Sunday Business Post Article

Trojan

Don't have a link to the article yet, it's not on the site, but its dissing the whole business "SME" pricing, and points out that it's cheaper to have 3 ISDN lines installed. Great article & recommended reading. Will post url when available.

Al.

neverhappen

http://www.sbpost.ie/story.jsp?story=WCContent;id-27089

ando

The ODTR says that Eircom can't sell any DSL product until it satisfies its director, Etain Doyle, on pricing. Eircom has dismissed this and says it will accept orders and deliver the products as normal

Can eircom really do this ? I mean, that has shocked me quite a bit... Eircom can 'dismiss' the ODTR ??

Trojan

Cheers for the link, here it is w/o the ';' getting in the way. Also a little excerpt...

http://www.sbpost.ie/story.jsp?story=WCContent;id-27089

Eircom calls it a "business offering". It's not. The company will accept orders from anyone for i-stream. It knows, though, that consumers won't pay that kind of money. Hence the "SME" tag and pricing which excludes Vat. But bar a couple of variations, it's hard to see a significant difference between its basic "business" product and "consumer" DSL products offered by European telcos for half the price.

So what gives? Eircom's arguments in defence of its price model boil down to one central point: DSL is expensive to set up in a small country like Ireland. This has some merit. Apart from its research, development and testing costs, Ireland just won't ever be as cheap in consumer internet or telecom costs as Germany, France or Britain. These big countries, and their adjoining smaller countries, can achieve much better economies of scale than is possible in Ireland.

To back this up, almost no other telco is keen on offering DSL to customers. Only Esat is remotely interested. Other telcos whinge that it's Eircom's fault (it owns the copper lines needed to sell DSL to customers), but the truth is that there's probably not much margin in selling DSL.

Al.

Urban Weigl

"Eircom's arguments in defence of its price model boil down to one central point: DSL is expensive to set up in a small country like Ireland."

Sorry Eircom, but that is complete and utter bull****. Once you have a particular number of ADSL modems installed, the cost-per user won't come down much further -- no matter how many more you install. Of course installing 10 ADSL lines will be very expensive per line, but once you arrive at tens of thousands or even thousands, the costs simply won't come down much further per user.

I personally know someone in America who runs a small ISP with just a few hundred subscribers, and he is extremely profitable. He is also able to charge lower prices than America's biggest ISPs, such as Earthlink. Of course with ADSL you will need to install thousands instead of hundreds of users, but Ireland is more than big enough for that. Let's face it Eircom: you're just holding us for stupid and hoping we'll buy into your fairytale world.