Why did they have to sell to Tony O'Reilly?!?!?!

K!LL!@N · 11-06-2001 2:30pm #1

I was watching the news earlier and i saw that Eircom have accepted Tony O'Reilly's, Valentia group, offer. Am i the only one who thinks this is a really bad idea? Personally i would have much rather seen Denis O'Brien get it. We just have to sit back and see what happens over the next few months. Hopefully some good will come of this. Who wants to join me in the crossing of fingers?

Coyote · 11-06-2001 3:04pm

Are you mad you wanted Denis O'Brien that would be about the worst person i could think of to buy eircom, he is just as bad as the old heads of eircom

You try to be smarter,
And I will try to be nicer

Gladiator · 11-06-2001 3:15pm

i disagree, the oreilly people are the worse, no experience what so ever in the telecom market,
the fact that the eircom directors want them in should be enough to warn you off.
O brien will shake eircom up, one things for sure it wont continue as it has.

i hate to say this but i dont hink eircom will be sold,
theres no way O'Reilly will get 65% of the share holders (he allready has esot) with his lower price.
while o brien has to get 80% outs of 85% of shareholders votes

Xterminator · 11-06-2001 3:24pm

I wish they were taken over by a big croud like AT&T or BT.
We might get xSDL, free local calls (or as good as) etc. in my lifetime!

Philip

K!LL!@N · 11-06-2001 3:26pm

I totally agree with Gladiotor, Tony O'Reilly will just see this as a vehicle to further enhance his media empire. And i think this is a really terrible thing. Whatever you say about Denis O'Brien, you can't say he doesn't know about the Telco industry. He's a hell of a lot more clued in than Tony O'Reilly.

Gladiator · 11-06-2001 3:38pm

Originally posted by Xterminator:
I wish they were taken over by a big croud like AT&T or BT.
We might get xSDL, free local calls (or as good as) etc. in my lifetime!

Philip

well obrien will have adsl out pretty fast, hes not the type to hang onto all tech.
allways moveing on to something new, and not afraid to take a risk, he took a £15 million lience and turned it into a £2 billion company, hell eircom its self is only priced at around that

The Cigarette Smoking Man · 11-06-2001 5:35pm

Originally posted by Coyote:
Are you mad you wanted Denis O'Brien that would be about the worst person i could think of to buy eircom, he is just as bad as the old heads of eircom

Dennis O'Brien would be the best person, he'd fire half the idiots that work there on his first day, O'Reilly on the other hand won't do a ****ing tap.

Coyote · 11-06-2001 5:41pm

You have to be jokeing right.
Denis O'Brien is a lieing cheeting scumbag
he bribed the gov of the time with a £50,000 bribe to give him the 2th moblie rights for ireland, he is trying to put the other small telcom companys out of busness by doing the same thing that eircom does.
you think that he would bring in DSL, lol he would pull up all the old eircom argments on why he sould not bring it in DSL, he is milking the lease line market as much as he can, the price of lease lines could be as litte as a grand more that they are in the UK but there about 5 times the price in the UK. if you think that esat is any better that eircom then your wrong and if you think that Denis O'Brien would run it any diff than he ran esat then your beening fooled.

As for Tony O'Reilly well he's a busness man the same that Denis O'Brien is. the are not telcom wokers, they run companys they could run any type of company.
what will Tony O'Reilly do with eircom who knows but wiht luck he might try to turn it in to a company that is leading the way in to the next gen of telcoms compansy instead of eircom's draging there feet.

Coyote

dahamsta · 11-06-2001 6:44pm

Wanna watch yourself there Coyote (and boards.ie), you're treading on dangerous turf. Saying DOB is "alleged" to have bribed the government, that's fair enough, but you just slandered the man. (Libelled even. Defamation of character. I'd go for four million Denis, just for the howl.)

Guilty until proven innocent is it Coyote? Let's all join in on Coyote's Kangaroo Court! Yahoo!

adam

[This message has been edited by dahamsta (edited 11-06-2001).]

