Eircom DSL....£40...... Yes Please

LegacyUser · 13-06-2001 11:21pm #1

The main reason of this post is to find out what other peoples price threshold would be re: any DSL service introduced by Eircom. At this point in time I would snap this up (if it's always on obviously) having been made fully aware of the situation since my forced interent usage scaleback.
Maybe this is more a damning indictment of my boring life, but I personally think this option would be very economical.

Since the SNL fiasco I think I have spent more cash in compensating for the void of the interent.
The last 2 weeks For example...
-The Irish Times and Sunday Newspapers £15-£20 (normally read online)
-5 cinema visits and 1 DVD Rental- another £15-£20 (This is to compensate there never being anything on TV)
-Bought 2 CD's and Plans for 1 more on June 19th (by the excellent "Stone Temple Pilots"!)- normally downloaded -Obviously having the Cd is better but I would have settled for burning them onto a CD-R- Thus another £45
-A hell of alot more voice calls and mobile SMS- normally done by e-mail or the free SMS on
Ireland-On-Line- £10

Total: All in all its over £100- and I am sure this will rise unless I find some other distractions quickly

I know I am on vacation ( I'm a student & I'm starting a new job-June 25th), so I may be in a bit of a quite period and therefore looking for stuff to do but still, life without the Interent is costing me indirectly, if not only finacially but also in terms of my mental Health!

Although the £40 by Eircom may sound a bit steep, I think as seen above the Internet if used to the full is quite and economical resource and maybe this price is about fair.

I would be fascinated to hear other peoples experiences and indirect costs of life OFFLINE!
I am sure theres tons of stuff people have taken for granted as being availanle @ a mouse click that now they are devoid of.

80p.

LegacyUser · 14-06-2001 12:26am

I'm not yet disconnected so I won't speak on the costs of being off-line, but reliable sources have it that Eircom are planning on charging in the region of £60 a month for ADSL and this also includes a 1 gig download limit.Which is crap for anyone who uses the net for anything more than an occasional browse, I'm told.charges for going over the 1 gig d/l limit are yet to be decided.....

LegacyUser · 14-06-2001 10:17am

Originally posted by bugler:
Eircom are planning on charging in the region of £60 a month for ADSL and this also includes a 1 gig download limit.

na, I don't think they would do both. THey might introduce 1 of the restrictions, but not both (60 quid and 1GB limit)

www.EFtraining.com

http://www.thealexandriaclan.barrysworld.net

LegacyUser · 14-06-2001 11:00am

Bugler is absolutely right about both the price and the 1 gig limit.

LegacyUser · 14-06-2001 11:17am

About the 1 gig limit. If this is the case, you could easily organise a protest against this. The ODTR might then prevent Eircom from offering the service. This might be what Eircom wants. They have been blaming the ODTR for the lack of DSL of late.

LegacyUser · 14-06-2001 12:06pm

Originally posted by hudson806:
Bugler is absolutely right about both the price and the 1 gig limit.

Where are you getting the facts from ?

LegacyUser · 14-06-2001 4:35pm

Originally posted by ando:
Where are you getting the facts from ?

Can't say, I'm afraid. I recommend you proceed as Skeptic1 suggested, and let Eircom know you are unhappy with this restriction.

If enough people complain, they _will_ change it, but _now_ is the time to do it.

LegacyUser · 15-06-2001 5:52am

grrrrh

what is the point in broadband with that sort of limit?

assuming a 4K/sec constant speed, i could download 10 gigs in a month over modem! 10 times more data via modem than with broadband. f*cking ridiculous.

i could download over 1 gig on my 75 hrs from esat.

how can you protest against something that hasnt been announced?

LegacyUser · 15-06-2001 8:30am

Originally posted by Acous:
how can you protest against something that hasnt been announced?

My suggestion is wait until it has actually launched. If the limit is in place at that time, then boycott the service. My earlier post was a bit ambiguous. If you protest now and it's successful, then the ODTR will not approve the new service thereby giving Eircom an excuse to delay the service for another year. Let Eircom go ahead and keep pressing for LLU is what I would suggest.

I'm not on the committee and this is just my opinion. I am happy to go along with whatever approach the committe takes.

[This message has been edited by Skeptic1 (edited 15-06-2001).]

LegacyUser · 15-06-2001 11:21am

"My suggestion is wait until it has actually launched. If the limit is in place at that time, then boycott the service" (SOrry, don't know how to do the quotes thing)

So the plan is to campaign for months for broadband internet, then boycott it when it launches?

Eircom will probably listen to a polite letter explaining the drawbacks of a 1 gig service and politely asking for it to be increased, (assuming there is a plan for a 1 gig limit)

Seriously, Eircom are a pain in the ass, but they don't exist purely to antagonise internet users

LegacyUser · 15-06-2001 1:03pm

If you protest now and it's successful, then the ODTR will not approve the new service thereby giving Eircom an excuse to delay the service for another year. Let Eircom go ahead and keep pressing for LLU is what I would suggest[/B]

YES, I agree completely, wholehartly, absolutly .... If you give Eircom any excuse to make more money on the sly, they will take the offer up

!

