UTV Launch Flat-Rate Internet Package

Tellox

Also, would there be a possiblity of a longer cut-off time , say 3 hours instead of 2 as some RTS games go on longer than that (maybe a gamer's package at a slightly increased cost??)

I second that one, I for one would pay extra for reduced/no auto-dc..

pete

Earlier today, Martin (UTVi) said:

the 150 hour limit is not a rigid limit. For instance someone using the service for 175 hours with a fair % of peak usage will not see their account terminated. This is not a tiered service, and as such the 150 hour limit is a guide which will enable us to ensure that the service is not abused by a few to the detriment of many.

But then later, Scott from UTVi said:

I note some concerns about cutting people off beyond the 150 hour mark. How would users feel about UTVi charging our discounted local rate for calls beyond that?

That'd be 0.95 cent per minute. If thought to be beneficial, we'll introduce that to our T's and C's from tomorrow.

Did we just lose a potential 25 hours of unmetered access???

Hey... i'm not complaining - I'm still signing up!

rymus

god bless you UTV!

/me wipes his ass with his eircom phone bill

tuxy

Originally posted by The Gopher
30 euro a month?**** that!!!!:mad: Our bill goes to 60 odd euro from the phone calls so if you add another 60 to that it works out at more than our phonebill usually is!Feck sake,why cant it be like england where you can have broadband flat rate for something like £14 a month?

if u dont use the net alot why dont u just take up the esatbt package €15 per month for 30 hrs a month?

nahdoic

Originally posted by rymus
me wipes his ass with his eircom phone bill

lol ... yeah I meant to ask UTV that.

Did your very clever marketing people decide to release this the same day that we get our eircom bills? cos I got my whopping big eircom bill today ... maybe it was just a clever coincidence

either way I'm signing up next week.

kamobe

Originally posted by The Gopher
30 euro a month?**** that!!!! Our bill goes to 60 odd euro from the phone calls so if you add another 60 to that it works out at more than our phonebill usually is!Feck sake,why cant it be like england where you can have broadband flat rate for something like £14 a month?

€30 a month is SUPER. Plus 20% off all other calls? Surely this can only be of benefit to EVERYONE. Even if you don't spend up to €30 a month on the internet, the phone service itself is way cheaper then Eircom/Esat.

I'm curious to see Eircom's response, I'd like to get a mail from them offering cheaper internet etc then the UTV offer, and be able to say NO. I can forsee 3/4 years down the line an Eircom ad saying "Over 100,000 Eircom customers are now returning..." ala BT.

Xian

Where (in the style of Etain Doyle)

Where

Has all this demand for
internet
access
come from?
I thought
there wasn't any demand
for
it.

gHoTi

Fantastic News, I only heard tonight, and I too have been screaming the praise of UTVInternet for their pay-as-you-go service!

THANK YOU UTV!!!

I can only hope this is a fantastic first step in a beautiful journey for Irish internet users and the wonderful UTV....


As to the proposed service, I would welcome the warning letters, and also the option to pay rather than be booted, i am still suffering from withdrawel from the last time, I could not go through that again....

Cheers UTV, you repaid my faith in you!
-gHoTi:D

lawhec

Originally posted by The Gopher
30 euro a month?**** that!!!!:mad: Our bill goes to 60 odd euro from the phone calls so if you add another 60 to that it works out at more than our phonebill usually is!Feck sake,why cant it be like england where you can have broadband flat rate for something like £14 a month?

There is NOWHERE in England, for that matter anywhere in the UK, which offers broadband to customers for £14 a month. The cheapest I can remember off the top of my head is £20 a moth from a small ISP (which I guess won't last too long), Pipex also offer it at around £23.50 per month - and both of these ISPs are reckoned to make almost no profit at all from this or at a loss. The big names like BT & Freeserve charge around £30 a month for ADSL broadband.

My current ISP up here in Tyrone is Freeserve Anytime which is a FRIACO product which is £14 a month. However the big difference between the UK & Ireland is that FRIACO products exist in the UK because BT was forced to offer lines on a fixed basis (supposed to be around £100 per month) to ISP's so that they could sell flat rate Internet access without having to be charged by BT by the minute. Currently Eircon are charging ISP's by the minute so while you might pay UTV €30 a month for the service for a flat fee UTV will still be charged by the minute by Eircom for every customer using UTV's service.