Coyote · 11-06-2001 7:12pm

And as for it beening alleged, there is no alleged to it all the companys and the partys admitted it happend, and did not denied it happend, it happend. that is as close as a bribe as you can get in my books.

Well i do not know what you call the company that was getting a large % of Esat giveing the ruleing party of the time 50,000 quid cash ????? and the goverment then selling the 2th phone licence for ireland for just 15mill quid (a joke price when it was worth min 100mill) that = the irish people getting Fu*ked wiht high phone bills when there were companys that were going to give much cheeper calls for there users. and people think that he is a person who cares about the users of his network, no he is a busness man and he is out to make as much money as he can, which is fine thats his job, but it's not our goverments job.

Coyote

[This message has been edited by Coyote (edited 11-06-2001).]

Gerry · 11-06-2001 7:15pm

Or, alternatively, there was no problem with the 2nd mobile phone license, Telenor were NOT concerned, there were no donations, and fine gael are incorruptible. Such an amount of effort is invested in keeping things quiet in Ireland, and there is still visible corruption everywhere.... hmm. Unfortunately theres no smoke without fire. I'm not going to say he made the donation, but theres definitely something dodgy about the whole deal.

The Cigarette Smoking Man · 11-06-2001 8:52pm

Originally posted by Coyote:
he is milking the lease line market as much as he can

How exactly is he doing that then?

Coyote · 11-06-2001 9:09pm

well lets see.
you can get a 2mb line in the UK for about 10-12 grand
now the line rent BT charge is about 1 grand.
the other 10-11 grand is for the bandwith and the minding of the line.
now in ireland the line rent for a 2mb line from eircom for esat (that is not the price for the joe blogs on the street) is about 2-3 grand but esat charge about 30 grand a year for a 2mb line so. after the line rent esat is changeing 27 grand where in the uk they charge about 10 grand.
can you see a diff when ireland has 1/3 of all bandwiht comeing in to the EU and the cheepest bandwith for sale for ISP's and very larger companys (ie likes of microsoft,IBM)
would you call that milking the market ?

Coyote

[This message has been edited by Coyote (edited 11-06-2001).]

Gladiator · 11-06-2001 9:28pm

its about 2 grand a year for 64k line
do you ****ign believe that,
i think his figure is about right on the t1 line. i never asked but i might tomorrow.
rip of at its best,

zenith · 11-06-2001 9:33pm

Actually, Tony O'Reilly has plenty of experience in Telecoms: his company, Princes Holdings, own 49% of Chorus, AFAIK.

Which, as we all know, sucks giant donkey.

Oh, and they run Unison too. And that really worked out well.

This is a fsking disaster for this country: for democracy, for bandwith, for diversity of opinion.

Betcha young Gavan O'R gets Eircom to scutter all over.

Skeptic1 · 11-06-2001 9:34pm

Originally posted by Coyote:

can you see a diff when ireland has 1/3 of all bandwiht comeing in to the EU and the cheepest bandwith for sale for ISP's and very larger companys (ie likes of microsoft,IBM)
would you call that milking the market ?

Coyote

And this bandwidth entering the country was subsidised heavily by the taxpayer. Essentially esat and eircom are stuffing their pockets with the peoples' money. The entire country is being shafted, not just leased line customers.

It is lack of LLU and consequently lack of ADSL which is forcing up the price of leased lines.

chernobyl · 11-06-2001 9:38pm

Originally posted by Gladiator:
its about 2 grand a year for 64k line
do you ****ign believe that,
i think his figure is about right on the t1 line. i never asked but i might tomorrow.
rip of at its best,

Leased line costs are mad here.
100Mbit pure fibre can be got in L.A. for $100 per month (would'nt that be heaven).

