Would you get ADSL from eircom at the prices they're asking?

Matfinn

Lo all

The only reason I would be inclined to get DSL is for the higher speed ( Naturally ) and for the always on access. At the moment I have 2 lines in my house, one for the family phone, and one for the internet. Now this second line that was installed has been shared with the first line, and my bandwidth has been nearly halved. I usually connect at 38k-42k tops anytime, and my internet connection is not nearly as fast as it was when I had only one line. My current internet connection is currently very unstable and slow, as a result, and it is prone to connection dropouts and incesant slowness all the time ( it feels like im surfing at 300bps ). I can no longer download large files anymore because of the quality of my connection ( I stopped downloading after 3 iso's of linux and solaris I attempted to download all turned out to be corrupt files when I tried to copy them to a CD ). Now I have been crying out for some solution to this mess, and broadband is what I have anticipated. Ive been crying out for the release of broadband for a long time, and now it is nearly here. Now since Eircom want to charge so much for it and impose a crippling cap on it, Im saying a big, in yer face NO! to Eircom. Thats how I feel. I will not deal with any company that walks on people and climbs on them in order to go up in their little company ladder. Eircom, you REPEL me, and as soon as I am given a choice, I will disband you IMMEDIATLY. Esat and any other telco's I see fit may provide me with broadband. One thing I have learned the hard way, the bigger a company gets, the less it gives a **** about the one home user. So in short again I will say no to Eircom. We need choice, after all we are a democracy.


My rant ends here

Matt

mewso

Has anyone mailed/phoned Eircom to register a complaint. I doubt they read this forum and the way some posts are written you expect them to.
I'm willing to be reasonable. I'm no expert but I know that the market even if it was 100% in this country is still a lot less than any other country offering asdl at lower prices. I think what they are charging is quite ridiculous. I personally would only switch from ISDN, what I'm on, to asdl if it would be the same or not much more. The businessmen who presumably decide pricing see this as a new technology while the rest of us see it as an old one that has arrived far too late.
Someone should contact Dunphy's The Last Word about this. He's battled Eircom before and if he was clued in he could well put them on the spot but we are fighting a difficult battle on a subject most of the country could care less about.
Ireland Offline is an admirable organisation but from what I've read they are being careful to remain media friendly and on speaking terms with Eircom. Fair enough but somehow as a group a lot of anger needs to be vented and we need to find a way how.

Bard

Originally posted by musician
I doubt they read this forum and the way some posts are written you expect them to.

They said that they do, actually, - as did the ODTR...

nahdoic

Originally posted by musician
I doubt they read this forum and the way some posts are written you expect them to.

I know they do. If you had been a regular reader of previous posts, you would have read the longest thread we had on Ireland Offline, "ADSL INFO FROM EIRCOM". They posted their ADSL page on their web-site a week before their launch, i made a copy of it that night. It was a mistake on their behalf to upload it that early and removed it the following day. I hosted it on my site at 12:00 that day, I only posted one link to it, and it was from this forum, and by 17:00 I had Eircom ringing me up to remove the page.

po0k

I for one woul attend a mass raly/demonstration/unofficial riot outside the Eircom offices in Dubln.; anyone interested?
Joking (but seriously, anyone?........)

This price is waaaay too high. There will be adopters at tehis price, they will be rich nobs and businesses. The speed will still be fine for em, Eircom will say its only being taken up by businesses and will fold any residential plans. Ina Year's time the prices won't have comes down. If it does however and everyone hops on I bet money that during normal hours it will slow to a crawl, prehaps down to 1 or maybe 2 KB (yes theres a difference in b and B Eircom- ignorant flucks). Then you will see businesses dropping it again cos its more expensive then dial-up ISDN and we're back to square one.
i honestly don't think we'll have enough internal bandwidth by the time we're supposed to be on it. hence its 'phased' (read: lazy, shiftless, cowardly, cheap) basis.
If some one could give some hard figures on this I'd like to see them. What sort of connection strings exchanges together out here in teh sticks? (6miles form Galway city - 1 mile from local exchange)?

I for one can't see how the government could have SOL OUR MOST VALUABLE TELCOMMS INFRASTRUCTURAL ASSET INTO PRIVATE FLUCKING HANDS! We now have damn all control over it and the country is suffering as a result. Ppl do't want to work here cos they're used to affordable and availablebroadband whre they're from (USA, UK, Europe etc.) so they setup in Asian countries lke Korea where you can get 512Kb/256Kb (yessss, small 'b's denote buits, an eighth of a B Y T E - Eircom lackies) uncapped, unconjested for £17-£20 a month.

FFS is not nearly strong enough.

