ODTR view on Internet

mdf

http://www.odtr.ie/docs/odtr0220.doc

dahamsta

I would encourage all IrelandOffline members to read and comment on this document. It's 47 pages, but you'll fly through it, and believe me, you'll have plenty to say when you're done. I think we would prefer if the membership commented on this before we did, as we don't want to bias the commentary.

adam

dahamsta

I'll tell ya, I'm going to be really annoyed if, given what we've been presented with in recent weeks, not one person responds to this. /Really/ annoyed. I have two handles in particular in mind when I write this.

adam

Fergus

Hehe.. I haven't responded cos I'm assuming the royal we refers the committee. However, let me point out to anyone who hasn't looked at this, there are a few gems in there like:

- Eircom's technical arguments against FRIACO
- Evidence that Eircom's arguments against FRIACO are not accepted by other operators
- A lot about the director's view of things like flat-rate and the current problems and ways forward

Have a look at sections 3.3.2 and 4.3 for example

yellum

Whens the closing date for replies ?

Boston

it was late when i saw this thread and im only up, ill have a detailed commentary on it very soon

Btw its page 7 before if even starts

Boston

hmm ive read it, seems mostly to be re used hype, nothign or real substance.

i did take note of this

One respondent felt however that to have value and meaningfulness leased line prices needs to be compared with other access options such as the emergence of high capacity DSL services

We can guess who this was. What service? What prise? What QoS? What average installation time? What down time? Was variation in speed? What limitations? What compatibility of equipment? What on call service support?
All on answered questions in relation to ADSL.

Dustaz

Didnt have word in work


ugh ugh, i hate reading documents like that, had to fight through the jargon

Anyway, the tone of the document seemed reasonable enough. Its nice to see that both Flate Rate and Broadband are on the agenda as a joint solution (at least thats the impression i got). Both LLU/FRIACO and xDSL seemed to be lumped together quite a lot towards the end.

In terms of FRIACO there seems to be a worrying 'long finger' approach. It seems to be put into the 'future' bracket along with broadband, yet i couldnt find any real reasons why the 1893 number could not be implemented straight away, apart from the (obviously Eircom) comment about Flat Rate callers tying up the network and affecting voice calls. Is this true or nonsense? I dont remember hearing any huge problems with this in England.


In the future section also, there seems to be some shortsighedness going on. ISDN/DSL would be far more suitable for some of the suggested uses of a FRIACO product (teleworking, telelearning).

What the HELL are pre-paid flat rate cards?:)

also, i loved this:

Ø Nine countries are more expensive than Ireland for 20 hours off peak access

What?? Who? Im assuming thats Eircom juggling the statistics a bit.

"Now i dont have a fancy smarty college education like you guys" (copyright ms 2001), but reading through this document (and i freely admit i skipped large chunks like mobile and corporate), it seemed pretty short on solutions. Is that because its a 'Where we're at' type document, or am i just too thick to see them?

Stonemason

Ok date 19/02/02 well let me see its only now they are asking questions well we can put back any sort of flat rate or broadband by about 5 years then.
The general impression I got in the end was that the ODTR is underpowered and out of its depth when dealing with one of the most important technologies of the present day (information is both money and power).
At the end of the day the problem lies in the fact that Eircom still holds a monopoly this wouldn’t be so bad(cough) if it wasn’t for the massive increase in mobile phone usage virtually making land lines only good for one thing the internet (mobile being to expensive for long periods)which is why we pay by the minute and will continue to while its so profitable .Worst still it seems judging by my own experience and many users on this board that the quality of service has dropped dramatically over the last few months (guessing)probably due to Eircom installing more and more Dacs boxes to squeeze even more profit out of us sadly this badly affects bandwidth (hence my 32kbps connection right now. So the ODTR knows what needs to be done but they don’t have the power to make it happen. They also go on about possible future service providers backing away from LLU well this hardly surprising when you consider the current world wide decline in Telco profit and proliferation this on its own is enough to make more cautious business men pull in their horns until some kind of equilibrium has been reached(still a side affects of the dot com hype and crash)Add to this the way Eircom behaves you can hardly blame them for steering clear of any dealings with the aforementioned Eircom and its amazing ability to have the government as its own private yes man. One of the biggest things to come out of that document was both as Dustav said the manipulation of figures to make Eircom look better and the glaring contradiction to what eircom used before as an excuse I.E their are not enough users to make it viable yet now they whine about flatrate being no good because their would be to many user and it would choke the network MAKE YOUR BLOODY MIND UP Eircom in finishing i would still stand by what i see as to be the only viable option both geographically finically and with in a reasonable time frame is to use an airborne solution i.e. masts connected to ESBs fiber optic loop simply put the investment in this technology would be way cheaper than updating all the "EIRCOM" owned exchanges/copper wires ect ect Due to low maintenance costs of such a system these saving could be passed onto us the customer not only would our internet connections be second to none in the world it would also be affordable. For all those laboring under the false economy that the lines are already there and it would be quicker and easier to go that way I say while eircom exists and the government still backs it this IS NOT THE WAY TO GO. Eircom is supposed to be a private enterprise now yet the government still treats it like its little baby wake up smell the coffee while you protect its monopoly the rest of the country is dieing. Dramatic maybe but well done for getting this far hehehe.To dahamsta as you said this document has so many points its hard to pick just a few to comment on with out this post becoming more bloated than the subject matter so if there is any special points you would like to bring to the table please post them here as you have probably guess I have an answer for everything .