How can the sale of Eircom be bad, can eircom get any worse?
eircom can only improve.(not likely though)

Gladiator · 11-06-2001 9:40pm

i got to stop reading this stuff, you guys are depressing me, i wish i could fall asleep and wake up in a years time with adsl coming out my **** .

dahamsta · 11-06-2001 9:49pm

Coupld of things:

1) *If* DoB gave a bribe to get a licence in Ireland, I can't blame him - like I said before, that's the way business was done in Ireland back then. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he did, given that he probably wouldn't have had a snowballs chance in hell of getting the licence without it. Carpe Diem. However, whether he did or not hasn't been PROVED yet. So you libelled him.

2) DOB is NOT milking the leased line business by any manner of means. In case you weren't aware, DOB hasn't had a direct involvment in Esat in what, a year? Two?

Like I said before Coyote, you really need to either sit back and think about what you're writing, or just shut the hell up altoghether. You're writing gibberish, and all you're doing is confusing people who don't understand the situation, and would probably like to.

And finally, god help us all if the Eircom shareholders approve the Valencia bid. DOB mightn't be the BEST man in the world to run Eircom, but he's certainly better than O'Reilly. By a big margin.

adam

Skeptic1 · 11-06-2001 10:18pm

Originally posted by dahamsta:

.....
And finally, god help us all if the Eircom shareholders approve the Valencia bid. DOB mightn't be the BEST man in the world to run Eircom, but he's certainly better than O'Reilly. By a big margin.
adam

Just to add that the decision will be made by a relatively small number of people. The two main groups are the institutional investors and ESOT. Obviously, once the decision is made, the institutional investors will have no further interest in what Eircom does. They are purely interested in getting the maximum price.

ESOT, in addition to the lump sum payable to them, will be interested in minimising the job cuts and maximising the payout to those being made redundant.

Anyway, once the deal is done, the same commercial pressures on Eircom will be in place. When these change in favour of ADSL then whoever runs Eircom will bring out ADSL. As we know, Eircom have had ADSL waiting in the wings for years.

I suspect this "ADSL in September" thing will be "under review" again when the new crowd takes over. They'll do an "NTL": "We had no idea that the network was in such a poor state".

[This message has been edited by Skeptic1 (edited 11-06-2001).]

Coyote · 11-06-2001 10:37pm

dahamsta i do not give a flying Fuc*K what you think to be to tell the truth.
what the hell are you talking about "back then" this is just about 10 years ago ?

And what do you want to prove some thing ?
DOB said he got the other company to give FF 50 grand,

the telphone company said that they gave the 50 grand, FF said they got 50 grand from DOB, what more do you want ?

If i gave you 50 grand a week before your going to pick the next moblie phone company, what do you call that ?

What did you think was going to happen? the government (FF same people who got the 50 grand) were going to investagate this ? even when it came out in the papers ? no there not.

How much proof do you want that he gave a bribe ???????????

I did not say that i would not give a bribe if i could to get a market like that, who wouldn't.

But thats a different thing to being in the best interest of Ireland and the people of Ireland.

By the way i did not libel him. infact, all i have said is what he did, even he said he did it.

The companys and FF admitted it happened, and did not denied it .... it happened.

Just because the government does not care and wants it to just dissapear from the public eye is not my fault. that doesn't make it libel.

As for him milking the lease line busness.
He owned the damn company,
he ran it for years, you think that he just walked out of a 2 billon pound company without putting someone that would do just what he wanted before he left ????

He was milking it then, and they have not changed there tone even after he left.

What makes you think that he will not try to use eircom lease lines to pay back all the debt that he ran up buying eircom ???

The % of profit he makes from lease lines is about 400% more that in the UK or other markets, thats fine he can charge what he likes thats up to him, it's his company.

But, Do i want the other larger telphone company sold to him? NO.

And why am i confusing people over things?

All I have said is the truth, you can get a 1GB Fiber optic line in to any major city in the US for $10,000 a year.

