NTL ...20% of Passed Houses get Broadband

spongebob

Did anybody notice the artilcle in the Sunday Trib yersterday about NTL.

NTL have admitted they only upgraded the cable to less than 3000 houses before they stopped the project. They also gave the finger to any suggestion that they may upgrade any other customers.

Among these 2900 odd houses the Broadband takeup is 20% so far. This is indicative of what happens when a decent always on connection is provided at a reasonable price. This is also the first time that NTL have admitted the real situation instead of peddling lies thru their press releases such as This one to give but one example.

Taking the RAT at ITS word as per its full page ads in the national papers this month, there should be 100,000 €ircon broadband connections by now.......except that the figure is more like 2000 and that is because the price is WAY too high for what they are providing.

The government should give the fibre ring dosh to NTL instead.....once NTL have put the performance bonds into place first of course, we can hardly take their word for it now can we

M

Hannibal_12

I would very much like to see NTL offer a dirt cheap 512kbps unlimited service to watch the RAT sweat and make a feeble counter offer on its I-Scream. I had always hoped that NTL would make cable internet widely available and promoted.I suspect that if they did so our situation with broadband would be significantly different. But alas it was not to be and I have basically given up on them for anything internet related in the next 5 years.

ozt9vdujny3srf

Originally posted by Hannibal_12
Eircom don't do ADSL but if they did, it would probably be the most expensive ADSL in the world.

They do, and it probably is :P

Dustaz

Originally posted by Muck

Among these 2900 odd houses the Broadband takeup is 20% so far. This is indicative of what happens when a decent always on connection is provided at a reasonable price.

[devils advocate]

20%. NTLs cable service is fairly cheap and close to the european average (€50 per month isnt it?) Itsalso been pretty widely advertised, so thats not really an argument. This figure bears out the figures in The Survey That Shall Not Be Mentioned. Why should they spend a penny upgrading other areas when demand is this low?

[/devils advocate]

The above could easily be trotted out by certain telcos and/or analysts to prove that Ireland has no interest in broadband, and to be honest for the general population, they wouldnt be far wrong.

Actually, i think 20% is a remarkably good figure for a broadband product, especially given that the rollout area is so small. It shows that there is demand for a reasonably priced decently spec'ed service. Plus, demand is hardly going to wane for broadband, NTL will probably see those figures rise sharply once the country has been exposed to the benefits of broadband on a wider scale.

spongebob

20% uptake in less than a year might I say.

Nor have I ever heard of anybody who chucked the service for a DSL product instead. Thats 20% and no churn so. Thats more than you could say about the churn rate on their TV packages.

Naturally, being NTL, they are institutionally incapable of recognising when they are doing something right.

M

pete

How many of those 2,900 homes actually have PC's?

How many more will sign up when they realise that they can use cable interweb for the new (broadband only?) XBOX and PS2 online gaming services?




they can, can't they?

spongebob

MS actually encourage people with Broadband to join their Sandyford based testing service, free XBOX games for ya if ya can speak a UURopEEN language.

M

Kevok

Really? Who do you contact for this? mmmmm free games.

Lemming

Originally posted by Dustaz
Actually, i think 20% is a remarkably good figure for a broadband product, especially given that the rollout area is so small. It shows that there is demand for a reasonably priced decently spec'ed service. Plus, demand is hardly going to wane for broadband, NTL will probably see those figures rise sharply once the country has been exposed to the benefits of broadband on a wider scale.

Also bearing in mind that the largest catchment area for NTL cable-internet is Tallaght, which is not considered a very affluent area.

NTL stated (in a meeting with SkepticOne & myself) that this was also a factor in their pricing of the product. Their initial pickup of the service in this area wasn't near 20% since most people in the area weren't convinced of why they should spend more on their internet bill (if they even had one at that point). NTL then got more people aboard by educating people as to what exactly it was that they would be paying some odd €30 for.

I cannot, unfortunately, recall what/if a user figure was mentioned for the Templeogue area though.

David C

Originally posted by Dustaz
NTLs cable service is fairly cheap and close to the european average (€50 per month isnt it?)

Think it's €35.. or €30 if you take their digital pack...
Only wish I could get it, but i've been asking ntl for years.... gave up hope a long time ago...

zynaps

Yeah. I asked them periodically over the phone since I was 17 or so.
I'm 20 now, and it seems their attempt at cable internet died a while ago and never got up...

If it's so blatantly fruitful a market waiting for them, why haven't they gone for it?

I mean, we want broadband so of course we're going to highlight the positive aspects for them to do it, in terms of takeup and interest and lack of ANY real competition...

But surely if they're the big business they are, they have market researchers and so forth looking into this stuff, who should be more informed than we are.

So why aren't they going for it?
It sounds to me not like they're broke, but that they have no interest at all in reviving their cable internet project...

Which also begs the question, should they really be advertising cable internet on their website and flyers etc.? It's certainly giving me a pain in the hole.

"Get your cheap, speedy, efficient cable internet with ntl, for an affordable broadband option!*

*May only be applicable if you are in the 0.1% of the population of Ireland that our network can provide services to"

zynaps

MDR

NTL have no interest in Ireland,
as long as nothing becomes availble which will significantily erode their existings customer base, any and all money they make here is going over the water.

They are still stinging after paying €635 million for a lame duck and have no interest in further capital spend in the Irish Market. Which given the rate of return they are seeing for already spent money, why would they be encouraged to invest more ?

scojones

Since i live away from home and i am attending college in Tralee my income is very limited. I work in the cinema here at weekends and my rent is €50, so as you can see even if broadband was €30 a month i would not be able to avail of it until i finish college. Now i know all of us on IOFFL want affordable broadband, but how many people in this country want it? I'm talking home users, and not just that.. How many do you think would actually GET it.

Maybe that's why NTL, if they are not broke, have stoped. 20% is a low figure. Is it not? Please don't find this offensive and flame me. I'm just trying to figure it out. I'm not talking i-stream either....

MDR

20% is a low figure. Is it not? Please don't find this offensive and flame me

20% uptake is a high figure way above the EU and US averages ....

Kevok

I apologise now if this post offends anyone, it's not meant as such, just as an expression of fact.

The Dublin 24 area, Tallaght, Templeogue etc, isn't a very affluent area of dublin. A fair few just don't have €30 to spend on broadband.

The reason, that NTL upgraded there first, was simply because it was cheap to upgrade. The area is fairly new compared to the rest of dublin, so the task of upgrading was simpler than if they had started in Ballsbridge, Donnybrook or anywhere that the take up may have been higher.

The amount charged by the council per foot of road dug up varies between the areas aswell.

MagicBusDriver

If your a NTL phone customer you get free dial-up. Your can also get the 128k for €25 a month.

My mate around the corner has 512k. NTL did not upgrade my road so I have I-stream. I should have bribed the NTL crews to upgrade my road , save me €70 a month.

theciscokid

my mate has the ntl broadband up in tallaght, he has ntl cable so his internet is E30 , and its real nice he gets 65k a sec

The Smircher

I was among one of the first ntl cable modem users in Tallaght.

Price started off at £50 per month which was less than I was paying for ISDN at the time.

Around last September, the price dropped to around €30 per month.

I recently moved to another non-cable enabled area (which is a real pain), but I convinced my sister to keep the cable modem in our family home.

The service is REALLY nice...d/l speeds consistently around 65 - 70 KB/s.

I'm not much of an online gamer, so I'm not sure what the ping times were like.