Lodge an official complaint on ADSL prices

Tellox

If we took down the servers, they'd ignore all of our e-mails from then on, which wouldnt do anybody any good.

Bard

Originally posted by Winters
I would say the two best ways is for EVERYONE to send them an email on the same day, if they got 100,000 emails on the same day at around the same time you might have a chance at bringing one of there servers down and i doubt they would like that.

As we know eircom dont seem to listen to phone calls so a server down they might listen to.

Sorry, but that's an utterly stupid idea.

Think about it - that technically amounts to a group-organised and orchestrated Denial of Service attack. A discussion on this (admittedly unofficial) forum would be all the proof that would be needed that IrelandOFFLine were involved.

Eircom would then have a specific culpable organisation to blame for an illegal attack on their server and could quite feasibly sue for damages because of the service lost.

Please folks- for the sake of the IrelandOFFLine committee and organisation, don't act on any such daft ideas which could potentially cause legal or other such problems for them.

sceptre

Taking down servers - bad idea. Bad for IrelandOffline's PR, bad for your own sake (organising something like that could be considered a DoS attack - in the US you'd be convicted of terrorist activity ffs), bad for the other people who wish to make a complaint about anything on the same day.

Don't do it - if you do you're very much on your own.

PiE, I suppose the reason behind any cap at all is to cover the people who will use it a lot if there's no cap (I hold up my hand on that matter - linuxiso.org would be shunting a major amount of data my way, all MS newsgroups would find their way in full on to my PC and I'd fill up a 120gig disk (which I don't have) in no time)

Caps are very low as you point out (especially at that price point - I'd expect to be allowed to run my own ftp server at that price). Even I can see the reason behind some amount of capping though.

PiE

Got the standard response about my complaint being filed and sent off to the ADSL department, not a mention of my complaints regarding the lack of Flat-rate 56k and ISDN though.

Winters

Originally posted by sceptre
in the US you'd be convicted of terrorist activity ffs

Wow, in America everything seems to be a terrorist activity. I would never do it myself, only an idea that came into my head at the time of writing the post. Eircom would (now thinking about it) make a lot of bad PR for IOFFL and net users if anyone was to do it.

timod

http://www.yankeegroup.com/public/news_releases/news_release_detail.jsp?ID=PressReleases/news_may092002_smbt.htm

Got this link via www.nua.com (wasn't that an eircom spinoff?)

Businesses Report That DSL Delivers Exceptional Value and Increased Productivity, According to Recent Yankee Group Study

NEWS RELEASE - 09 MAY 2002

BOSTON - In a recent survey conducted on behalf of SBC, the Yankee Group found that 91% of business DSL subscribers believe that the productivity benefits of the service meet or exceed their expectations in relation to the monthly cost.  In addition, 65% of business DSL subscribers reported that, if forced to cut costs, DSL would be one of the last services eliminated.

Dial-up Internet access is no longer sufficient, and high-speed Internet access is proving to be a necessity for businesses.  As companies migrate from dial-up Internet access to DSL, it is clear that they realize increased productivity and enhanced competitive advantage.  

"Businesses truly believe that broadband enables them to service their customers better and more efficiently," said Mike Lauricella, program manager with the Yankee Group's Small & Medium Business Technologies Practice.  "Businesses will only continue to increase their use of the Internet and continue to extend broadband throughout the company."

Some of the key applications of the Internet include:


• 88% of respondents use DSL Internet access service to conduct online research.
• 83% send and receive e-mail with large attachments.
• 78% purchase supplies online.
• 69% book travel reservations.

The survey results of Business Broadband Watch are based on independent telephone interviews conducted by the Yankee Group from a random sampling of 550 small businesses with SBC DSL Internet access service.