Stone

PS on the point of manipulation of figures nation wide homeuser figures would be of more concern and more helpful we are not just heading for a digital dived where are living in it and paying huge rents for the privilage.

Fergus

the glaring contradiction to what eircom used before as an excuse i.e. there are not enough users to make it viable, yet now they whine about flatrate being no good because there would be to many users and it would choke the network

Excellent point stone

Xian

Originally posted by dahamsta
It's 47 pages, but you'll fly through it, and believe me, you'll have plenty to say when you're done.
adam

I have to ask, adam: how is it possible to "fly" through this document. Run as fast as you can and flap your arms - you still get bogged down in the half-truths and poorly disguised bickering.

Dangger

To answer Dustaz's question "What the HELL are pre-paid flat rate cards?", Eircom have actually considered introducing a pre paid card aimed at school children and students primarily. I guess the benefit would be to allow people to go online at peak times and not pay peak prices, depending of course on how the card was priced! Get 'em hooked young. I pointed out to the people proposing this at our last meeting that there was no next level after the card option, for a user who progresses in usage, there was of course no comment. Instead they launched into describing two part pricing and the benefit it would bring us all in the future, but the mobile phone companies were dead against it as short calls to mobiles would become more expensive. As far as I know with two part pricing the longer the duration of the call the rate at which its charged per minute declines.

Fergus

eircom has done a number of scenario studies on the effect of introduction of capacity-based charging on the evening busy hour of the network. In each case the effect of introducing a scheme that encourages extremely long holding times is to significantly increase the traffic carried on the network, resulting in unavoidable degradation of the quality of service offered to both internet and voice customers. The correct approach should be to migrate heavy users to an always-on type technology such as ADSL.

Translation: Eircom has done its own private studies on the effect of introduction flat-rate dialup during off-peak hours. They claim it has some unspecified level of impact on the quality of service for all telephone users, and they have come to their own conclusion that this is therefore not an option.

It's not good enough to just say 'migrate heavy users to ADSL'. (a) We can't wait till you roll it out; (b) You aren't going to roll-out to everywhere anyway; (c) You're charging far too much for it; (d) The margin-squeeze on the wholesale rate for bitstream is blocking competitors; (e) The overly high spec interconnection for bitstream for other operators rules out all but the largest.

Off-peak flat-rate has already been tested. We had two years of off-peak flat-rate availability with SNL, and still have 18,000 such users at present. The network didn't fall apart. Eircom didn't call for it to be withdrawn at any stage because the network couldn't cope.

Where's the independent technical analysis? Are these 'scenario studies' by Eircom open to public scrutiny? Isn't it rediculous that a study used to block OLO access to products is being carried out by their primary competitor?

Why is there no room for compromise? In the UK, while recognising that DSL/IP-based Internet access is the only option in the long term, they understand (unlike here) that something is needed now, not whenever Eircom feels like getting around to it. Hence, they have found ways for the phone network to accommode FRIACO in the short term until IP networks can be built. And the Irish network is obviously far smaller - it would be a joke to suggest that the same could not be done here.

viking

The use of data networks such as Frame relay and ATM or leased lines can be used to take traffic off the PSTN at the earliest point of interconnect...

One operator believes that congestion issues could be significantly eased if eircom were to hand over eircom billed calls to OLO PoP’s from the primary level. With the growth seen by the market in respect of dial up Internet over the last three years coupled with the profile of long call duration we believe that it has been a challenge for planners to adjust routing and capacity to deal with the situation, however the problems have been exacerbated by eircom refusing to hand over dial up Internet access traffic to OLOs at primary nodes. In addition, eircom refuses to groom traffic in accordance with the requirements of OLOs. Such grooming is undertaken in other markets where OLOs find it advantageous to have certain traffic being conveyed over designated 2Mbit/s interconnect links or parts thereof.