€30 a moth up here for off peak access sounds rather high but as mentioned the costs for UTV in the Republic are higher as they are charged on a pay-as-you-go basis. Until a FRIACO network is built in the Republic the likes of UTV's offer is probably going to be the best for some time to come. Before the FRIACO network was built in the UK some ISP's tried flate rate access, some even with freephone 24-7 access but didn't last long (Lineone, Libertysurf etc.). Lessons have been learned and I don't any such package exists anymore.

kamobe

They won't loose TOO much, as they are signing ppl up for general phone service too. In the long run i hope they profit plenty from it, as the two bloody ass clowns down here aren't really doing anything....

VeeEmmy

Originally posted by Scott Taunton
I note some concerns about cutting people off beyond the 150 hour mark. How would users feel about UTVi charging our discounted local rate for calls beyond that?

That'd be 0.95 cent per minute. If thought to be beneficial, we'll introduce that to our T's and C's from tomorrow.

I'd be quite willing to pay that. And from what I gather from the T&C's, that's 0.95cent including VAT. Very reasonable. I don't know if I'd be exceeding the 150 hours very often, but it's good to know that I wouldn't be banished (again) for exceeding.

Thank you, from the bottom of my purse, thank you!
Now... if i can get isdn out to my place in the boonies, I will be one very happy, happy girl!

(and thanks for clarifying the 3 month min- 1 month notice thing in the T&C's.)

Well done to UTV.

Scott Taunton

Thanks again to everyone for the support. We'll be sifting through the unanswered posts today and over the weekend.

On the 150 hour cut-off, we'll update our T's and C's to ensure that no one gets cut off and will instead be charged our local rate (0.95 cent inc. VAT) per minute for the calls over 150 in a month.

One key issue being raised is some sort of warning system on reaching the 150 hours. We need to meet internally to discuss how to implement this as we don't currently have access to real time data from the exchange. We could perhaps build a system which parses our radius logs, but it wouldn't be 100% accurate until month end.

We'll get cracking on that and add a section to our "account admin" section so that users can check, plus or minus a few %, how much time they've spent online during the month to date. May take us a week or so to get that going. Hope it helps.

Kind regards and appreciation

Scott Taunton
Managing Director
UTV Internet

ednwireland

am i missing something here i work from home and most of my access is daytime eircom only charge 1.9c (-10% for friends and family) a min according to my bill.
how does 3.8c - 25% help me i am assuming the 150 hours are free off peak can't seem to find any confirmation of this

nice step but not much use to us daytime users

GIVE US REAL FLAT RATE NOW (aimed at ODTR and eircom not utv)

ando

scott, i signed up last night online, but it did'nt give an option for isdn. I put my second isdn number in the 'additional numbers' box. I hope thats ok, i dont want a €60 bill lol

Lemming

Originally posted by Xian
Where (in the style of Etain Doyle)

Where

Has all this demand for
internet
access
come from?
I thought
there wasn't any demand
for
it.

Pld Xian

ihatemushrooms

UTV Can you answer this?

are you a VISP?

As I believe you are who is carrying the traffic?

What contention ratios are you operating under?

If I sign what are my chances of getting a reasonable qulaity of service?

How many Switches does your carrier have in the South?

Why did this product fail in Northern Ireland?

Sorry for being a pain in ass but Basically your asking me for €120 (as I need to sign a contract) and I`d like to know what serviced level to expect.

Other than that I`m cool with it

Martin-UTVi

Ok, this will probably be some sort of Uber-post to try and answer some of the more recent questions. Obviously I'll repeat that a lot of the info is detailed in the FAQ's available at www.utvip.com

Ok, here goes......

And if its going that way, how about a warning e-mail after 130 hours, and every 10 hours thereafter.

Ok, as Scott mentioned, we will be working internally on something to address customers need for info on their usage. Whether this is an email or a figure they can view within their account info, we're not sure at this stage. But we're looking into it.

I think someon menctioned this but is it possible to connect using 2 isdn lines if you buy 2 packages?

Again, this is something we haven't really given a lot of time/thought to.....as you can imagine our focus has been getting the standard product released. Our initial reaction is that for 128k ISDN access, customers will be paying for 2 accounts. Give us some time on this one please.

Despite the launch of this product, will you still be campaigning and negotiating for a proper FRIACO product?

Absolutely.

My only quiery is, it did not give the option for ISDN?

