ODTR drops court case and more

-Toppy-

Didnt see this yet soo


Telecoms Regulator Welcomes Launch of High Speed
Offering by eircom: Agreement reached on long
standing issues, facilitating competitive DSL
development: Reduced interconnect costs: Court
cases discontinued !!!!!!!
A load of new docs on http://www.odtr.ie

cheers
-Toppy-

Son of Blam

Might as well post the press release up:

Etain Doyle, Telecoms Regulator, today welcomed the announcement by Eircom that it is to launch its new wholesale ‘bitstream’ and ‘i-stream‘ retail (DSL, high speed) internet products. The bitstream product is being launched today. She also announced that she has approved new eircom proposals in relation to prices for Local Loop Unbundling (LLU).
In parallel with this, she has approved final prices for interconnection services provided by eircom (known as the Reference Interconnect Offer or RIO) for periods up to 31 March 2001. Rates for the four month period to 31 March 2000 are to remain unchanged from previously announced interim levels. Rates for the year to 31 March 2001 are approved at levels which are, on average, 13% below interim levels (€4.8m reduction). Higher than anticipated volumes and lower than anticipated costs contributed significantly to this reduction.

She has also confirmed that eircom intends to discontinue legal proceedings launched by in 2001 against ODTR decisions in relation to RIO and LLU.

eircom has developed revised bitstream offerings which respond to the regulatory and competition problems raised by the proposals made last year. There is a new pricing structure which the regulator is satisfied meets the regulatory requirements. In addition to new pricing, eircom has also confirmed that it is making special arrangements to ensure that competitors may have access to the necessary complementary services to launch bitstream services.

The new pricing for LLU services, based on new submissions from eircom replaces the interim pricing set out in the ODTR Decision Notice of April 2001, and also pricing for certain ancillary services announced by eircom later that year. There are positive and negative changes in the pricing, but in the overall, they represent a reduction on the current charges offered by eircom. The new prices will apply retrospectively, and in order to provide certainty to the industry, also for the current regulatory year to end March 2003. The Regulator also announced that a new industry group is to be set up very shortly under the Chairmanship of Professor William Melody of Delft University to develop a LRIC model for the access network, and LLU charges will be reviewed in the light of outcome of this work.

The regulator said – “I am very pleased by these developments which I believe may indicate a more open approach on the part of eircom’s new management. The introduction of competitive broadband DSL services is a welcome step in the development of the Irish communications market. Esat Telecom is well advanced on its programme for introducing LLU in 40 exchanges in Ireland. I look forward to operators providing significant benefits to Irish users and consumers in terms of enhanced service offering and competition.

The finalisation of interconnection rates is of considerable benefit to new entrants and Irish rates now compare favourably with those in force right across the European Union. eircom’s decision to discontinue its legal proceedings is particularly welcome as this will greatly enhance stability and certainty within the Irish telecommunications industry.

With these old items out of the way, all industry participants can now concentrate on the real business of serving the consumers, both business and residential in 2002 and beyond”

mdf

Your post title is wrong - eircom dopped the court case

Kix

We still have to wait to see what Eircom anounce later on as the wholesale bitstream price.

Once they do that they will be able to start offering i-stream to customers in 21 days time.

K

jd

Originally posted by Kix
We still have to wait to see what Eircom anounce later on as the wholesale bitstream price.

Once they do that they will be able to start offering i-stream to customers in 21 days time.

K

I think I saww €49 mentioned for istream solo wholesale

lynchie

Surely if both Eircom and the ODTR have come to an agreement, the ODTR will waive the 21 day delay??

jd

Originally posted by lynchie
Surely if both Eircom and the ODTR have come to an agreement, the ODTR will waive the 21 day delay??

NOpe-it's to give time for OLO's to get things together

mdf

It's a requirement of legislation that eircom can only launch 21 days after formal retail price notification/publication. Otherwise any other opwrator buying the wholesale product would be entering the market AFTER eircom -

ironfist77

[
I think I saww €49 mentioned for istream solo wholesale [/B]

Yeah that the price rte news have reported http://www.onbusiness.ie/2002/0417/eircom.html

misterq

The wholesale bitstream price and adsl enabled exchanges are listed in a pdf doc on the Eircom site.