I have the funniest feeling that eirCON's network is technically not equiped to handle FRIACO. They know that if they implement FRIACO now their PSTN network would crumble, reason being that have not been able to adjust routing and capacity to deal with a FRIACO situation.

As one respondent says "The use of data networks such as Frame relay and ATM or leased lines can be used to take traffic off the PSTN at the earliest point of interconnect..." Therefore it is possible to prevent PSTN congestion, but as another respondent says "eircom refuses to groom traffic in accordance with the requirements of OLO's".

IMHO I believe eirCON would like to release a flat-rate product, but they are either
(1) technically inept at implementing it on their network or
(2) the network is fundamentally flawed and not ever capable of being adapted to handle a FRIACO situation.

Lets hope its not the second option...

viking

Fergus

As one respondent says "The use of data networks such as Frame relay and ATM or leased lines can be used to take traffic off the PSTN at the earliest point of interconnect..." Therefore it is possible to prevent PSTN congestion, but as another respondent says "eircom refuses to groom traffic in accordance with the requirements of OLO's".

What they are saying is Eircom are refusing to introduce standard techniques to off-load Internet traffic from the voice network, which would alleviate the congestion problem. That doesn't sound like Eircom want to release a flat-rate product.

For those wondering, afaik.. 'grooming' is a process whereby your Internet calls are intercepted at your local exchange and switched through to your ISP's modem bank over their separate route. This thereby avoids your Internet call travelling through the core of the voice phone system and the load on it is therefore decreased.

Xian

It should be noted by the Director that there was not one independent ISP to respond to the consultation.

In general, it is isn't hard to guess, in most cases, who made what comment.

The majority of respondents maintained that users did not have sufficient choice of capacity and pricing mechanisms. Conversely one respondent however believed there was sufficient choice and pricing mechanisms in place.

eircom (the line is too familiar to be from another respondent) can then put their ISP hat on and trot out

The perception of the internet and more importantly the relevance of lack of it to people's daily lives is where the deficiencies currently lie.

On the other hand, every other respondent point to the lack of competitive models as being The key deficiency, including, you can assume, Esat, who to-date have not asked the ODTR to intervene.

Who is more two-faced than who?

flap, flap, flap...

Manic

http://www.odtr.ie/docs/odtr0220.doc

Would it be possible to have this document made available in other formats too such as Acrobatreader?

Xian

Originally posted by Manic
http://www.odtr.ie/docs/odtr0220.doc

Would it be possible to have this document made available in other formats too such as Acrobatreader?

Thank you manic! I was going to raise the issue myself but you seconded my motion before it was made.

I'm sure the ODTR would be interested to know that (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html]) "...a Word document normally includes hidden information about the author, enabling those in the know to pry into the author's activities... Text that you think you deleted may still be embarrassingly present. See http://www.microsystems.com/Shares_Well.htm. "

I know they've tried pdf before, but in their own interests, they should have a second look before this fact is made plain to them in other ways.

timod

Originally posted by Xian

Thank you manic! I was going to raise the issue myself but you seconded my motion before it was made.

I'm sure the ODTR would be interested to know that.....

Yeah, I email them every now and then to get them to get with the times, and stay away from supporting monopolies... (anybody get the irony??)

Anyway, pdf version is here...

http://ocean.ucc.ie/02/tjod1/odtr0220.pdf (128k)

(boards won't let me upload .pdf, or anything >100k)

Tim

Manic

Originally posted by timod
Anyway, pdf version is here...

http://ocean.ucc.ie/02/tjod1/odtr0220.pdf (128k)

(boards won't let me upload .pdf, or anything >100k)

Tim

Thank you Tim it worked ok for me and i will read it later

Manic

Originally posted by Xian

I'm sure the ODTR would be interested to know that (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html]) "...a Word document normally includes hidden information about the author, enabling those in the know to pry into the author's activities... Text that you think you deleted may still be embarrassingly present. See http://www.microsystems.com/Shares_Well.htm. "

Well spotted Xian

dahamsta

http://www.irelandoffline.org/files/public/htm/odtr0220.htm

NOTE: The URL has changed since posted. I'll be deleting the original now.

adam

Manic

Nice one dahamsta
thank you.

davros

General Comments:
- nothing here makes flat-rate or broadband access look inevitable or imminent
- "One operator had the view that..." Submissions are more-or-less public so why not name the originator of each comment and put the submissions up on www.odtr.ie as well.
- much of the document refers to things that the ODTR does not have control over. No harm airing them, perhaps, but ODTR action points are hard to pick out

In relation to that, I reckon the Government has a bigger role to play in stimulating Internet uptake and provision than the ODTR. Tax breaks (for users), building codes that require ethernet-ready ducting, local authorities who install conduits under every new (and old, ideally) road, and so on.