SBC's DSL:

DSL Internet Access Service
With this economical way, small- and medium-sized businesses get unlimited Internet access, multiple e-mail accounts and DNS Hosting. Add an Office Gateway and share a DSL Internet connection, printers, scanners and other devices with up to 10 PCs

http://www.ameritech.com/DSL_new/content/0,5289,10,00.html

$49.99 per month for 768Mb. And no download cap.

sceptre

That's 768kps rather than 768MB?:D

To add: Self-install $0
Equipment $99
Activation $50 (a snip)

Value for money. I might just give them a call*




*except I can't because the market hasn't been opened enough that OLOs can operate properly here. Eircom's *wholesale* rate is as expensive.

root

I'd be happy with the following.
All I care about is a decent speed and NO CAP.No I can download all the pr0n and warez I want forever for 200 Euro a month.


eircom i-stream enhanced

For a multi user, multi PC networked environment

* Speeds are up to 1Mbps downstream/256kbps upstream
* Connection fee is [euro.gif] 165 excl. VAT - Monthly fee is [euro.gif] 169 excl. VAT.
* Additional equipment costs will vary with customer requirements.
* For [brand.gif] enhanced there is unlimited Internet download allowance.**

timod

...on a lighter note:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/25268.html
A naked protest....

PiE

Dear Mr. Roche, [even spelt my damn name wrong]

I refer to your recent complaint regarding the delay in roll-out and the
pricing of eircom i-stream, eircom's ADSL service.

The introduction of ADSL follows agreement with the Office of the Director
of Telecommunications Regulation on the wholesale prices that will apply to
Other Licensed Operators (OLOs) in Ireland and eircom's retail business.
eircom were in discussion with the ODTR on the launch of ADSL for some time
and were unable to launch the service until the ODTR was satisfied that all
regulatory and competition issues raised last year were addressed. Now that
agreement has been reached, we are obviously anxious to expedite the
roll-out of DSL and have initially targeted those exchanges where we can
reach as many customers as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Prices of ADSL services in Europe vary from country to country depending on
maturity of market, infrastructure and population density. In addition,
there are a broad range of services available and pricing also varies
depending on the service package. The prices for eircom i-stream reflect
the significant costs of bringing these products to market. eircom want to
introduce products that are commercially sustainable and will price them
accordingly. At launch, eircom is focusing on delivering products to the
business market - product prices reflect this focus and feedback from
business customers has been positive. eircom is, however, investigating
the development of cheaper product(s) specifically targeted at the consumer
market. These investigations will include the option to 'self install', a
feature of many of the lower cost European offerings. Development of these
products is at an early stage and as soon as details are available, they
will be announced.

At the moment, it is very difficult to develop a commercially viable cost
based model for flat rate internet access - while the costs to the operator
change based on usage, the revenue remains the same. However, we continue
to monitor the market and market conditions in this regard.

Thank-you for taking the time to contact eircom - we do take all customer
feedback into consideration when developing our products and services. I
have passed your complaint to the ADSL Product Management and Development
Team for reference.


Yours sincerely,

Louise Bannon
Corporate and Government Marketing
eircom retail

Bleh.

aidan_dunne

Originally posted by PiE
At the moment, it is very difficult to develop a commercially viable cost
based model for flat rate internet access.....

BULL$HIT!

Give us flat-rate and give it to us NOW you ba$tards!

Tellox

Dear Mr.

---

,

I refer to your recent complaint regarding the availability of flat-rate
internet in Ireland and the pricing and availability of eircom i-stream,
eircom's ADSL service.

At the moment, it is very difficult to develop a commercially viable cost
based model for flat rate internet access - while the costs to the operator
change based on usage, the revenue in such a model remains the same.
However, we continue to monitor the market and market conditions in this
regard.

I'm sorry that you are disappointed with eircom's ADSL offering. The prices
for eircom i-stream reflect the significant costs of bringing these products
to market. eircom want to introduce products that are commercially
sustainable and will price them accordingly. It is important to note that
eircom is focusing on delivering products to the business market initially
and product prices reflect this focus. We are investigating the development
of cheaper product(s) specifically targeted at the consumer market. These
investigations will include the option to 'self install', a feature of many
of the lower cost European offerings. Development of these products is at a
very early stage and no information regarding product specifications and
launch date is available at the moment. However, as soon as details are
available, they will be announced.

