UTV and broadband

theciscokid

Will everyone be happy waiting for their service if they are willing to provide it?

i think 2003 will be the turning point , every isp will be churning out dsl or cable,

ntl are supposedly updating 1000's of dublin homes with their cable, esatbt will have their *cough* affordable 256 k lines, eircon will be stubborn about a price drop if any :rolleyes: ,

and what will utv plan,

any forecasts for the next year fellow forumites?

bfree

Come on, we've been waiting, and waiting and waiting and waiting and it's always just around the corner. As for NTL I would believe absolutely nothing they say unless they have given you a legal document which states you will own their company if they don't carry through on schedule! Why am I so sceptical about NTL? Well the NTL saga began with Cablelink talking up their trials (which existed in a small area) so that they could increase the price for their company which they were planning to sell. Cablelink never had any intention of rolling out a cable modem network, only of enticing an increased bid. Guess what, it worked! NTL proceeded to pay the highest price per subscriber for any cable tv network worldwide (at the time, someone may have beaten this but I doubt it). Now once NTL had payed way over the odds for the network they talked and talked and talked about the imminent launch of their cable modem service and eventually had an actual lauch. Congratulations to anyone who can find out where the service is actually availiable (the best I could discover was that perhaps a couple of roads in the Tallaght/Templeogue areas of Dublin which I neighbour were actually commissioned). A few weeks/months later and surprise surprise the promised rollout (can't tell you where or when, the engineers are out doing it and you'll get a letter in your door when your upgraded) never actually existed and they ultimatley barely managed to roll out a digital TV service before they hit the wall! End result NTL are broke, not just in Ireland however but worldwide, to the extent they they are _hoping_ to get out of bankruptcy protection! Bottom line to believe NTL will have a service for you is to believe errorcom will have a service for you that can be favourably compared to any peer they would like to pick! As for UTV? Perhaps, but I suspect that they will be using adsl over the errorcom network and hence as few people will be able to get access to it AND they will be bound to pay errorcoms pricing (wholesale adsl or local loop unbundling, and if local loop unbundling they will be tied to the ODTR's decisions on where they can gain access).

LFCFan

Originally posted by theciscokid
ntl are supposedly updating 1000's of dublin homes with their cable

When I rang NTL a while ago to ask about the Roll out of their Cable Internet service I happened to get some chap who must have been seriously pissed off with NTL 'cause he basically told me that there was no chance that NTL would ever be upgrading any more areas and not to believe anyone who tells me otherwise. Ireland must be the unluckiest country in the world to get 3 of the most useless companies ever. €ircon, NTL and Chorus.

acid

unless the price of wholesale bitstream is fixed at a reasonable level there will be no alternative dsl offerings. esat only put their equipment in exchanges cos they got financial incentives to do so. the normal way of doing things is for operators to buy wholesale from (eircom) and resell. in the uk, bt was split into wholesale and retail, the same needs to happen here, asap.

nobody will touch eircom's wholesale dsl because of the margin squeezing. im sure utvip and others would love to offer dsl but its just not viable atm.

as for ntl and chorus...............

the best hope for the future as i see it is wireless from the likes of irishbroadband and leap.

but hey, who cares anyway? when you can access the internet for as little as 1c per minute :rolleyes:

De Rebel

Originally posted by acid
unless the price of wholesale bitstream is fixed at a reasonable level there will be no alternative dsl offerings. esat only put their equipment in exchanges cos they got financial incentives to do so. the normal way of doing things is for operators to buy wholesale from (eircom) and resell. in the uk, bt was split into wholesale and retail, the same needs to happen here, asap.

nobody will touch eircom's wholesale dsl because of the margin squeezing. im sure utvip and others would love to offer dsl but its just not viable atm.

as for ntl and chorus...............

the best hope for the future as i see it is wireless from the likes of irishbroadband and leap.

but hey, who cares anyway? when you can access the internet for as little as 1c per minute :rolleyes:

excellent summary

MDR

acid is right up until a point.

The introduction of FRIACO will be a major turning point in the Irish Internet Market. It seems government is behind it now, as in the rest of the telco industry, as is the media.

People I had to hard sell FRIACO to 6 months ago, now accept it as fundamental. Its no longer a question of if it will happen, its more so a question of when it will. Eircom could delay it until mid-2004, it would take government that long to implement laws to force Eircom to provide the service, plus they would alienate themselves even further from government, which is never a good idea.

They may however yield to the demand for FRIACO, and position themselves much better in the long term. If I was O'Reilly and the boys, I would prolly fight to maximise profits in the short term and pay off some on the 2billion they owe and fund redundacies.

When FRIACO is introduced it WILL act as a catalyst for affordable broadband.

acid

has anyone heard anything substantial as to a possible price when FRIACO is introduced? (or a likely date for that matter)
anything over €25-30/month will scare too many people away and i hate to say it but, like MDR says, eircom could quite easily stall the process for some time.