/me is VERY P|SSED OFF :mad:

mewso

Originally posted by nahdoic

I know they do. If you had been a regular reader of previous posts, you would have read the longest thread we had on Ireland Offline, "ADSL INFO FROM EIRCOM". They posted their ADSL page on their web-site a week before their launch, i made a copy of it that night. It was a mistake on their behalf to upload it that early and removed it the following day. I hosted it on my site at 12:00 that day, I only posted one link to it, and it was from this forum, and by 17:00 I had Eircom ringing me up to remove the page.

I did read that post but thanks for patronising me. If you recall somebody mentioned later in that topic that it was just as likely that somebody who rang the number might have told them where they got it. I actually made my previous comments because I considered that a more likely scenario and that if they do monitor this forum it's probably one idiot making sure we don't say anything illegal.

corkie

Eircom, ODTR clash on ADSL
Irish Independent, Ailish O'Hora ( 14th September 2001)
A FRESH spat surfaced yesterday between the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation (ODTR) and Eircom, with both parties firing shots at each other in the ongoing saga over the introduction of broadband services here through ADSL

nahdoic

Originally posted by musician
I did read that post but thanks for patronising me.

Sorry if I sounded patronising, it just seemed like you came out out nowhere, and all of a sudden replying to a lot of posts and criticising Ireland Offline about a lot of things. But criticism is good, and once again, sorry

But come on, Eircom have told Ireland Offline that they do keep a close eye on this forum.

They rang me up within 5 hours of posting something on my site they weren't happy with.

The cap for the solo package was originally intended to be 1 gb, but due to complete and utter outrage on these boards, was increased to 3 GB.

I think we can be pretty confident, that they do watch this forum.

ando

Did anyone realise just how many Eircom I-Stream adds there is on the unison.ie website ??? Its covered in them

corkie

Originally posted by ando
Did anyone realise just how many Eircom I-Stream adds there is on the unison.ie website ??? Its covered in them

Yes I did notice them when I was their earlier and posted the link here. Annoying 'Doubleclick' advertising. If your fed up with them install some ad filters to get rid of them!


John O Connell

Bard

Originally posted by ando
Did anyone realise just how many Eircom I-Stream adds there is on the unison.ie website ??? Its covered in them

maybe it's just me but I just went there, browsed around a bit, and didn't see a single one.

wouldn't it be a laugh if eircom were forced to withdraw the product due to the price?

NeilF

Originally posted by Bard
wouldn't it be a laugh if eircom were forced to withdraw the product due to the price?

or advertising a service they knowingly could not offer?

Pimp Ninja

No Buckin way would I pay this. It's way too high and 3 gig just isnt even close to the limit we'd use. I DL more than 3 gig in a dau insome cases (thanks to my 2.5GB connection in work).

On the other hand, it is a good step to a certain extent, at least adsl is now available. we have another alternative to our 2 exixting choices for home users. All thats left is a "realistic" pricing structure and decent cap limit then we're set.

cmkrnl

<B>
I for one can't see how the government could have SOL OUR MOST VALUABLE TELCOMMS INFRASTRUCTURAL ASSET INTO PRIVATE FLUCKING HANDS
</B>

Thats irrelevant, tell us how Joe Public managed to exercise any rights of ownership when it was state owned. The only people who benefitted were the featherbedded overmanned clucks who worked there. At one stage not so long ago TE had 4 times the amount of employees/line than the dutch did for a similiar size phone network. It wasn't a privatised company that had ISDN changes & rental more a LOT expensive than the UK (when BT here were taking the complete piss). It wasn't a privitised company that used every dirty trick in the book to prevent meaningful competition in the business & leased lines market. Even today the cost of an E1 connection to the 'Net in a metropolitan area such as Dublin takes the biscuit. It wasn't a privatised company that resorted all kinds of chincanery to stop the establishement of call back services for cheaper international calls. I witnessed at first hand the disconnection of numbers that gave access to these services.


But its part of a more general malaise in the Irish public sector that are entirely producer orientated & puts the customer last, a good example would be the executive restaurant with french trained chefs @ the ESB HQ etc etc etc.


Call me cynical, but I get a tad peeved at the notion that life was just dandy when it was all state owned.

greg

Hecate

I voted mabye, but after thinking it over for a while I would have to say no, I wont get adsl from eircom in the way they are proposing.

£95 (thats what it works out at including vat, according to the letter they sent to trialists) isn't that bad, but the 3gb cap just makes it pointless. For £95 I would want a 512k connection that I could use without having to think of how much traffic I am generating.

kamobe

Even without the cap - £95 is FAR too much

Sweeden per year: £240
England per year: £480

EIRCOM: £1,140

PLUS the cap!! which could be yet another £20/£30 a month (£360 per year..?)

Extortion.