Doesn't really matter to us......whether you dialup over a modem or ISDN your account is still the same.....the hardware that handles the call needs to obviously do things differently, but thats all handled automatically. As long as we have the caller-id of the line that is dialling up we're happy. Authentication is based on username, password and caller-id for obvious reasons.

the only problem i have is my ping in cs is 70 with oceanfree and 130 with utv

Don't forget we have our own online games at www.dnagames.net

is there anyway of buying 2 150hr packages on one phone line, giving 300hrs?

No this won't be possible.

Are UTV using this as a loss leader, as Esat did with NoLimits?

I think this may already have been answered.....and the answer is nope, we're not running it as a loss leader.

Also, would there be a possiblity of a longer cut-off time , say 3 hours instead of 2 as some RTS games go on longer than that

Something we'll look at when the service has been running a while.

the thought occured will clicksilver make its way down here to us and if so roughly how long ?

We'd be keen to launch a similar broadband product as we currently have on offer in NI. But its something we just have to keep working at and hope Eircom do the right thing to make it easier for us.

will you wave the 1 month termination for those of us who are impatient?

We currently don't impose any restrictions for people wishing to swap between services in NI, so I guess the answer would be yes.

nice step but not much use to us daytime users

Sorry! Bit out of our control as I'm sure you understand given the current telecoms models we're working under.

are you a VISP?

Absolutely not. We own and maintain all the hardware and the network your call is terminated on.

As I believe you are who is carrying the traffic?

Our IP connectivity is currently through Nevada.

What contention ratios are you operating under?

I think you're asking if you'll see engaged tones - there will always be enough capacity to handle the demand.

If I sign what are my chances of getting a reasonable qulaity of service?

I'd say your chances were 100%. Why not sign up for our free dialup and give us a test? http://u.tv/internet/services/

Why did this product fail in Northern Ireland?

It was only released yesterday.......We have operated successful flat rate products in NI for over a year now.

Phew, thats that then

De Rebel

Originally posted by Scott Taunton

Kind regards and appreciation

Scott Taunton
Managing Director
UTV Internet

The pleasure is all ours !!

dahamsta

ando said: it did'nt give an option for isdn. I put my second isdn number in the 'additional numbers' box. I hope thats ok, i dont want a €60 bill

Your telephone number is your telephone number: If you connect from ISDN, you'll get ISDN connectivity; if you connect from analog, you'll get analog connectivity. I would presume that the additional number is just so you can connect from either/or, but that would really need to be confirmed.

are you a VISP?

Eh, they would be really I guess.

As I believe you are who is carrying the traffic?

Nevadatele is UTV's operator in the South, so they'll be carrying the traffic.

If I sign what are my chances of getting a reasonable qulaity of service?

Speaking for myself, UTV has been my default ISDN dialup ISP for at least a year (probably longer), and I've been very happy with the service I've received. I'm using them for analog at the moment, but I can't speak for the QoS of that as I'm on a split line. Unfortunately, I can't take the new service because Eircom have cut me off, and their fraudulent invoicing for line rental is precluding me from paying the balance I owe them; however if my lines /were/ up-and-running, I'd take it in a shot.

It should be noted that I very, very rarely recommend or endorse services in this way; Esat Digifone (not O2) probably being the only other service I ever recommended to any great degree. If UTVi continues with good QoS and customer service though, I'll recommend them to everyone. They're treating us with respect that's long overdue, and I believe it's incumbent upon us to return that respect. And of course I will be hoping in earnest that UTVi realises the value in communicating with "their public" in this way.

On that subject, I would like to thank Martin and Scott for taking the time to come here and talk to us, and more importantly listen to us. Obviously it's in your best interest to do this, and you have a lot to gain by talking to people, which makes it all the more shocking that no other ISP or telco has ever really had the brains to figure it out. Well done, and thanks.

adam

fabien

Martin, you will be a busy man today...

I just had an idea...seen as we will have to change over to UTV for phone calls as well, and seen as you don't offer any other levels of internet access (i.e. 100 hours, 50 hours...) is there anyway the unused internet time could be used to make local phone calls?

Or is there any plans to offer smaller packages for less?

Regards
Fabien

Martin-UTVi

I just had an idea...seen as we will have to change over to UTV for phone calls as well, and seen as you don't offer any other levels of internet access (i.e. 100 hours, 50 hours...) is there anyway the unused internet time could be used to make local phone calls?

At this stage no.

Martin, you will be a busy man today...