The actual url is unfeasibly long.
Go to: Eircom.ie -> About Us -> Eircom Activities -> Carrier Services

In the right hand menu, it's under
"Wholesale Bitstream Access Service".


Regards

Ronan

vinnyfitz

You can find it here:

http://mmm.eircom.ie/about/PressReleases/pressrelease.asp

dahamsta

The wholesale bitstream price will come down by about a third, to something like €50. And Esat will get a multi-million euro rebate on LLU charges. Handy that. Perhaps they could invest some of this in writing a letter of complaint on unmetered negotiations to the ODTR. I reckon it should cost about one euro. It could read something like this:

Dear Etain,

We have been negotiating with Eircom for a flat-rate service for about half a decade now. We've suddenly realised that we might not be able to resolve it. Could you pop round some day for a chat? We can play with Lego when we're done.

Derek

adam

-Toppy-

Press Releases 2002

April 2017

eircom's EUR 125 million broadband DSL plan to proceed - 02/04/17


Hmmm they trying to tell us something? DSL in 2017

http://mmm.eircom.ie/about/PressReleases/pressrelease.asp

sceptre

I love it when that Adam Beecher chap gets sarcastic.

If anyone from Esat is listening, some of us would be really grateful if you could explain why you think it's more complicated than the procedure that Adam has outlined. (Actually, it's more simple - when I asked the same question at the seminar, Derek Kickham (then CEO of Esat Fusion) was sitting next to Etain Doyle (telecoms regulator) - a nod or a wink would have been enough at that point). If I was going out with someone who hadn't contacted me in a year, I might just think that relationship negotiatinos had broken down.


Or could it be that Esat are shortsighted and think the greatest return is from paying a per-minute interconnect charge to Eircom for people who don't use their NoLimits account much (the highly profitable ones - my GF's household are paying £20 to Esat but would pay only about £7 to Eircom if they dumped the product), making profit on that section of their customers, while dumping the customer base that exceeds the making profit level?

(but then people say my paranoia reaults in my seeing conspiracies everywhere)

longword

Originally posted by -Toppy-
Press Releases 2002
April 2017

ROTFL!

I can just see it tomorrow when I visit www.adsl.ie.

72 point red text on a brilliant white background.

PSYCHE!

Bard

*cough* *splutter* €350 connection fee ??!?!?!?!!?!!!

http://mmm.eircom.ie/about/PressReleases/PressRelease.asp?id=378

longword

Ummm. Just looking at that 2017 press release. Wholesale rates of €49 for 512k, €79 for 1Mbit.

Why is there a big difference between the two? I mean all the OLO is getting is the link from exchange to the customer. The wires are the same. AFAIK the hardware on both ends is identical for the two speeds (and Eircom only supply one end), just a flick of a switch between them. Am I missing something?

Again I can't for the life of me understand why an OLO would go for those wholesale rates rather than LLU, except perhaps for initial speed of deployment. When the year 2017 rolls around anyway...

Isadore

How handy that the ODTR has rolled over and allowed i-strem to go ahead at wholesale prices more inflated than they had been looking for initially.

Interesting also, the timing at which it ocurred, just before the election.

Seems a lot of "movement" on broadband has happened just before this election.

sikes

handy timing indeed not just for the election but the comms bill is to be finalized tomorrow and with this news just one day before its is to be completed.

Son of Blam

This is just a screenshot of the PDF document available on the Eircom.ie website:

sikes

look at this

DSL is a very important addition to eircom's existing portfolio of broadband services which range from ISDN beginning at 64 kilobits through to ATM at 155 megabits."

Someone tell them isdn is not broadband

Baud

Someone tell them isdn is not broadband

Technically, IIRC, ISDN is broadband. BaseBand covers PSTN and broadband covers another range of technologies, including ISDN.

It's got nothing to do with the amount of data carried, more to do with the bandwidth usage (PSTN only uses 3.1KHz).

L.

Dustaz

Originally posted by aidan_dunne


Therefore, Eircom have won another battle in my view because they now know that they can go through this whole procedure with any other product in the future and will still end up basically charging ridiculous prices for services by making people desperate for them.

