The DSL Battle is hotting up a bit....another provider is coming....via networks!

spanner_head

Found this in todays Irish Times.

The DSL competition is hotting up in Dublin!!!
Via's package is a pretty decent price :-)

It should give Eircon a run for their money,

Article by Jamie Smith again......

Dublin firm to offer DSL
By Jamie Smyth



Via Net.works Ireland, a Dublin-based internet service provider, has launched the first wholesale DSL service which uses Eircom's product to supply a service.

The new service will compete against Esat BT and Eircom's DSL products and should give the flagging broadband sector a much needed boost.

DSL is a broadband technology which enables companies and residents to access the internet at very high speeds over an ordinary telephone line. Unlike a dial-up internet connection, DSL offers users an "always on" connection.

Via Net.works is supplying a DSL service which offers users a one megabyte download speed for €165 excluding VAT per month. It will also charge a once-off installation fee of €169 excluding VAT, and offer additional internet equipment such as DSL modems.

The DSL service will initially be available only in Dublin, but will be offered nationwide when telecoms exchanges in the regions are enabled for the new service.

Via Net.works service was made available to its existing customers from Monday. It will be offered extensively in January when a marketing campaign kicks off.

The company, which was established in the Republic in 1995, already has about 10,500 corporate internet customers and 4,500 residential customers.

Via Net.works is the first company to successfully conclude a wholesale DSL agreement with Eircom. Under this agreement, it will pay a wholesale fee of €79 per line to Eircom to enable it to offer a product based on Eircom's own one megabyte DSL offering.

Mountjoy Mugger

So - where's the competition? If they're using an eircom product to supply the market, they'll have their own markup to add. They're just resellers - no competition!

LFCFan

At least there will be some competition but as they are paying €ircon a rediculous wholesale price I don't think €ircon will be too worried about it. We're not going to see the prices getting lowered because of it. €165 excluding VAT for a 1Mbit line is an absolute joke.

sceptre

Originally posted by spanner_head
Via Net.works is supplying a DSL service which offers users a one megabyte download speed for €165 excluding VAT per month. It will also charge a once-off installation fee of €169 excluding VAT, and offer additional internet equipment such as DSL modems.

In other words, they're reselling the exact same service that Eircom provide for exactly the same cost. Via's gross profit on this will be €90pm (169-79). Not exactly setting the market on fire are they?

Snaga

Assuming its not capped its a grand saving of just less than 5 euro a month. :rolleyes:

Lookout

Boring boring,

This means nothing as already stated.......

Coverage will be same as Eircon....

Also , when DSL is more widely used and the contention ratios go up, Via customers will suffer for the same lack of through put as eircom DSL users as they will all probably be running on the same DSLAM in each exchange.

spanner_head

It gives consumers a bit of choice.

spongebob

Originally posted by spanner_head
Found this in todays Irish Times.

Article by Jamie Smith again......

The DSL service will initially be available only in Dublin, but will be offered nationwide when telecoms exchanges in the regions are enabled for the new service.

Jamie is a real press release regurgitator (dont worry about the ****e therein) methinks. Whos gonna tell him that Eircom Wholesale DSL is available in Limerick and Cork NOW!

When is he gonna start >checking< >facts< like a normal journalist ?

Karlin......we neeeeed yuhhhooooo

M

RicardoSmith

Also its a business package. Too expensive for most of us. How come no solo type package for domestic use. Surely thats the biggest market. Perhaps Eircom is "protecting" its market by not releasing that as an option to resellers?

Dustaz

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
How come no solo type package for domestic use.

Under this agreement, it will pay a wholesale fee of €79 per line to Eircom

Untill that wholesale price change, we wont be seeing bubkas in the residential range for obvious reasons.

The Cigarette Smoking Man

Originally posted by Muck
Jamie is a real press release regurgitator (dont worry about the ****e therein) methinks. Whos gonna tell him that Eircom Wholesale DSL is available in Limerick and Cork NOW!

Eircom wholesale is available in Limerick and Cork now, but I presume that if via want to offer a service there they have to have a link from Eircoms POP in Limerick/Cork. I doubt Eircom are going to give them a connection back to their Dublin POP for free.

Re the article: I think it's good news. More competition is always better for the consumer. Even if it only saves €5 a month, that's still €60 a year. It's also €60 I'd rather have in my pocket than someone else's.

bk

It is so depressing when you compare this offer with NTLs 1Mb cable service for £34.99 in the UK, see post here it just shows how far behind we are.