Most days you'll find

Completely off topic, does anyone know where I could get back copies of TCD's mag Piranha (their student "satire" rag...) or does anyone have any copies lying about? TIA

dahamsta

Absolutely not. We own and maintain all the hardware and the network your call is terminated on.

Oops.

adam

MDR

Or is there any plans to offer smaller packages for less?

The average IOFFL Member uses the net around 64hrs a month (established in the residential survey) from home, a package for 75hrs a month at a cost of lets say €18.99 would be excellant, and I am sure would attract alot of customers from the low user bracket, who would have otherwise continued using pay-as-you-go.

flamegrill

Jusy trying out your free product now. Seems fine to me.

now wheres my credit card....?

ando

Originally posted by Martin-UTVi
Don't forget we have our own online games at www.dnagames.net

any chance of putting up a 'star trek voyager elite force server' ? Barrysworld (london) have just gone and setup a subscription service and have lost a few hundred number of players (they were free)... there's loads of us just roaming around trying to find somewhere to play usually end up on american servers... which give crap pings obviously

just giving it a go as utv seem to be saints at the mo

spongebob

Almost true

On that subject, I would like to thank Martin and Scott for taking the time to come here and talk to us, and more importantly listen to us. Obviously it's in your best interest to do this, and you have a lot to gain by talking to people, which makes it all the more shocking that no other ISP or telco has ever really had the brains to figure it out. Well done, and thanks.

Leap showed up in the recent past but not on this scale.

Vapourware has beem peddled on occasion if one will pardon
the pun.

Muppets and trolls have appeared, probably from Esat and Eircom and certainly not 'officially'. All your IP belong to log lads !

This has to be the all time greatest 'we are here to listen to our customers because they DO matter' kinda thread though. PM's are answered as well. Cripes?

Frankly this is a textbook example of the proper use of the Internet to fine tune a product in just 24 hours.

M

dahamsta

Fair point MDR, although I was talking more about "traditional" ISP's and telco's. Mr. Ardagh is of course a most welcome member here.

adam

Dustaz

Originally posted by Martin-UTVi

Completely off topic, does anyone know where I could get back copies of TCD's mag Piranha (their student "satire" rag...) or does anyone have any copies lying about? TIA

Absolutly no idea, but if people here dont answer (by the time ive typed this ) try posting either on the college play forum or in After Hours . They should be able to help you.

Dustaz

Originally posted by Martin-UTVi

I think this may already have been answered.....and the answer is nope, we're not running it as a loss leader.

Im only asking this as a matter of interest, and to educate myself:)

IIRC, Esat limited users to 75 hours on its No Limits service because this was about the amount of time that the subscription fee (€25) bought them off peak with eircon. What has changed that utv can make a profit from 150 hours at €30 per user? Has a new deal been hammered out? (i.e. Are eircon getting the same amount of money per call as they were getting from esat with No Limits)

Sorry if its a stupid question

Scott Taunton

You'd have to check with Esat about their costs. I think you'll find that a large part of their cost base is "margin" and their complaints dept probably costs a bit to run

We've looked at a number of factors in setting our pricing.

- Average use of the service - it'll not be 150 hours for everyone, but it's there for those who use it.
- Telephony contributes a little.
- Long term customer satisfaction assists with development of other products, hopefully broadband, as well as our existing hosting and registration services.

Most importantly, it needs to represent value to consumers.

It's a win/win. We won't make enough to sail off into the sunset, but we're not about to lose money on the service. We'll still be here until the regulations and competition free up enough for the next incarnation - as long as that may be. At the same time, we see genuine benefit to users of the service - and cost savings.

Development of the UTV brand in Ireland is important too. I note the comments about a "foreign" company offering these services. We want to break down those conceptions. We're listed on the Irish Stock Exchange and a constituent member of ISEQ. We're the second most watched channel in the Republic and are building a significant radio operation here with Cork and Limerick radio stations already part of the UTV Group.

From day one, UTV Internet has been an all-Ireland internet service, with offices in Belfast, Dublin and Cork. We hope that our website and services reflect that.

UTVip is a good step forward for IOFFL, but we're in full support of its broader objectives. We want to expand choice for internet users and bring long overdue competition to the Irish marketplace.

We've a great team who, as Martin raised, have worked hard to develop UTVip. There's a great buzz in our offices and they appreciate the comments from the vast bulk of you posting to the boards.

Thanks for the support.

Scott Taunton
Managing Director
UTV Internet