"Amy's I" article in the Irish Mirror

Gadgie

A few days ago I emailed Amy Vickers at the Daily Mirror in the UK who writes a column about technology which is also carried in the paper's Irish edition.

Here is a copy of the mail I sent :

Hi Amy,

I am a reader in Ireland of your column and I was wondering if you would be
interested to hear about the poor quality of broadband services over here.

eircom (the national telecoms company) have recently launched their
broadband "service" which costs € 107.69 *per month* and has a 3GB *monthly*
download limit (downloads over the limit are charged at 3.6c per megabyte),
which I think you'll agree is absolutely disgraceful. Their website is at
http://www.eircom.ie (sorry I cannot provide a direct link, but the site
runs on a session engine. If you click 'what's new' and then 'eircom
launches new ADSL product range' you will get there). When asked, eircom say
they are focusing on business users, and are looking into a 'more limited'
(!) option for home users. There is also no flat-rate dial-up service
available, only 'pay-by-the-minute' free or subscription services.

NTL also offer a broadband cable modem service
(http://www.ntl.com/locales/ie/en/athome/internet_cable.html) which costs
€30/€35 per month and has no download limit, but it is currently available
only in parts of West Dublin. There is also a local cable company in
Dungarvan, Co. Waterford (http://www.cablesurf.com/) who offers a cable
modem service, but again this service is limited to a small region.

There is a group set up to tackle the companies over their poor services -
IrelandOFFLine (www.irelandoffline.com), but so far they have been
unsuccessful due to the fact that there are no official bodies that can (or
are willing) to put pressure on the telecoms companies.

I understand if you are unable to help in this matter due to your column
being UK based, but I'd like to thank you for reading my e-mail and
congratulate you on an always interesting column.

Regards,

Glenn

And here is what she replied with:

hi glenn

thanks for getting in touch. i've been watching the broadband fiasco in
ireland with interest, but haven't really been able to do anything just
yet.

just been looking at eircom's woeful site (and we thought BT was bad!) and
it's appauling - 70 quid a month for a bog-standard consumer service!!

going to mention this this week - but keep me informed of any changes. i
hear there's calls for a e-minister and more competition to enter
ireland..?
cheers
amy

And now from today's column (in the paper and online at http://www.mirror.co.uk/amysi):

THE UK may be well on its way to broadband heaven but spare a thought for our Irish cousins.

They've long suffered because of the inaction of Eircom, their BT equivalent, but now an influential body has said Ireland's digital media sector will stagnate unless the government recognises broadband's potential and it's made more affordable.

Here we are arguing the toss over pennies when Eircom's prices are roughly a third higher. For £70 you get a three gig monthly download limit which, when exceeded, costs an extra £2.40 per megabyte.

On top of that, it costs £130 to get it installed and about 100 quid for the ADSL modem. And we thought BT was rubbish.

I'm not sure if anything will come of this, but it's a start and fair play to Amy for putting it in her column when she could have just said "sorry, but my column is UK based".

Glenn

MrPudding

Nice one Glen. She seems to be pretty approachable. Do you think she might do some followups?

mdf

Eh yeah but has she ever heard about the euro?

seamus

Originally posted by MrEnvy
Nice one Glen. She seems to be pretty approachable. Do you think she might do some followups?

Well, tbh, what else can she say? The Irish Mirror (like the Irish Sun) gets most of it's extra news content (Technology, Human Interest) from the UK. Amy writes for the UK mirror, and her column is still quite small, so any followups would be not really of any use to her. A better bet would be to get an Irish broadsheet reporter to put even a tiny column every day/3 times a week, updating what is happening for the Irish consumer. In the Indo or the Herald yesterday (forget which one), one tech reporter had some good stabs at eircom. Maybe take a look at all the Irish tech reporters and see who would be best to feature our kind of news. Karlin Lillington springs to mind...........

Unfortunately, the tech sections in most papers really only care about business news, where eircom have a *little* more influence, and a few happier customers.

Eh yeah but has she ever heard about the euro?

It's an english paper. Quoting euro would be about as annoying for them as quoting dollars is for us.

Oh an well done Glen. Every little helps

mdf

It's an english paper. Quoting euro would be about as annoying for them as quoting dollars is for us

My point was that the figures are therefore incorrectly translated and are inaccurate

CodeMonkey

Originally posted by mdf
It's an english paper. Quoting euro would be about as annoying for them as quoting dollars is for us

My point was that the figures are therefore incorrectly translated and are inaccurate

Cost of ADSL service is 107.69 euros which is 69.62 sterling.
she said £70 sterling.

Cost per meg over the limit is 3.60 euros which is 2.33 sterling, she said £2.40. Errrr, ok, they are rounded off a bit but how the hell is it incorrectly translated?

Dustaz

The charge for each additional meg over the limit is 3 cents not euro.

www.adsl.ie
(thats a static address that you can send her)

Raskolnikov

Nice work Glenn, at least you got off your ass and did something.

I was going to post about seeing the article but Gleen beat me to it :P

sceptre

Nice one Glenn

212.2.179.66

I have to say you are to be admired for what you have done Glenn. WTG! Nice one.

212.2.179.66

Matfinn

Glenn: Fair play for getting us that article

Codemonkey: Who cares?

Matt

Gadgie

Originally posted by Dustaz
The charge for each additional meg over the limit is 3 cents not euro.

Yeah, I noticed the mistake and told her about it, to which she replied

eek!!!
my euro calculations suck!

But lets face it - if it stirs eircom into replying, even just to correct her, would this be a bad thing?

Glenn

PS - thanks for the kind words lads

Dustaz

Originally posted by Glennus

But lets face it - if it stirs eircom into replying, even just to correct her, would this be a bad thing?

Not at all

How often is her column published? Is it a weekly thing?

Fair play to you for getting in contact there

JANER

Nice 1 Glen..................every little bit has to help....if a little.............

Gadgie

Originally posted by Dustaz
How often is her column published? Is it a weekly thing?

I think it's Monday to Friday, but it might be on Saturdays too. The guy who used to do the weekly column now does a larger one on Sundays.

Glenn