"You're writing gibberish"
I'm writing gibberish am I, well what am I writing that you can not understand ?
as most people can understand it fine.

and if I'm confusing why do you not try and tell them what is happing in ireland then, all you have been doing is running down any thing i say,
i have not heard any real facts from you about what is happing, all you do is tell others there wrong.

You try to be smarter,
And I will try to be nicer

[This message has been edited by Coyote (edited 11-06-2001).]

dahamsta · 11-06-2001 10:43pm

I'm writing gibberish am I, well what am I writing that you can not understand ?

Well, most of that last post for a start...

adam

The Cigarette Smoking Man · 11-06-2001 10:56pm

Originally posted by Coyote:
well lets see.
you can get a 2mb line in the UK for about 10-12 grand
now the line rent BT charge is about 1 grand.
the other 10-11 grand is for the bandwith and the minding of the line.
now in ireland the line rent for a 2mb line from eircom for esat (that is not the price for the joe blogs on the street) is about 2-3 grand but esat charge about 30 grand a year for a 2mb line so. after the line rent esat is changeing 27 grand where in the uk they charge about 10 grand.
can you see a diff when ireland has 1/3 of all bandwiht comeing in to the EU and the cheepest bandwith for sale for ISP's and very larger companys (ie likes of microsoft,IBM)
would you call that milking the market ?

The point I was making was not the fact that leased lines are expensive, it's that DO'B has nothing to do with Esat so he's not fleecing anyone.

BTW: The total cost for a 2Mb line from Eircom is £35k - £40k depending on where you are. A 2Mb IP connection into Telehouse in London is about £400 a month.

Microsoft and IBM get their IP connectivity off Eircom. IBM have a 155Mbps ATM MAN and connections out of the country are carried on ATT.

I heard the other day that Esat have a total of 800Mbps of International Connectivity, which doesn't seem a lot if they want to offer DSL.

The Cigarette Smoking Man · 11-06-2001 11:05pm

Originally posted by Coyote:
What makes you think that he will not try to use eircom lease lines to pay back all the debt that he ran up buying eircom ???

I don't think he'll get the opportunity to do that considering that the competition in the market here now.

All I have said is the truth, you can get a 1GB Fiber optic line in to any major city in the US for $10,000 a year.

I don't think that's a major concern to any company in this country. (Excluding ISPs) I don't know any company that needs anything over 155Mbps.

Koopa · 11-06-2001 11:47pm

dahamsta:
Well, most of that last post for a start...

can you point out the gibberish in that post then?
seeing as i understood it perfectly..

alastair · 11-06-2001 11:51pm

can i just re-iterate that valentia (sir anto) got eircom?

all this do'b talk is past being academic.

Koopa · 11-06-2001 11:52pm

oh yeah..
as for the "competition in the market right now", youd be surprised, there isnt any.. its been the same for the last 5 years, i dont see any reason why it would suddenly change now

and if you can get 1gb/s for $10000, you might notice this means 1mb/s for $10.. this would not be a major concern for anyone excluding isp's? so the fact that the isp could get 1mb/s for $10 for a year wouldnt mean a thing for users?

Gerry · 11-06-2001 11:53pm

as did I, maybe you just didn't bother reading it dahamsta?

Skeptic1 · 12-06-2001 12:15am

Originally posted by alastair:
can i just re-iterate that valentia (sir anto) got eircom?

all this do'b talk is past being academic.

Not quite. The board are recommending valentia to the shareholders. They don't need to accept the recommendation.

It is academic though. Noone realy knows what direction Eircom will take once the take-over occurs.

dahamsta · 12-06-2001 2:35am

Well, since Koopa and Gerry seem to want me to run through it, I will. I still maintain, however, that it's one of the worst written pieces of garbage I've ever seen.

"dahamsta i do not give a flying Fuc*K what you think to be to tell the truth."

Great start.

"what the hell are you talking about "back then" this is just about 10 years ago ?"

