Broadband providers await Eircom's MRD

viking

Mr McRedmond claimed that this could create a situation where Eircom would be forced to invest in equipment to allow competitors to sell wholesale products, which they could then bypass once they have recruited enough customers to make local loop-based services viable.

There it is, thats the real fear for eircom. They know this will happen once competitors can unbundle the local loop and start offering innovative products to consumers. A major loss of revenue for eircom if wholesale customers suddenly become LLU customers.

Stifle progress at all costs...

Blaster99

Isn't McRedmond implicitly acknowledging that Eircom's products are poor? He's predicting that once there's an alternative, everyone will leave Eircom. If Eircom had decent competitive services, they wouldn't run the risk of having exchanges full of redundant equipment.

machalla

A competitive monopoly? I can't honestly think of any examples of that in this country. Why would Eircon want to be any different from the rest.

crawler

Sponge Bob wrote:

Abolishing Comreg will not piss anyone off , its beautiful

Noel D said as much at the Comreg CEO forum!

cgarvey

IoffL press release now online.

damien

http://www.enn.ie/frontpage/news-9650669.html

eircomtribunal

damien.m wrote:

http://www.enn.ie/frontpage/news-9650669.html

Quote from the enn article:

For its part, Eircom says that there is no link between LLU and broadband penetration rates. It says that only 0.2 percent of lines in Belgium are unbundled, even though the country has 54 percent broadband penetration. It also said that only 1 percent of lines in Sweden are unbundled, even though it has 25 percent broadband penetration.

Is any dog****e eircom places on the pavement good enough to be cited?

Belgium has a high broadband penetration of 17% (% is the way the EC and ECTA express the more correct OECD "connections per 100 inhabitants" definition of broadband penetration), not 54% and only 1% is through unbundled lines. So Belgium is an exception.(Basically in Belgium's case their extremely high cable availability provided for competitive DSL provision) That does in no way take away from the general argument.

Sweden has high broadband penetration of 17% and very high usage of LLU: 29% of DSL connections are provided over unbundled lines.
(The professional Eircom liars misread the ECTA tables and slipped to the UK rate of only 1% of unbundled DSL provision. The UK is the other big exception, but looking closer at its circumstances would explain exactly how that came about.)
Anybody to point that Eircom misinformation out to Ciaran Buckley?
P.

paulm17781

The sad thing here is it seems that only the cable companies will be able to truely save us for the interim. Let us just hope upc do here what they have done in other countries.

eircomtribunal

paulm17781 wrote:

The sad thing here is it seems that only the cable companies will be able to truely save us for the interim. Let us just hope upc do here what they have done in other countries.

Cable footprint simply is too small in Ireland.

LLU has to be the big puzzle piece.
Another thing with comparing other countries LLU figures: It is not necessarily the absolute high percentage of DSL delivered over unbundled lines that counts. The competitive threat of LLU being really available is often sufficient to push the incumbent to provide decent broadband.
It will be interesting how the UK situation will develop in this regard.

P.

crawler

What are the odds that eircom will up DSL speeds witihn the coming couple of weeks to show what good guys they are?

Good in itself, I know but....

paulm17781

eircomtribunal wrote:

Cable footprint simply is too small in Ireland.

LLU has to be the big puzzle piece.

While I am in complete agreement with this. If/when NTL & Chorus are merged, that will give about 500,000(?) wired cable homes to one company? That could put a dent in Eircom's business.

500,000 is a guess. Correct me if I am wrong.

crawler

paulm17781 wrote:

While I am in complete agreement with this. If/when NTL & Chorus are merged, that will give about 500,000(?) wired cable homes to one company? That could put a dent in Eircom's business.

500,000 is a guess. Correct me if I am wrong.

NTL would have that many passed homes alone on cable....if all was 2 way.

Dont know about Chorus....check last Company listing/filing...

eircomtribunal

crawler wrote:

NTL would have that many passed homes alone on cable....if all was 2 way.

Dont know about Chorus....check last Company listing/filing...

To my knowledge Ireland has currently below 200 000 cable connections which can deliver broadband.
That is not enough to seriously tickle eircom.

Sure, cable will expand, but it is a slow and costly process, while Eircom can wait to the last minute and longer ("incumbent effect"), before it upgrades with the press of a switch.

I would have my doubts that eircom really feels the cable competition even in the areas where NTL broadband is taken up by 10% of connections.
P.

Blaster99

I wouldn't be surprised if Eircom is rolling out broadband quicker than NTL. If true this is pretty diabolical considering NTL is all in urban areas.

I'd say IBB has a greater footprint than NTL. Irrelevant I know. Maybe Digiweb will get there with the Metro stuff?

philologos

Magnet.ie are saying that they will have 10Mbit soon

damien

It seems that our figures via ECTA and the figures eircom are pulling out of their .. "book of facts" are not matching in any shape or form and many journalists are unable to figure out which set of figures are the right ones.