Comments on specific aspects of ODTR document:
- I don't see benchmarking against the EU 15 as particularly useful. We can expect to average out at 7th or 8th position in any broad area (choose your own metrics depending on the point you want to prove). We should strictly benchmark against best-in-class. I suggest comparing ourselves to Hong Kong, Singapore and California (US averages not being very meaningful).
- "no need for rationalisation of leased-line products below 2Mbit/s". I think I'll raise this as a separate thread. I'd like to know more about leased lines.
- The document mentions stimulating demand for Internet access. I'm glad that get's a mention. It's the other side of the supply/demand coin. Again, though, it's for the Government to push this along.
- 3G, GPRS are lauded as an alternative access model. I don't see that these will solve any of the problems we have now. Great for mobility but still expensive, metered and low-bandwidth (big claims notwithstanding).
- "Internet access calls can be easily identified at the Primary switch and routed onto the appropriate data network"
If this is referring to dial-up, does that mean having modems in the primary switch? Otherwise how can you convert from circuit-based to data-based transmission?
- "eircom has done a number of scenario studies on the effect of introduction of capacity-based charging on the evening busy hour of the network": It seems to be flat-rate they mean here. I'm sceptical about these scenarios for two reasons...
1. worst-case analysis would suggest using the day busy hour instead
2. there must be plenty of unused network capacity during the "evening busy hour" (i.e. 18:00 - 08:00). Why not fill it?

Xian

http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=6393970

The latest Nielsen//NetRatings Global Index showed that Ireland's active Internet universe increased by 20,462 users from December to January.

In the consultation paper a number of comments were made regarding domestic demand for internet.

a higher penetration and usage rate might reasonably be expected given the general state of economic and social development as well as the relatively high level of IT skills and Internet awareness in Ireland. She recognizes that there are a range of factors that are likely to contribute to the present penetration levels; these would include relevant competitive content, lack of predictability in terms of cost/Flat Rate Access, security and payment services, broadband services availability etc.

At the end of the paragraph she states

To ensure this competition can flourish there also needs to be a parallel stimulation/education of the demand side.

Later, in reply to the response questioning the "relevance consumers place on going on-line generally", she notes

The importance that relevant and competitive content can play in stimulating demand is also recognized.

In the ODTR's last quarterly report http://www.odtr.ie/docs/pres060901.doc it was noted

Those who do not have access to the internet at home (63%) cite lack of interest ( 38%) as the primary reason, followed by a lack of a computer at home (23%) . 15% cited cost.[...]A recent report by Amárach Consulting shows a slow down in the number of new users starting on the Internet. Many non-users continue to believe the Internet is irrelevant to them and fail to see the benefits in starting to use it, similar to the findings of the ODTR Consumer Survey reported on earlier in the year. This is a challenge and an opportunity for the ISP and content providers to deal with.

Regarding the last Nielsen NetRatings report, the Director commented

According to Nielsen’s Internet figures ..., the active Internet Universe in Ireland has increased by 11% since our last review . The active Internet universe refers to the number of people who have access to the Internet at home and have used it during the month. The increase in Internet usage may be due to the tragic events of September 11th with an increasing number of people possibly accessing the Internet for up to date news reports.

I wonder what has caused this new batch of active users. Has there been any education, stimulation or "compelling content" in the last month? I haven't seen it. Did 20,000 people go out and buy computers for Christmas and immediately become "active users"? I doubt it. Have costs become any more predictable or broadband any more available? Did the internet become any more "relevant"? Has there been any event on the scale of September 11th in the last month? By the Director's rationale that 11% should have reversed. Instead it is still increasing. How is the Director going to explain these statistics in the next ODTR quarterly report? Let me offer a suggestion.

Because of the widely accepted lack of competitive access models for ISPs (all but one of the 13 respondents to the consultation agreed on this point) many people remain "passive" users of the internet, the "internet aware". The fact that the number of active users of the internet continues to increase points to the likelihood that an increasing number people have decided that they need regular internet access and that to get this they must choose between the few access models open to them seeing as the anti-competitive status quo has prevailed for the last number of years and is unlikely to change.