With regard to the roll-out of ADSL and its availability in areas outside
Dublin; as we are obviously anxious to expedite the roll-out of DSL, we
have initially targeted those exchanges where we can reach as many customers
as quickly and efficiently as possible. In deciding where ADSL is deployed,
consideration is given to a number of factors. Among these are the
network/transmission capabilities, infrastructure availability, support
capability and the suitability of ADSL (in terms of population
density/proximity to exchanges and impact on service reach). Dublin and
other urban areas score positively in this regard as they have the available
infrastructure, support structure, required transmission capability and
population. The additional eight regions targeted also score well in this
regard by virtue of their connected population and infrastructure. We are
currently developing a deployment plan to bring ADSL to more exchanges in
the named regions and to other parts of the country. This will cover
selected exchanges in Greater Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford,
within the next 12-18 months, reaching a total of 100 exchanges within three
years.

Thank-you for taking the time to contact eircom - we do take all customer
feedback into consideration when developing our products and services. I
have passed your complaint to the ADSL Product Management and Development
Team for reference.


Yours sincerely,

---

Corporate and Government Marketing
eircom retail

THEY SAID WATERFORD.
And they said in 12-18months.
...

stormkeeper

Ack... That wouldn't bode well for everywhere else, I'm thinking

gurramok

I got same reply as the one on the irelandoffline website here not from the marketing bods but from Mr Patterson !
I also got a 2nd reply from some dude in customer care dept not from any marketing dept.

Dear xxxx

Regarding your e-mail making a complaint about the price of Eircoms ADSL
product. This complaint has officially been logged and you should receive
correspondence regarding the matter within the next 5-10 working days.

Yours sincerely,

xxxx xxxx
Customer Care Dept.

ie...It's GOOD and worthwhile to complain.

ihatemushrooms

Amount you spend staying online 24/7 for 30days on eircoms 56k subscription service - €720.6
Amount a british user spends staying online 24/7 for a month on BT's 56k subscription service - £20

All across Europe Flat Rate access is priced similarly to the UK, it probably looks like a more competitive offer but if you become or fall into the abuser catagory ISPs all take action to make your access more difficult. I`ve read of cases in France and Germany where abusers end up trafficing on different networks to low end users. These other networks are older with reduced capacity and the dropping of calls is a frequent issue.

Saying that BT offer flat rate for £20 isn`t correct as they have appeared on Watch dog on a number of occassions for a surf no limits type senario. BT have gotten rid of loads of abusers so your making an unfair comparison.

The business model is based on a number of ports being invested in by the ISP, each of these ports is to serve an number of customers and is called a contention ratio if an abuser is online 24/7 driving the contention ratio down then the model breaks and the ISP is loosing money. ISPs won`t sustain this and hence the difficulties.

What about if people were to offer Eircom €200 a month for unlimited then there maybe a chance of success, I think in the States there is something like this.

I think the bottom line is if you want to be on line 24/7 your going to have to pay the dollars there is no easy solution

PiE

ISP's have no problem if you stay online 24/7. They do have a problem if you spend 24/7 downloading and taking up bandwidth.

longword

Originally posted by PiE
ISP's have no problem if you stay online 24/7. They do have a problem if you spend 24/7 downloading and taking up bandwidth.

They care about both - and I'd imagine tieing up the line is more important from their point of view. You can't do much damage to their bandwidth when you're downloading at most 5KBytes/sec.

PPC

FYI this is Tellox

No wonder Eircom wont give him flat rate :P

SkepticOne

Originally posted by ihatemushrooms
The business model is based on a number of ports being invested in by the ISP, each of these ports is to serve an number of customers and is called a contention ratio if an abuser is online 24/7 driving the contention ratio down then the model breaks and the ISP is loosing money. ISPs won`t sustain this and hence the difficulties.