I suppose if you where going to get Eircoms 1Mb service anyway (IrishWAN people sharing maybe , I'd rather give VIA the EUR90 pm (the amount after the wholesale price is removed) then have it line Eircoms pockets.

spongebob

Eircom will cherrypick the customers for themselves anyway, heres how BT Compete with Via equivalents in the UK

M

Ulysees

At least it's better than the 1mb offering from esat.
Why on earth would someone want to pay MORE than eircom are forcing you to pay ?

Uly

seamus

This months dot.ie has a small article on them /me ducks

It's not big, I'll type it out......

Breaking the Broadband Barrier. Dot.ie Magazine Jan/Feb '03

Despite the obvious hunger from many businesses for high speed Internet access, customer figures for DSL are still alarmingly low. Louise McKeown, marketing director at independent ISP VIA NET.WORKS has some interesting views on why this is so and how her company plans to take the lead in introducing broadband.

DSL penetration in Ireland is still very low. [ComReg] (which has assumed the responsibilities of the ODTR) recently released telecommunications market review figures for the last three months and they made depressing reading for any champion of broadband access.
The ComReg figures indicate that there are still only 1900 DSL customers in Ireland, even though the same report suggests that 25 per cent of SMEs plan to upgrade from ISDN to DSL.
There are a couple of obvious reasons why take-up figures have been slow. DSL is pretty expensive, it is not available in every exchange and for those who don't want to use Eircom as their service provider, the alternatives are limited.
VIA NET.WORKS has just launched the first phase of its DSL broadband offering, targeting small to medium businesses in the Dublin area. This is the first large scale DSL offering by an independent ISP and the reprsents the first serious challenge to Eircom's DSL service, according to Louise McKeown.
As Louise puts it, businesses looking for broadband access now have and alternative to Eircom and VIA NET.WORKS aims to capitalise on what she describes as the confusion among business users created by the incumbent's marketing of DSL and ISDN.
"Business customers are confused by Eircom's positioning of DSL and ISDN, which is a result of Eircom wanting to to protect its higher margins in ISDN connections", she said. "Eircom has been marketing ISDN very aggressively over the last few months through price reductions. The is one of the reasons why DSL take-up has been so slow at a time when businesses are crying out for affordable broadband access."
The prevailing view in the industry is the Eircom has been very reluctant to offer DSL in areas where it has a high level of lucrative leased line business because it is anxious not to cannibalise revenue from other parts of its business. "With Esat BT only present in a very small number of exchanges, VIA NET.WORKS is the first ISP to offer an alternative."
Louise McKeown says the company is rolling out its DSL offering much more quickly than Esat BT, with alost 40 exchanges already enabled and more to follow. "We are not really looking at Esat BT as our competitor - we are going head to head with Eircom and are confident that we can compete on price while offering better customer service."
She also confirmed that VIA NET.WORKS plans to expand its DSL offering early next year [2003] with the addition of broadband services and also plans to launch a consumer DSL package by the end of January 2003.
"We understand the business community in Ireland very well. We have been providing Internet access and services to SMEs since 1995 and we know there is a lot of pent-up demand for broadband."

Not much there really. A lot of marketing fluff and information hiding. What worries me is the trend of considering low-speed access products (256 and 128) as 'consumer products' and everything else as 'business products'.

512 and 1Mb are consumer products. Everything higher is business.

Maybe if someone could find an email addy, and convince them to participate here, they may build some respect from us?

BKtje

Perhaps im being naieve but im hoping that they come out with a residential producth thats not`256/128 but rather with less customer support or larger contentions etc.

Im probably dreaming but this nightmares gotta end sometime right...?

ando

is there a cap with this ?

if there is not, the package will be far superior to eircom and esat's in selling appeal

SkepticOne

Originally posted by ando
is there a cap with this ?

The service probably doesn't have a cap but neither does Eircom's 200+ euro version.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by B-K-DzR
Perhaps im being naieve but im hoping that they come out with a residential producth thats not`256/128 but rather with less customer support or larger contentions etc

For that to happen, they would need to have access to the appropriate wholesale bitstream service from Eircom. This does not exist at present.

The lowest priced bitstream service (512k and 24:1 contention ratio) from Eircom costs around 50 euros per month. Adding in bandwidth charges and VAT and taking into consideration that they would be selling very few services, VIA would be forced to charge over 100 euros per month for the retail offering.

Don't expect to see any substantial changes in the DSL market until Eircom reduce their bitstream charges and there is no incentive for them to do so at present since people are throwing money at them for dial-up and ISDN, a source of revenue that would be threatened if there was cheap DSL.

