Attention: Chorus, NTL, Esat, Eircom, ODTR, Competition Authority

dahamsta

Please note the current definition of competition:

competition

competition COLOR=green]kómp? tísh’n[/COLOR (plural competitions) noun

1. trying to beat others: the activity of doing something with the goal of outperforming others or winning something
• several firms are in competition for the contract

2. contest: an activity in which people try to do something better than others or win something

3. opposition: those against whom one is competing, or the level of opposition they give
• keep one step ahead of the competition

4. ECOLOGY struggle for resources: the struggle between organisms of the same or different species for limited resources such as food or light

[Early 17th century. From the late Latin stem competition-, from Latin competit-, the past participle stem of competere, (see compete).]

Encarta® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1999, 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

A real-world example of competition is also available:

Blueyonder notches up 107k broadband punters
By Tim Richardson
Posted: 01/03/2002 at 10:50 GMT

Blueyonder is signing up 900 new broadband customers a day, according to the latest figures from the UK cableco Telewest.

The company said that as of yesterday its ISP, Bueyonder, had 107,000 broadband users putting it neck and neck with BT’s ISP, BTopenworld.

Of course, all that could change following recent price cuts for competing DSL services.

However, the cableco has said it will meet BT’s challenge head on by rolling out a 1 megabit service later this year, making it twice as fast as BT’s most popular service. And it also intends to go head-to-head with BT on price.

Commenting earlier this week on BT’s decision to drop the cost wholesale DSL Adam Singer, group chief exec of Telewest, said mockingly: "It was getting hard building broadband Britain by ourselves and it's great that BT has finally turned up to lend a hand.

"So far, with our cable colleagues at NTL, we have connected more broadband customers than BT despite the latter's position as the dominant telephone provider in the UK," he said.

And he added: "Using the technical superiority of our cable network over DSL, we are going to play full-contact broadband with BT and will keep raising the speed till they run out of puff."

Publishing its full year results for 2001 total turnover 17 per cent to £1.32 billion. Net loss, before exceptional items, was £801 million.

By mid morning shares in Telewest were up 2.75p (15.5 per cent) 20.5p. ®

jbkenn

Potential Errorcom Reply
competition

competition [kómp? tísh’n]

1. "A word to be bandied about"

2. contest: "No contest we make sure of that"

3. opposition: "Everybody who doesnt work for Eircom"

4. ECOLOGY "Them effin Greens again"

I am having a bad day

Jbken

tobi

Not to mention

LLU hits 200 milestone

Crack open a warm can of lager and pop open a packet of cheese and onion crisps - local loop unbundling is alive and kicking and taking off in the UK.

b20uvkft6m5xwg

competition

n 1: a business relation in which two parties compete to gain customers; "business competition can be fiendish at times" 2: an occasion on which a winner is selected from among two or more contestants [syn: contest] 3: the act of competing as for profit or a prize: "the teams were in fierce contention for first place" [syn: contention, rivalry] [ant: cooperation] 4: the contestant you hope to defeat; "he had respect for his rivals"; "he wanted to know what the competition was doing" [syn: rival, challenger, competitor, contender]
Source: © 1997 Princeton University

Antonyms->

Victor

Originally posted by tobiwan
LLU hits 200 milestone

And there was me thinking it would be 200 exchanges ....

Boston

well still thats allot in a relatively short time. in reality its only been 6 months(the same amount of tiem the odtr pissed about for since llu in the uk had any legs to stand on.
and since teh services offered over llu are usualy high end solutions, this busness could allready be making large profits with just 200 lines

Typedef

Hey here's an idea I had after a recent visit to 'cloud cookoo land'.

How about the Irish tax payer forks over IE£ 1 billion so that we can placate the eircom monopoly over former state assests and pay for yet another teleco network?