Clover

No Way !!

it is just to much, plus the 12 month contract ;( aarrgghhhh.

monthly fee £93.56x 12= £1,122.72p
then conection fee £118.13p
usb modem £137.04p

total = £ 1,377.89p + ( the line rental? is that true line rental?)

ps : does anyone know if they are going to charge for changing from isdn 2 adsl? .

mewso

Originally posted by nahdoic


Sorry if I sounded patronising, it just seemed like you came out out nowhere, and all of a sudden replying to a lot of posts and criticising Ireland Offline about a lot of things. But criticism is good, and once again, sorry

Ah the old text medium again. Don't worry I was being sarcastic and I know you didn't intend to be patronising. I've been a moderator here for a long long time and I read loads but don't reply to everything. The internet situation in Ireland is something very close to my heart becuase it's what I do at work and what I do when I go home in the evening. We have a leased line at work for over 100 connections and it's very slow. Annoying as a web coder and as someone who researches on the net. I even attended an e-governement seminar, as a rep. from South Dublin County Council (yes I'm a public servant) where politicians and professors talked about how we could improve online services for the public. They did not seem to realise that we can't offer services because we can't guarantee a good fast service and Joe Public has little interest in the internet anyway - they can't afford a PC and if they can they can't get a good connection. This forum is lets face it representing a small minority of people in this country who regularly use the internet. Nobody ever set up a group demanding that PC suppliers sell PCs for a reasonable price. I built my current PC with parts bought in England where to buy in Sterling STILL worked out cheaper. A long time ago the Government talked about the Ireland being the e-hub of Europe and it doesn't just mean broadband internet it means getting more people online by ensuring PCs in every home. Now I'm sure statistics can say a large percentage of homes have a PC but how many are internet ready in some form and as someone who works for a County Council how many council houses have a PC. For that matter how many have a video.

smokin' an'chewin' man

Originally posted by disConnected
I voted 'no', because

a) it is extremely bad value for money
b) I am not able to afford it

DITTO

Typedef

I would have to modify my answer..... eircom's adsl site seems to be surprisingly uninformative & I was under mistaken impression there would be no caps, I (probably) wouldn't mind paying lots for some good broadband but I refuse to get ripped off with a 3gb cap yeah?

What is the point in paying for a capped service anyway? I had just stuck with the iolnolimits(ehh I mean ioltwofingersinclientsface) package because I was waiting/hoping/praying for maybe a decent adsl service but, alas it would seem that the package is aimed at people who will pay for a service and then not really use it know what I mean? Again the solo package seems like a package that was thrown together so that eircom couldn't be accused of offering it only to business clients!?! It seems that internet use in Ireland will be stuck in the doldrums of lowband until we get some real competition going eh?

Don't suppose I blame eircom with their near monopoly, not giving a to-s about their corporate image, I mean they were prepared to let Denis O'Brien own the company

GavinJCD

I might be interested in eircoms ADSL offer if it wern't for that stupid 3GB limit. that amounts to around 100 megs a day depending on the month, hell I sometimes go past that with my 56k. It would be too expensive, i they were to drop that cap I might be interested, if they were to also drop the price by £20 or so I'd probably go for it. As it is atm though they can eff off.

Yurmasyurda

I said no, but the only reason I did is due to the cap and that's all, it is actually ok value for money if they remove the 3GB cap, and officially it is 2.8p per mb after that and this equates to £28 per gig which is absolutely pointless having an "always on" connection if you can't afford to use the bloody thing.

Hopefully just like the isdn thing, they will come to there senses and realise that most irish people are not millionaires (YET) and work from there.

BTW. Does anyone know if there are bandwidth issues or do they have a limit to the amount of users they can have as there is only so much bandwidth available in Ireland and my company has most of it

Yurma

Balfa

I voted yes... what choice do i have Still, it's probably a moot point, since the ODTR don't seem to want the public to get their hands on ADSL with yet another spanner in the works.

By the way, Ireland seems to have quite a bit of back end bandwidth at its fingertips. Global Crossing have installed a pipe across the atlantic which holds capacity for at LEAST 300Gb/s (that's two-way 85kb/s for every man woman and child in the country all day every day).

There's also another line from 360Networks (which lands at Dublin and Liverpool) which can throw 2 terabits across the atlantic every second. Unfortunately this fibre has yet to be switched on because 360Networks are having financial difficulties.

Of course, Ireland don't keep all of this bandwidth. Large chunks of it will be sold off around europe, but hopefully, in the long run, enough will be kept to maintain decent ADSL speeds for anyone using it at a given time. Assuming, of course, that ADSL ever gets released here, and that it does at a practical price.

I don't know much about this next point, but i'd say there will be more than enough bottlenecks in the bandwidth, for example between Eircom and the exchanges, or among different ISPs, to keep up our continued stress levels and prompt a couple of slow-bandwidth-induced suicides around the country.

See http://www.iol.ie/~discover/bwith.htm for a viciously vague overview of random bandwidthness

(PS - Pimp Ninja, you don't have a 2.5GB connection at work)

Lemming

Originally posted by Balfa
.. since the ODTR don't seem to want the public to get their hands on ADSL with yet another spanner in the works.