Id disagree with this. There are a handful of people in Ireland that will take ADSL at the price eircom will offer it at. Not even all the 'net savy' people here who are desperate for it are going to go for it at that price.
The danger is they will say theres no demand

aidan_dunne

Originally posted by Dustaz


Id disagree with this. There are a handful of people in Ireland that will take ADSL at the price eircom will offer it at. Not even all the 'net savy' people here who are desperate for it are going to go for it at that price.
The danger is they will say theres no demand

I suppose you do have a point there, Dustaz. And I think that you could also be right about the "not enough demand" argument. Don't be surprised if Eircom try to use that excuse to try and withdraw the whole ADSL service at some point. Though, I don't think they would do it because of the potential uproar it would cause but don't be surprised to hear Eircom try and make some sort of threat along those lines when they find that the take-up is so low and slow of the service. You can be sure they'll say something about there not being "enough demand for the service" but will never acknowledge that it's the high prices that would be the cause of the low demand.

Eircom: "Our prices high? No, never."

infomat

Originally posted by mdf
Your post title is wrong - eircom dropped the court case

Yes that it a very important point. It is most likely that the court case was a delaying tactic on the part of Eircom also even if they won their court case they may not gained much as the law was likely to change to their disadvantage.

longword

Originally posted by ando

eh, is this a joke?
Your talking about twice the speed, twice the bandwidth? You cant expect them to be the same price wise?

Why not? Sure 1meg is a bigger number and generally nice and shiny. But aren't these wholesale prices supposed to be cost-oriented? AFAIK there is zero additional cost to Eircom to provide 1meg versus 512k on the local loop because there's zero contention on that line - there's only you using it, it's not shared with anyone else, and what happens on that line has no effect on other lines. The only difference is a one-off config command entered by an Eircom engineer at setup time.

Bandwidth gets expensive when you have to provision the links (a) from the exchange back to the ISP and (b) from the ISP to the rest of the world. As I understand bitstream access, the OLO is wholely responsible for both of these links and they're the ones who have a cost-justified reason for a substantial price differential between the two speeds.

longword

Originally posted by infomat


I assume that this is the connection fee for the Service Provider (for example: Esat) and that this cost would be spread across a number of end users

I doubt it. I'd expect that to be per-user, with the OLO expected to eat the up-front difference between 350 euro and a reasonable retail installation price, hoping to make it back over the lifetime of the connection before they start making a profit out of it.

BT charges about 160 euro for the setup of a wholesale DSL line and about 40 euro a month regardless of speed for anything from 576k to 2Mbit. http://www.serviceview.bt.com/list/current/docs/Broadband/120614.htm

Maybe I'm reading this wrong though. What exactly does the ISP get from Eircom for these wholesale prices? Do they get the customer connected all the way to the internet?

SkepticOne

Originally posted by longword
Bandwidth gets expensive when you have to provision the links (a) from the exchange back to the ISP and (b) from the ISP to the rest of the world. As I understand bitstream access, the OLO is wholely responsible for both of these links and they're the ones who have a cost-justified reason for a substantial price differential between the two speeds.

AFAIK, Eircom also provide a link from a number of exchanges to a smaller number of handover points. Eircom could, therefore, justify higher wholesale costs for bitstream on the basis that they have to provide more capacity on these links.

longword

Originally posted by SkepticOne
AFAIK, Eircom also provide a link from a number of exchanges to a smaller number of handover points.

That's fair enough I suppose. But they definitely don't provide a complete internet connection for the wholesale prices we've seen?

SkepticOne

Originally posted by longword
That's fair enough I suppose. But they definitely don't provide a complete internet connection for the wholesale prices we've seen?

True, the ISP provides the Internet link to these handover points.

longword

Originally posted by SkepticOne
True, the ISP provides the Internet link to these handover points.

Looking at BT's DataStream offering, it seems to work along the same lines. The ISP buys an ATM link to the BT network, and BT gives them ATM Virtual Paths across their network to the exchanges - the ISP doesn't need a dedicated link to individual exchanges.