That's competition too!

yellum

Also add definitions for Stalling, untruths and incompetence

dahamsta

PlusNet and Nildram update DSL prices

Sheffield-based ISP, PlusNet, has confirmed that the price of its single-user DSL service will cost from £22.99 a month.

adam

dahamsta

Another item in my personal little crusade to educate:

Broadband sales surge ahead of DSL price cuts

BT Wholesale is reporting sales of ADSL connections have soared from 3,000 to 8,000 a week since the telco reduced the wholesale price of DSL connections.

adam

dahamsta

HUPYAH!

Telewest in cable broadband promo

Telewest is flogging its cable broadband service for less than the price of unmetered dial-up access in a bid to attract new punters. The special promo from the cableco starts on May 1. Monthly subscriptions to the blueyonder broadband service are just £13.48 for the first three months.

adam

aidan_dunne

All this obvious evidence in favour of cheaper DSL and flat-rate access and do you think Eircom are going to take any notice? YOU MUST BE F**KING JOKING!

Seems to me that Eircom have this amazing ability to suddenly become blind when facts like these are placed in front of them. Or, more likely, when someone tries to point out these facts to them they stick their fingers in their ears and go, "LA, LA, LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

F**king muppets!

J@ck Chri5tie

MPs call on regulator to split BT

If only the headline was "Irish TD's call on regulator to split Eircom"

JC

dahamsta

Freeserve deal sees NTL open broadband network

NTL to offer wholesale broadband

adam

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Originally posted by dahamsta
I'm back baby, I'm back!

adam

Thanks Frank (Costanza)

Serenity NOW !!!

dahamsta

Happy Festivus 80p.

adam

dahamsta

It's only 5PM and I found another one:

Pipex gives away free ADSL modem

adam

dahamsta

BTo donates 800 broadband connections

BTopenworld is to donate 800 ADSL connections to businesses and community groups over the next couple of years in a bid to drive demand for broadband.

The £1million initiative was announced this morning at a BTo broadband summit held in London.

As part of the initiative BTo will equip community groups and selected small businesses with broadband access and equipment free of charge.

dahamsta

PlusNet cuts price for DSL

The battle to gain broadband customers took a new turn today after PlusNet introduced a new, cheaper ADSL product.

The new "Home Surf" ADSL service costs just £20.99 and is aimed at punters who use the Internet for web browsing, gaming and email.

dahamsta

Now I really feel like a bogger...

Verizon expands its horizon: Verizon Wireless said it will offer a new flat-rate plan, Express Network, for customers who check e-mail and surf the Web from mobile phones, laptops and other handheld devices as it tries to stake a claim in a new market.

The new plan comes as rival Sprint PCS (PCS), the nation's No. 4 wireless company, prepares to launch a similar service this summer.

Express Network offers high-speed Internet connections for e-mail and the Web from laptops and personal digital assistants. Typical speeds are about 40 to 60 kbps -- the equivalent of a home dial-up connection -- but can be as fast as 144 kbps.

dahamsta

Flat-rate mobile Internet access gets closer to home, but still no sign of flat-rate fixed-line access in Ireland:

Orange to launch flat rate GPRS mobile Internet access

adam

Dr99

Let’s guess what multiple of my current age I'll be by the time I get Flat rate on my mobile, I’m guessing 3x!! Just in time for my colostomy bag

I hate living in this country (from an access to up to date technology point of view).

longword

Originally posted by dahamsta
Orange to launch flat rate GPRS mobile Internet access

They have the same "interesting" take as Eircom on the meaning of flat rate. They're charging 6 euro a month for a 10Mbyte cap (and no, I didn't miss out any zeros on that). IMHO it's a marketing ploy and not a huge improvement on what was already available.

Xian

Internet usage soars

Owen Gibson
The Guardian, Tuesday June 11, 2002

The number of internet users in the UK has continued to rocket with a further 5 million people joining the online population in the last year, despite the lingering effects of the dotcom crash,

In the UK the number of regular home web users has risen from just over 11 million to 16.5 million in the past year.