Would the readers here care to point out additional sources of LLU numbers which we can use to strengthen our argument?

Thanks.

seamus

I think the fact that if you search for "LLU statistics in Western Europe" on Google and fine absolutely no reports on LLU in Ireland (and identical reports on LLU in other countries) speaks volumes.

Blaster99

I'm working on the Swedish numbers, prelimary results indicate that your numbers are correct. I will try the Danish regulator too. The Finnish regulator possibly publishes in Swedish too (official language in Finland), but I can't find the URL of the regulator. Anyone know what it is? If I have those countries covered, that leaves Holland and France.

Sounds like eircom are on thin ice. Let's get them.

parasite

it was discussed on 5-7 live, see here http://www.rte.ie/business/2005/1026/businesstonight.html

OfflerCrocGod

"Minister Noel Dempsey says we need LLU not just for national interests but also to ensure eircom employees have a secure future." Umm impatience?

bk

paulm17781 wrote:

While I am in complete agreement with this. If/when NTL & Chorus are merged, that will give about 500,000(?) wired cable homes to one company? That could put a dent in Eircom's business.

500,000 is a guess. Correct me if I am wrong.

Chorus cable passes 317,300 homes:
http://www.lgi.com/ireland.html

Blaster99 wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised if Eircom is rolling out broadband quicker than NTL. If true this is pretty diabolical considering NTL is all in urban areas.

They've enabled all of Galway and Waterford and half of Dublin in just 12 months, that is outsanding, it is a much faster rollout then Eircom. Also remember when your area is enabled, you can get BB, non of this "as long as your line passes" bs from Eircom.

eircomtribunal wrote:

To my knowledge Ireland has currently below 200 000 cable connections which can deliver broadband.
That is not enough to seriously tickle eircom.

Then they are fools and I don't believe that for a moment. The very small threat from Smart forced Eircom to up their speeds, NTL is a much bigger and a real threat.

5 years ago Eircom spent millions on expensive DSL gear and TV encoders to offer a TV over DSL service because of the mere threat of NTL rolloing out in Ireland, after NTL went bust and stopped the rollout they relaxed.

Now NTL is an even greater threat. They are the only company with a network that reaches almost as many homes as Eircom. NTL's network is completely independent of Eircom, one of the few, even the LLU companies can be bullied by Eircom. UGC are actually a much larger company then Eircom and have as much advertising and political clout as Eircom. The NTL network and technology is superior to Eircoms and has much greater capabilites (speed). NTL can easily do the triple play of BB, TV and voice, it is relatively hard for Eircom. NTL can not only steal Eircoms BB customers, they can also steal their prescious voice customers.

NTL is Eircoms worst nightmare and thrust me they now it. The only reason Eircom has gotten a break so far is because NTL hasn't gone out and advertised nationally yet, but hey will and then all hell will break loss.

eircomtribunal wrote:

Sure, cable will expand, but it is a slow and costly process, while Eircom can wait to the last minute and longer ("incumbent effect"), before it upgrades with the press of a switch.

DSL enabling an exhange is just as difficult and exepnsive as cable, in fact in some ways cable is easier. As for slow, see above, NTL are working their socks off, going much faster then Eircom, it is just that they have started a few years later then Eircom.

If Eircom do up their speeds soon, it will be because of NTL, there is no other reason for them to do it, they have succesfully neutered the LLU companies.

bk

Jakkass wrote:

Magnet.ie are saying that they will have 10Mbit soon

That is good, but will the bandwidth be shard with the TV service or independent?

Remember a standard definition TV channel uses about 4Mbit/s at MPEG2 or 2Mbit/s at MPEG4 (20 and 10 Mbit/s for HD).

cgarvey

bk wrote:

They've enabled all of Galway and Waterford and half of Dublin in just 12 months

I didn't realise that half of Dublin was available. However to say that it all happened in the last 12 months is incorrect. NTL have been upgrading their network in spurts over, at the very least, the last 6 years. That's as far back as I can remember (referring to the laying of fibre for the 2-way network upgrade, D8/Christchurch area), it could very well have been before that.

Not only have they been slower than eircom, in broadband rollout, they've never released plans and have been promising most customers who enquire "a few weeks now" for at least 7 years.

.cg

damien

Half of Dublin enabled and in 12 months, working for the eircom PR machine are we BK? Can we get back on topic please.

seamus

cgarvey wrote:

I didn't realise that half of Dublin was available. However to say that it all happened in the last 12 months is incorrect. NTL have been upgrading their network in spurts over, at the very least, the last 6 years. That's as far back as I can remember (referring to the laying of fibre for the 2-way network upgrade, D8/Christchurch area), it could very well have been before that.