Can you say "tribunal"? I believe there's two currently still running. I also believe that the allegations made against DOB were a direct result of one of those tribunals? Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

"And what do you want to prove some thing ?"

In english now....

"OB said he got the other company to give FF 50 grand, the telphone company said that they gave the 50 grand, FF said they got 50 grand from DOB, what more do you want ?"

So now you're refuting your own allegation? You're telling me DOB *didn't* bribe the government. And wasn't it FG? What do I want? A legible sentence would be a good start...

"If i gave you 50 grand a week before your going to pick the next moblie phone company, what do you call that ?"

I call it bribery. But you didn't give me fifty grand, and I'm not going to pick the next mobile phone company, and again, DOB didn't do that either. Telenor - or so we are led to believe - gave FG the money.

"What did you think was going to happen? the government (FF same people who got the 50 grand) were going to investagate this ? even when it came out in the papers ? no there not."

I hasten to bring the word "tribunal" to your weak little memory again. Whitewash, yes, but still a tribunal.

"How much proof do you want that he gave a bribe ???????????"

I don't want or need any. I don't give a toss if DOB bribed the government, or Telenor bribed the government, or the Pope bribed the government. If you read my posts properly, you'd see that. I know there's something fishy about it all, but I don't care. It's fifty grand for gods sake, and like I said, that's the way things were done "back then". Ten years is a long time in politics. Five years in fact.

"I did not say that i would not give a bribe if i could to get a market like that, who wouldn't."

Again, english please.

"But thats a different thing to being in the best interest of Ireland and the people of Ireland."

Makes no difference to me. Did it make a difference to you? Please, tell me how it made a diffence to you...

"By the way i did not libel him. infact, all i have said is what he did, even he said he did it."

No, no, I'm sorry, you did in fact libel him. You said, and I quote: "Denis O'Brien is a lieing cheeting scumbag he bribed the gov of the time with a £50,000 bribe to give him the 2th moblie rights for ireland". That, dear boy, is defamation of character, plain and simple. I'd like to see you say that to his face. Or to his lawyer. He'd take every penny you own. And worse, in the post I'm responding to, you flip around completely and say that he didn't bribe the government, Telenor did. Which is it to be Coyote? I think you should skip the Debating Society.

"The companys and FF admitted it happened, and did not denied it .... it happened."

No, they admitted a sum of money was "donated" to the government. Do you honestly think a multinational company or a multi-millionaire is going to say "yes, I bribed the government"? Grow up for gods sake.

"Just because the government does not care and wants it to just dissapear from the public eye is not my fault. that doesn't make it libel."

Again, I beg to differ. Calling someone a "lieing cheeting scumbag" (sic) is about as libellous as it comes. Saying they bribed the government, well, that's just asking for trouble. If you said it to me, I'd have you in court before you could blink. Do you know why? Because if I knew your identity, it'd be an open-and-shut case. Course, that'd be where Denis would run into trouble. I wish him the best of luck though.

"As for him milking the lease line busness. He owned the damn company, he ran it for years, you think that he just walked out of a 2 billon pound company without putting someone that would do just what he wanted before he left ????"

He "owned" - he didn't in fact own the company by any manner of means - the company about two years ago. As to him "milking the lease line business" (sic), for a start he didn't have a big enough network to "milk" anything. For seconds, so what? It's not as if there was anything there as an alternative. In case you hadn't noticed, the local loop still isn't unbundled...? What did you want him to do, sell air?

"He was milking it then, and they have not changed there tone even after he left."

And what exactly is he supposed to do about that? Send them flowers and ask them to be nice? In case you haven't noticed, I /detest/ the fixed line section of Esat. Do you expect me to defend them or something?

"What makes you think that he will not try to use eircom lease lines to pay back all the debt that he ran up buying eircom ???"