Of course this also excludes UTV from offering similar services as they do in the North.

Any change in this situation will require regulatory action.

RicardoSmith

Actually I heard from a good and reliable source that VIA would be launching a residential service around the end of the month.

Theres quite a simple reason why you would choose a more expensive VIA service over Errorcom. You fail the Errorcom line test (like I have). So you simply don't have the option of going with Errorcom.

Despite this VIA can still hook you up with DSL. Even though you are still paying way too much its still cheaper than being stuck on a bad dialup and you free up the phone line too.

The €165 excluding VAT per month that VIA is currently offering is too much (IMO) for residential users. (though I'll admit I was seriously tempted). If I was working from home more I'd have gone for it.

Scruff

I think ure wrong there Ricardo. Because VIA are basically reselling Eircom's DSL connections, if you fail Eircom's connection then you've also failed VIA's.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
Theres quite a simple reason why you would choose a more expensive VIA service over Errorcom. You fail the Errorcom line test (like I have). So you simply don't have the option of going with Errorcom.

Same line test would be used.

RicardoSmith

I told them I had failed the line test on more than occasion and they did their own check and told me it wasn't a problem. I didn't order it in the end as it was to expensive for me. I queried them on how they could give me a different line test result than errorcom and they refused to comment on it. Besides I really don't believe errorcoms line test do you? Their online test is moronic beyond belief.

spongebob

you're both right.

It should be the same test by the same company ...Eircom....and should have the same result, in a perfect world.

It could be that Eircom are not passing lines at certain signalling levels but thet VIA have elected to be more tolerant.

I would assume that Via will have their own ADSL Modems and Engineers on site to deal with the fallout.

Of interest to some home users will be whether the Via wholesale agreement with Eircom will allow them to fine tune an individual circuit to get acceptable ping times for gamers .....that being a large black mark against the Eircom service at the moment.

M

RicardoSmith

Thats why I think theres room for a domestic offering from VIA. They can hoover up all the people with marginal lines that errorcom doesn't want, and those people have no basically no other options, so VIA has a captive audience. Still has to be better than dial up though. I'm on dialup with via and I couldn't fault their service so far. I'd have switched to UTV to save on phone charges before now only for the iffy connection that some seem to experience, and also for the fact that I though I'd have a dsl line by now.

highlight

It's the exact same test at the exact same filters. Both eircom and Via Networks have access to the same database.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by highlight
It's the exact same test at the exact same filters. Both eircom and Via Networks have access to the same database.

That is what I would have though too, but it does not seem to be the case in practice as Ricardo Smith points out. Are Eircom free to take a very conservative view of the same data that they pass on to access seekers? According to their document:

The remote metallic pair survey is a process whereby:

• An indication is provided as to the suitability of the of the metallic pair to support the Bitstream Service at a articular point in time (i.e. "snapshot" in time).
• It is simply an estimate based on available technology and equipment at a particular point in time. It confers no responsibility or liability on eircom, with respect to actual physical capability of the line.
• The RMPS will be made available to Access Seekers to obtain an indication as to whether a particular metallic pair is potentially suitable to support ADSL.

Note, that nowhere else in the document (Provision of the ADSL Bitstream Access Service) does it imply that Eircom will also be bound to interpret the database in the same way as OLOs. This could explain Ricardo's situation.

RicardoSmith

I thought it was odd myself which is why I queried it with them.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
Thats why I think theres room for a domestic offering from VIA. They can hoover up all the people with marginal lines that errorcom doesn't want, and those people have no basically no other options, so VIA has a captive audience.

I can see why this might be very attractive to VIA, but it might not be very attractive to Eircom whose bitstream service they are reselling. These people Via would be hoovering up would currently be paying a lot to Eircom. This is why I don't think Eircom will willingly reduce their bitstream price to allow a residential priced service.

Via of course is still free to offer a residential service at a business price like Eircom but take-up would be very low.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
I thought it was odd myself which is why I queried it with them.

If you are getting a different result from Eircom and Via then you sould get on to ComReg immediately.

RicardoSmith

I know but unless I got it installed or had anything in writing (some chance) I couldn't really prove anything could I. Besides, I'll wait until I actually get it installed before creating a song and dance routine about it. My problem with it was that I could get the commerical package from one company but not the residential one from another. So if I paid more I can get it but if I pay less I can't. Seems a bit off no? Of course in the event of any grief VIA could always turn around and say actually no it won't work, and I'd be left on dialup forever. So I'd rather not blow the only chance I have of getting DSL however slim. At least not for now.