The total number of people with internet connections has risen by a third to around 30 million - almost half the population.

Internet users are also spending longer than ever before on the web, fuelled by flat-rate monthly tariffs. The average user spends half an hour longer online per month than they did at the same time last year.

The trend is likely to continue as broadband access becomes more prevalent. The high speed service is "always on" and requires users to pay a flat subscription fee for "all you can eat" access.

dahamsta

Telewest intros 1Mb broadband service

Telewest is to offer a 1Mb broadband service to its punters across the UK at a price that undercuts a similar product from cableco NTL.

The new service - introduced after a trial involving 1,500 people - costs £35 per month (when taken with other Telewest Broadband services) or £39.99 on its own.

NTL's 1Mb service - which was launched in March - costs £49.99 a month.

David Hobday, sales and marketing director of Telewest Broadband, described the service as being like "viagra for your PC, providing a mind-blowing Internet experience."

Some 169,000 people subscribe to Telewest's blueyonder broadband service. ®

dahamsta

HUP!

Lest we all forget.

adam

timod

Just as a BTW, heard on the radio this morning that RGDATA is referring Vodafone to the competition authority. No more details than that.

And Vodafone is not what I'd call a monopoly...

Also, TCA have launched an investigation into monopolies and unfair competition
in the banking sector.

While the biggest anti-competitive facet of Ireland's economy is just staring them in the face.

timod

....and here's the biggest farce of them all:

Regulated Markets
The Regulated Markets Division monitors and studies competition policy in State regulated markets and advocates the removal of unnecessary or disproportionate restrictions on competition. The Division also endeavours to raise awareness and understanding of the benefits of competition. Ms. Isolde Goggin is the Director of this division.

Ms. Isolde Goggin
....
Isolde Goggin is Head of Regulatory Affairs at the Competition Authority.
....
Ms. Goggin worked for nine years with Telecom Éireann (now Eircom)
....

I think this speaks for itself really.

dahamsta

Oftel plans BT leased-line wholesale cuts

Telecoms regulator Oftel has tabled measures that would force BT to slash the price it charges rivals to provide leased lines using its network.

Under the proposals, connection charges for PPCs partial private circuits (PPCs), the key wholesale components of leased lines, will be typically reduced by 50 per cent, and rental charges by 30 per cent.

These savings will be backdated to 1 August 2001, when the products were first introduced by BT, following an earlier Oftel initiative.

The move is designed to bring down prices significantly for end users and operators by boosting competition in the leased lines market. Oftel is also seeking to revamp the quality regime for BT's wholesale broadband products by proposing improvements to BT's service level agreements, including forcing BT to pay compensation for late delivery of services.

[...]

crawler

Guys,

This is just really upsetting - stop it!

I'm just waiting for the "Company XYZ pays customer £25.00 to take DSL service"

Me thinks Telewest and ntl will Merge eventually when Telewest sort out the pennies - this could be very interesting for over here given the involvement with Liberty/Telewest/Chorus and now that ntl are out of the financial doldrums ( albeit with an ancient network!) .......

Well, you never know.

dahamsta

No let-up I'm afraid...

BT to trial 2Mbit/s SDSL, rollout next year

BT is to begin trials of a high-speed SDSL (Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line) service next month, ahead of a planned full roll-out from the middle of next year.

The pilot - which will test two SDSL products giving speeds of up to 2Mbit/s both upstream and downstream over a copper line - should be a hit with companies keen to try out videoconferencing and teleworking.

Oh, and it should also appeal to those outfits which need to move large files/documents around the place.

Anyhow, BT Wholesale is looking for up to 20 ISPs to take part in the six month trial.

Initially, the service will be available at 20 exchanges in London, but from December a further 30 exchanges in areas including Manchester and Yorkshire should also be able to provide SDSL.

[...]

The emphasis is mine. Eircom, meanwhile, are still hoarding ADSL in Dublin, and Esat are virtually hiding their services away altogether.

adam