I agree with this. Generally ISPs won't want a lot of people occupying the lines and modems and thereby preventing others from logging on. However, a FRIACO (for want of a better word) deal would enable them to determine how this should best be done. Some may go for a package with a set montly number of hours, others may adopt a policy of dumping excessive users according to rules that they deliberately don't make public. Some may even go for per-minute billing although this probably would not survive in a competitive environment.

Even though 24/7 access would still not be possible in reality, a lot more flexibility would be granted the ISPs and it would allow for competition where currently there is very little.

The important thing is that ISPs must have the option of purchasing on the the basis of capacity rather than time and that the deal they get reflects the true cost of providing this capacity.

Tellox

Kieran, there are some laws against that.

p2p

Here is a complaint i sent into eircom ...

I would like you to pass on this complaint to your supervisor - thanks.

I am writing to complain about the pricing of your adsl bitstream service. I know you are targeting it at the business market but even for that the price is ridiculously high. Similar services in europe are much much cheaper. I know you might say that your connection ratio is superb etc but to be honest a good quality connection ratio should come as standard and should be no justification for such high prices. These high prices are well beyond the reach of any home user / teleworker. I have heard rumours that you are planning to release a residential out of the box type 'diy adsl' at some stage in the future, but yet again I fear that
a.) The price will be too high, and
b.) the caps will be ridiculously low.

I am working from home at the moment and if i were to download a few iso files ( eg new linux mandrake ) , the latest java jdk, and do some general surfing my 3 gig cap would be gone before the end of week 1.
There must be a relativly cheap home user service which is *uncapped.

What is needed before any of this really is a flat rate dialup service. As i'm sure you can appreciate the market for broadband grows on the back of such flat rate services, no ordinary user will be willing to pay Euro 50 for broadband when he is a new user of the internet, its like buying a ferari to learn how to drive , all you need is a reliable mondeo and once you've learnt the trick you move up to the ferrari.
Thank you for taking time to read my compaint and i hope you will consider some of the points i have made when releasing your residential adsl service,
Yours sincerely,
_____

p2p

And here is the reply i got ..


The second paragraph is the most interesting ,,

Note they way they didnt refer to any one of my specific points after this. I think from now on once they see dsl and complaint in the same email they get out the aul cut & paste..

Dear ____

I refer to your recent complaint regarding the pricing and availability of
eircom i-stream, eircom's ADSL service and the availability of flat-rate
internet in Ireland

At the moment, it is very difficult to develop a commercially viable cost
based model for flat rate internet access - while the costs to the operator
change based on usage, the revenue in such a model remains the same.
However, we continue to monitor the market and market conditions in this
regard.

I'm sorry that you are disappointed with eircom's ADSL offering. The prices for eircom i-stream reflect the significant costs of bringing these products to market. eircom want to introduce products that are commercially sustainable and will price them accordingly. It is important to note that eircom is focusing on delivering products to the business market initially and product prices reflect this focus. We are investigating the development
of cheaper product(s) specifically targeted at the consumer market. These investigations will include the option to 'self install', a feature of many of the lower cost European offerings. Development of these products is at a very early stage and no information regarding product specifications and launch date is available at the moment. However, as soon as details are
available, they will be announced.

Prices of ADSL services in Europe vary from country to country depending on maturity of market, infrastructure and population density. In addition, there are a broad range of services available and pricing also varies depending on the service package.

* Features: Product features such speed, number of users and
inclusion/exclusion of ISP charges differ across products and countries.
eircom offers a range of speeds and user numbers across its products. ISP
charges are included in the monthly recurring charge.
* Service quality: In terms of quality of service metrics, operators
will typically offer contention ratios of 20:1 for business users and 50:1 for residential users. Targeted at business users, eircom's i-stream service is set at 24:1.
* Technology: High speed internet access is available over cable and DSL in some countries. Monthly recurring charges tend to be lower for cable than for ADSL. However, as the bandwidth on each cable is shared, quality can degrade as more customers log on. ADSL is not a shared local loop access medium so users should not experience service degradations as more
users take up the service
* Customer Support: At launch, all installations are engineer
supported and customers have a telephone support helpdesk facility available
to them free of charge, Monday-Sunday 8am to midnight. In addition, eircom i-stream is supported by Ireland's largest ISP, eircom.net.

