy to see eircom with their hands on Meteor to be honest. I know we all hate eircom in this forum for what they're up to in the wireline / broadband market. However, I really think an Irish player in the mobile market might have a positive impact. The other networks just see their Irish operations as a tiny but profitable off shoot of their UK offices.

At least Eircom/Meteor may start to do some of this old-fashioned innovation rather than waiting for a parent network to launch products elsewhere first. Vodafone seem to do everything almost globally thesedays and O2 Ireland seems quite slow off the mark when it comes to things like 3G. I always though Digifone was far more innovative.

De Rebel

Winding back just a little, and trying to address "Grow up, kids" concern, here are my thoughts.

ARUP is a valid measure. So too is "total revenue" divided by "total minutes". But neither reveals the true picture, and neither measure is better than the other. And "total revenue" divided by "total minutes" can be very misleading: it has a serious defect in that it will not show the difference in profitability between a lightly used network and a heavily used network.

To try to put it simply, on a given network, the first x minutes will have both fixed and variable costs allocated to them until the operator's fixed costs are recovered. These minutes will generate no profit. Any minutes on the network over and above X will generate a lot of profit, as the fixed costs have already been covered and the variable costs only remain. Without going into details of diminishing returns, diseconomies of scale etc., the more use a network gets (within reason) the more profit the operator should make. Therefore, on a heavily used network (such as the Irish ones), assuming equal levels of profitability among the networks, profit per user should be a lot higher than on lightly used network. However the result of total_revenue/total_minutes will be the same on both networks.


Worked example, 2 countries each with 2M users, same geographic spread, same network infrastructure, same operating cost ratios etc. etc.
First column of numbers shows the country with the light users, second column shows the babbling Irish.

A	Number of users                 2,000,000       2,000,000   Users
B	Minutes per user per month            100             250   Minutes
C	Minutes per annum           2,400,000,000   6,000,000,000   Minutes
D	Price per minute                     0.10            0.10   Euro
E	Operator Income (Revenue)     240,000,000     600,000,000   Euro
					
F	Fixed Costs                    75,000,000      75,000,000   Euro
G	Variable cost per minute         0.031250        0.031250   Euro
H	Variable cost                  75,000,000     187,500,000   Euro
					
I	Total Cost                    150,000,000     262,500,000   Euro
					
J	Operator profit                90,000,000     337,500,000   Euro


H       ARPU                                  120             300   Euro

I       Revenue divided by Minutes           0.10            0.10   Euro

On the basis of your argument, "Grow up, kids", the babbling Irish are not being ripped off. The above simplified example would suggest that they are.

My conclusions:.

• We are lacking the information necessary to get a true picture.
• Revenue divided by minutes does not give a true picture.
• It is not disputed that the Irish spend a lot more time on the phone than other countries, therefore ARUP can be expected to be somewhat higher. However many here are of the belief that it is a tad higher than it ought to be. (i.e. the networks are making too much money by charging us to much). That, by the way, includes Dr. Phil Nolan of eircom who describes the Irish Mobile market as "..... as one of the most attractive mobile sectors in Europe"
• Competition has not resolved the situation.
• Competition alone is unlikely to resolve the situation (eircom want in on the act and a share of the profit, they have no reason to spoil the party by reducing prices/margins)
• Comreg are gallantly (very very late, but gallantly none the less) responding in the only way they can, by declaring a curse on all of the operators houses (the SMP case) which will enable them to begin to address the issue. We hope. We fervently hope. However we sometimes harbour doubts in relation to Comreg.

eircomtribunal

De Rebel wrote:

[*]Competition alone is unlikely to resolve the situation (eircom want in on the act and a share of the profit, they have no reason to spoil the party by reducing prices/margins)

Gareth Jones of 3 has already explicitly told us that they do not want to rock the boat which brings the loot:

He answers his own question when he launches into the 3 ethos and the idea of “better value”, not to be confused with “cheap”. You don’t have to talk to Jones for too long before you realise how defensive he is about media accusations that 3 is somehow the cheap cousin of the operators: “It’s about delivering better value. Anyone can cut costs but it doesn’t get you very far. We understand the issues and know what needs to be done but it’s about more than having a ding-dong with the operators on price.”

P.

Grow up, kids

bminish wrote:

Nope! AMPS is the old American analog system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Mobile_Phone_System

Ireland / UK used TACS. The UK had 2 TACS networks for a number of years before Eircell appeared on the scene.

NMT450 has been around since 1981 for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Mobile_Telephone



I rather doubt it! I don't recall the UK system having any bar on international calls and I remember making a call back to Ireland on an AMPS phone (in America) in the early 80's

.Brendan

You're right, it was TACS. It's a long time since I've worked in the industry, apologies.

I know Ireland wasn't the first to have a network - the 1st GSM network was Radiolink in Finland - but a lot of the initial testing was carried out here, that's why some of the first calls were here.

Grow up, kids

De Rebel wrote:

The above simplified example would suggest that they are.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that. Both customers in your example are paying the same rate - 10c per minute. Just because customer B uses his phone more than twice as much as customer A doesn't mean he's being ripped off. He uses it more, but pays the same rate.

oscarBravo

The point is that in a truly competitive market, there's plenty of room for customer B's call costs to be reduced. His operator is making extraordinary profits, which means he's paying more than he should be.