Not only have they been slower than eircom, in broadband rollout, they've never released plans and have been promising most customers who enquire "a few weeks now" for at least 7 years.

.cg

While I'm pretty sure a 12-month, half-city rollout is incorrect, the original upgrade plan was replacing all the cable with two-way. Most of us will remember NTL back in 99/2000 digging up roads and then suddenly running out of cash, giving a handful of people digital TV and leaving the rest of us without anything. Then at some point in early 2004 they started again, after testing a new technique that allowed them to run digital TV & internet over the existing network. It's probably been more like 24 or 30 months from testing to rollout. But if you remember, eircom were testing back in 1998, and we still haven't got 100% coverage in Dublin.

paulm17781

bk wrote:

Chorus cable passes 317,300 homes:
http://www.lgi.com/ireland.html

That is their network, is all of that wired?

bk wrote:

thrust me they now it.

No offence but I don't really want to thrust you.

dahamsta

paulm17781 wrote:

No offence but I don't really want to thrust you.

You'd like to "now" him though?

viking

Eircom told it must open network to competitors
Barry O'Halloran

Communications minister Noel Dempsey said yesterday the Government would consider changing the law if necessary to get Eircom to open its network to competitors.

Speaking at a telecoms industry conference yesterday, Mr Dempsey said the Government believed it was vital that Eircom allow its competitors access to the lines connecting its exchanges with consumers and businesses.

Opening up this link, known as the last mile or local loop, is considered vital to the development of broadband - high speed internet access - in the Republic.

The State has one of the worst levels of broadband development in the EU and this is damaging its ability to attract new investment.

Mr Dempsey said encouraging the process, known in industry jargon as local loop unbundling, was a Government priority.

"I have made it clear on a number of occasions to both the regulator, ComReg, and Eircom, that the Government regards local loop unbundling as extremely important," he said at the Telecommunications and Internet Federation conference at Dublin Castle. "I am very anxious to see it brought forward quickly and efficiently.

"As far as the Government is concerned, the fastest roll-out possible is necessary. If that includes or entails changes or legislation, then that will be fully considered by the Government," he said. This week, Eircom, gave ComReg its plans for opening up access to its competitors, who have criticised the proposals for not going far enough. Mr Dempsey said he had discussed the document with ComReg.

Eircom argues in the document that broadband development is not necessarily connected to opening up the local loop, while its competitors say it is.

Broadband will allow the development of new services, like the use of the internet for phone calls, which would result in a dramatic cuts in telecoms costs for businesses and consumers.

Danny McLaughlin, the chief executive of one of Eircom's biggest customers, BT Ireland, revealed yesterday that the UK-based group had just decided to launch a new network, called 21C throughout the island of Ireland. This will make a range of broadband-based services widely available and facilitate the development of new products and services.

BT is likely to launch the service in early 2007, broadly around the time that Eircom has said it will have resolved at least one of the problems surrounding the opening up of its network.

Mr McLaughlin warned that poor broadband take-up posed an economic threat to the Republic.

He pointed out that, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Republic ranks 19th of 22 developed countries for broadband take-up.

"We have a long way to go," he said. Mr McLaughlin warned that failure to tackle the problem would have a catastrophic effect on the economy.

© The Irish Times

paulm17781

Changing the law would be great... Provided it is quicker than waiting for Eircon.

damien

From ComReg:

Update on Local Loop Unbundling

On 14th September 2005, ComReg issued an Information Notice (Document 05/71) advising the industry that eircom were to respond to a document outlining requirements from Access Seekers for Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), and related facilities, by 24th October 2005. This response was provided to ComReg on the 24th October 2005 and was presented to Access Seekers on 25th October 2005.

The document was circulated by eircom to other operators on 25th October 2005 however, to ensure that this is available to all interested parties; ComReg is now publishing the document.

While ComReg is still in the process of fully evaluating the response, at this stage it should be noted that many of the views represented within the document are not shared by ComReg, and it is ComReg’s view that eircom’s response is disappointing in a number of respects, which include:

• There is insufficient detail to permit the assessment of the reasonableness of the timescales and costs associated with the development of the Geographic Number Portability (GNP) product requested.

• The document fails to recognise the central importance of LLU as a product to enable operators to provide innovative, higher speed broadband products which, in turn, would benefit consumers in terms of
price, choice and quality. It is ComReg’s view that LLU can play a
critical role in meeting the national objectives in relation to broadband.

• The response fails to recognise obligations which ComReg believes eircom has in terms of meeting their wholesale customers’ requests. In the context of moving this process forward, ComReg’s will be seeking additional information from eircom in relation to their response as a matter of urgency and will continue to work closely with the Access Seekers on the issues.