Customers who choose the eircom i-stream solo or multi products are given a specified monthly download allowance. These limits were set based on our experience of customer usage over the period of trials and research with triallists. During trials, customers used the service free of charge and were able to download as much material as desired. Each of the eircom
i-stream products was trialled. Our research showed us that average usage was well within the limits we have now set on the solo and multi product. eircom i-stream enhanced has no download limit.

Thank-you for taking the time to contact eircom - we do take all customer feedback into consideration when developing our products and services. I have passed your complaint to the ADSL Product Management and Development
Team for reference.

Kind regards

Tracy Mulvihill
Customer Care Mktg.

PiE

Originally posted by p2p
Our research showed us that average usage was well within the limits we have now set on the solo and multi product.

In that case, again I ask why the bloody need for a cap when you are sure noone is going to exceed it?

Retards.

It'd make much more sense for them to lie and pretend that EVERY triallist abused the service and they were forced to impose the cap.

skrobe

"Saying that BT offer flat rate for £20 isn`t correct as they have appeared on Watch dog on a number of occassions for a surf no limits type senario. BT have gotten rid of loads of abusers so your making an unfair comparison. "



bt have a limit of 10(maybe 12) hours a day. this is the only limit
even in ireland if it was 8 hours a day id pay up to 40 euro a month

MrPudding

I seem to recall someone posting prices for the dsl service that is available on Gibraltar (I think, it was a small Island anyway). These prices are considerably cheaper than what is on offer from Eircon. If I am not mistaken, and this is the case, how can Eircon use population density as one of the legion of excuses for ripping us off again.

dahamsta

Isn't the population density of Gibraltar quite high? New Zealand would appear to be the perfect comparison. Sparsely populated, large farming community, etc.

adam

gurramok

As well as NZ there is comparison to Finland, Denmark, Sweden etc...and not forgetting Northern Ireland, Scotland.
All it means is that from Eircon point of view Ireland is the only unviable country to have DSL out of first, second and now third world countries.
The next OECD figures which should be out soon should confirm it.

Btw am still waiting for the 5-10 day correspondence from my original complaint to Eircon.

BoneCollector

i recently send a mail to eircom complaining about the monopolistic nature of the company and the abusive usage of such to charge such hi prices compared to europe etc for adsl isdn etc... ( i have sent them a further reply pointing out the error of the way)

here is the reply


I refer to your recent complaint regarding the pricing and download limits
of eircom i-stream, eircom's ADSL service. I'm sorry that you are
disappointed with eircom's offering. However, the prices for eircom
i-stream reflect the significant costs of bringing these products to market.
eircom want to introduce products that are commercially sustainable and will
price them accordingly. At launch, eircom is focusing on delivering
products to the business market - product prices reflect this focus.
eircom is investigating the development of cheaper product(s) specifically
targeted at the consumer market. These investigations will include the
option to 'self install', a feature of many of the lower cost European
offerings. Development of these products is at an early stage and no
information regarding product specifications and launch date is available at
the moment. As soon as details are available, they will be announced.

Thank-you for taking the time to contact eircom - we do take all customer
feedback (positive and negative) into consideration when developing our
products and services. I have passed your complaint to the ADSL Product
Management and Development Team for reference.

dahamsta

I hope I'm not stating the obvious when I say that I hope all of these letters are being copied to the ODTR, Competition Authority and Department of Public Enterprise? Public outrage will get a much better reaction from Governmental organisations, than from a private company.

adam

Mountjoy Mugger

Originally posted by dahamsta
I hope I'm not stating the obvious when I say that I hope all of these letters are being copied to the ODTR, Competition Authority and Department of Public Enterprise? Public outrage will get a much better reaction from Governmental organisations, than from a private company.

Ooops! You may be stating the obvious, but I just used eircom's website to complain. I overlooked cc'ing the contents.

Come to think of it, they haven't heard from me in over a week..