Now you're imagining things, pulling rabbits out of hats. Nothing makes me think that, and I never said anything of the sort. I /think/ that there is a good chance that DOB will push to get the local loop unbundled, because he's a cute hoor, but that's just what I think. There's also a chance that he'll lock LLU out even longer and try and bleed ISDN and leased lines even further. Both possibilities also run with Valentia, and everyone and anyone else who's showed even the slightest interest in Eircom. However, I /believe/ that there's a better chance of DOB opening the loop and banging into broadband and always-on than there is with the Valentia Consortium.

"The % of profit he makes from lease lines is about 400% more that in the UK or other markets, thats fine he can charge what he likes thats up to him, it's his company."

I don't think I even mentioned leased lines, did I? No, I believe that was you. I *know* what's going on with leased lines and ISDN. I *know* they're overpriced, I *know* the network is in a right state. Jesus, I wore an t-shirt with "Eircon, working with wet string since 1985" on it for a month when I was under fire from Eircom for my eircon.org website. Overpriced leased lines and the non-availablility of broadband, always-on and flat-rate connections are directly hurting my business. The loss of SNL could take my business out. Again, do you expect me to stick up for these greedy, money-grubbing little assh0les? I detest the Irish telco's. Talk about stating the fupping obvious Coyote!

"But, Do i want the other larger telphone company sold to him? NO."

So you'd prefer it to go to Tony O'Reilly? God help us all. Do you read his newspapers? Have you read the Phoenix in the past, oh, ten years? I'll tell you this much, he gets a hell of a lot more column inches in the Phoenix than DOB does. But of course that doesn't prove anything. Maybe "Sir Anthony" *will* be a stand-up guy and unbundle the local loop. Maybe he will get broadband into all our homes. Or maybe he'll be bullied into it - at last - by the Irish government, and we'll have the same result anyway. But *my* belief is that DOB would be a hell of a lot better at the helm of Eircom. That's my belief, it's the judgement I've made from watching the telco market and the business pages for a few years, from the sidelines. You think I'm going to change my mind because of the bluff and blunder and plain-jane inaccuracies you come out with? You've gotta be kidding me man!

"And why am i confusing people over things?"

You're confusing people because although you have an idea of what you're taking about some of the time, you go off the wall with allegations, straight out *wrong* commentary and accusations, and complete bluff a good portion of the time. The correct stuff mixed in with the rubbish confuses people and leads them to believe that you know what you're talking about. And some of the time you do. But you're misleading people at every turn.

"All I have said is the truth, you can get a 1GB Fiber optic line in to any major city in the US for $10,000 a year."

No you can't, and I'm willing to bet you know that just as well as I do.

"I'm writing gibberish am I, well what am I writing that you can not understand ? as most people can understand it fine."

The post I'm responding to is a case in point. It was all over the shop. It was almost surreal reading it.

"and if I'm confusing why do you not try and tell them what is happing in ireland then, all you have been doing is running down any thing i say,
i have not heard any real facts from you about what is happing, all you do is tell others there wrong."

The reason I run down *most* of the stuff you say is because *most* of it is rubbish. And I don't just "tell others they're wrong", and you'd know that if you read my posts.

But you got your way, little man, I won't be responding again in this thread, and I won't be responding to your comments again. It's obviously a waste of both my time and yours. You just go on telling yourself you're right in your mind, and keep misleading people with your garbage.

adam

Gladiator · 12-06-2001 10:25am

stop your fighting lads, its not helping,

Tony O'Reilly will make things a hell of alot worse for us, With his 50% of chorus which is ment to be compiting with eircom for the phone market, that wont happen anymore.
and you can be sure if he takes over eircom any adsl we get will not be in the same areas as chorus is and will be on pretty much the same terms, eg very limited and **** poor.
Thank Christ for the EU because it looks like it will have to be allowed by them, and i cant see them doign that with him owning as much of chorus As well as being the dominant player in the daily and Sunday newspaper market

At least DOB will be out for himself, not deal with anyone, if he takes over we will see competition like britian,

Why did they have to sell to Tony O'Reilly?!?!?!

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