I think the ODTR, powerless as they may be, are the only official body (Ioffl not withstanding ) standing up to Eircom and saying "Look .. these prices .. they're a f*cking disgrace! Lower them .. NOW!"

It appears to be Eircom that don't want the public to get their hands on aDSL, since they've created a service that appeals to no-one since it is too restrictive AND LUDICROUSLY over priced at that!

logic1

As sson as I'm showed the dotted line I'll be putting my signature on it.

As big a rip off as it is it's still ADSL and I'm not going to sit around torturing myself waiting for Eircom to drop their price.

.logic.

fixer

I find it amusing that somehow, people have come up with a price that "feels" right to them. Have any of you looked at the economics involved in any of this? Nothing is "unlimited", everything has a higher cost for more usage. The cap is one way of controlling costs - otherwise, the flat-rate price would just be higher.

This first roll-out is for business class service. The prices are very comparable, and in some cases even less expensive, than their counterparts in the US. When dsl was first introduced in the US, it was insanely priced, similar to a frame-relay connection. I fully expect that once enough business users defray the start-up costs for the added infrastucture, we will see a lower priced service for designed for home usage.

I plan to pay £130 per month for the i-stream Plus. My phone charges here are about £200 a month, so I will still be ahead financially, on top of the 1Mbps/256kbps advantage over 56k. Just waiting on the roll-out in Cork City.

infomat

Originally posted by fixer

I plan to pay £130 per month for the i-stream Plus. My phone charges here are about £200 a month, so I will still be ahead financially, on top of the 1Mbps/256kbps advantage over 56k. Just waiting on the roll-out in Cork City.

If it does save money then you have no option but to go with the prices on offer but I still am of the opinion that the prices are too high.

How much are you spending on voice calls? Don't forget that as well as paying for ADSL you also must pay normal line rental plus the cost of voice calls.

Why not pay the extra and go for the Enhanced service which is not capped and which includes a static IP?

Originally posted by fixer

Have any of you looked at the economics involved in any of this?

I am going to turn this around a bit by saying why should we when the ODTR has undertaken this task on our behalf ... the Regulator has looked at the economics of this and she has stated that Eircom have failed to convince her office that the charges are cost related.

It would appear that her opinion is that at the very least their wholesale price is far too high.

If Eircom are so convinced about their costings why are they being so obstructive in their dealings with the ODTR ... make no mistake about it they have really annoyed her and many potential users.

kamobe

"When dsl was first introduced in the US, it was insanely priced, similar to a frame-relay connection"

That's because it was a new technology. Now it's not. Their prices are not comparable with anywhere, they're far more expensive, be it for the home user, or a buisness user.

Maybe dsl was expensive when it was first introduced throughout the globe. Eircom chose not to invest (and if they had their way they still wouldnt touch it), that doesnt give them the right to charge people as if they just invented DSL.

astrofool

basically it comes down to if you use exactly 3gb worth, you are paying .3p a megabyte, after that 2.6p if you download less, you will be getting less value.

It's like opening a motorway, but then telling everyone that each person can only use it for x amount of time every month.

This country right now is using about 2% of it's total bandwidth, with the ISP's adding more links all the time, it will be interesting to see what the other ISP's offer in the way of caps, there has to be competition in place before the service launches, Eircom is just trying to side step that, and crying no fair when they don't get their way. Screaming child over someone else's toy.

Most companies gain a good reputation by providing a good service and innovative products, telco's seem to be the only ones who want to do a dis-service to all their customers. If there was proper competition, Eircom would be out of business. The fact that they're letting customer's brood over their inadequacies just shows how stupid the management of eircom is.

I wonder if you could go to the european court and fight Eircom for control over the copper wire into the house, seeing as they do fup all with it themselves?

fixer

kamobe, the costs involved were not all dealing with developing a new technology. The providers needed to purchase new equipment, train their installers, train and add customer service/response teams, add to their billing systems, develop marketing plans, etc.

Many of the DSL providers who tried to cut their rates too low have gone bankrupt.

As to the dealings with the ODTR, I suppose you are correct there. I admit I am not too keyed in to that part of this process.

I will point you to business plan pricing from speakeasy.net - one of the highest rated dsl providers in the US. http://www.speakeasy.net/low/buscompare
The lowest priced business plan is $99, with a $225 startup cost and a $359 hardware cost. Granted, that is without bandwidth caps and they do provide things like static ips.

I guess my main point in this is that what Eircom has set up doesn't seem to me to be a bad first step. Could it be better, compared to other countries or compared to our personal wants & desires? Absolutely, but as much as I wanted Guinness to be cheap in the US, they still charged me $4-5 a pint. (don't bother flaming me, I know it's not a perfectly fair comparison, but it makes enough of my point).