It's funny, this organisation is campaining for broadband in ireland, but now some ppl are thinking about boycotting the service when we finally get it !!??!!

If there is a crippeled ADSL service from Eircom, at least we will have a service, and it will be only a matter of time before the service becomes resonable as competition will bring down the prices ....

LegacyUser · 15-06-2001 1:28pm

Originally posted by hudson806:
So the plan is to campaign for months for broadband internet, then boycott it when it launches?

That is what I was suggesting. I don't know what strategy will be adopted by the IrelandOffline committee.

Eircom will probably listen to a polite letter explaining the drawbacks of a 1 gig service and politely asking for it to be increased, (assuming there is a plan for a 1 gig limit)

I don't think so. They already know about the drawbacks of ISDN and 56K dialup. I'm sure they have had a few polite letters about these over the years. They have had ADSL capability for some years now.

Seriously, Eircom are a pain in the ass, but they don't exist purely to antagonise internet users

They are only a pain in the ass because that is the way to make money in a monopoly situation. They care what users want only in so far as it increases their profits. This is the nature of corporations. I'm sure they would rather not antagonise users but if making as much money as possible requires doing this then that is what they will do. Their function is not to keep users happy. By all means send a polite letter, but I believe, IMHO, that they are fully aware of the limitations and are deliberately setting the limit low in order to make the product unnatractive whilst being able to make announcements in the press about their "cutting edge" technology. Remember, they make huge amounts in call call charges on ISDN and 'free' internet access. They would be giving up a chunk of this if they brought out an unlimited xDSL service. They would also lose some of their low capacity leased line business.

All the above assumes the 1 gig thing is true.

[This message has been edited by Skeptic1 (edited 15-06-2001).]

LegacyUser · 15-06-2001 2:17pm

So maybe the best approach would be for the Irelandoffline people to start mentioning this limitation when talking to the papers/competitors/ministers/ODTR and explain why this is a "very bad thing", and that it negates much of the benefit of broadband in the first place.

How would that sound?

LegacyUser · 15-06-2001 2:27pm

even though we are all thinking of ways of campaigning against this limitation service, I still have not seen 1 shread of evidence for the introducion of the 1GB limit.....

It's probably just someone messing about

Personnally, I ain't gona do a thing until I know the hard facts for myself ...

If Eircom plans not to introduce a crippled service, all we'd be doing is delaying adsl

LegacyUser · 15-06-2001 9:51pm

Thanks for the feedback so far, but the aim of this topic was to find out the price threshold of users for the service just so if we have any discussions w/ the Telco's we have consensus on a price. Without being specific on download or time limits, please assume any service introduced will be unlimited. Therefore what is the upper amount you will be prepared to pay for a DSL service ??

80p.

LegacyUser · 15-06-2001 10:48pm

OK. For me £50 per month. I could be pushed as high £65. Some of my phone bills have been this high on occasion. I am not a nolimits customer.

LegacyUser · 15-06-2001 10:58pm

sorry 'bout going off topic 80 !!

If I had unmetered DSL, I would be prepared to pay anything upto 60 quid a month, but thats just me, I'm desperate for unmetered broadband

!

Personally, I think £60 a month is a rip off, but I would still pay it....

I think an acceptable pricing for unmetered ADSL would be £40 a month, but would expect the price to come down as more ISP's were able to use the Local Loop !

LegacyUser · 15-06-2001 11:19pm

LET'S BE CAREFUL

I understand what you're trying to do here, 80p, but are you sure it's a good idea for a public forum?

These boards may be read by Eircom and if people publicly state their willingness to pay figures of up to £65, that may well become the price that Eircom targets.

In regard to suggestions by other people about the committee starting to lobby on prices, we haven't discussed this as a committee. What I am going to say now is therefore only my personal view and I am not speaking on behalf of IrelandOffline.

I think it would be premature. Let's concentrate on getting broadband in place and see what 'market forces' do to the price, bearing in mind that there will be competing companies in this area if LLU takes place. If the price settles at too high a price, then we should certainly lobby about it. I also think it is premature to start talking about boycotting something that isn't even there yet.

Again, I must emphasise that this is just my personal view.

Martin

[This message has been edited by o_donnel_abu (edited 15-06-2001).]

LegacyUser · 15-06-2001 11:48pm

Point taken Martin.

However the experience in the past has been that the Telco's have always gone way too high when they introduce the service and are then shocked when nobody takes it up. They then usually issue press releases saying they're withdrawing the service because of poor demand. At least if we make it public what we're willing to pay they know where they stand.
If the Telco's for instance know £30 max will have a high demand, they can make financial forecasts on that basis.-ie- If the service has a high penetration but is loss-making to begin with at least they will know when it will be profitable down the line.
Obviously we dont want to overshoot the mark & thus let the Telco's continue to take us for mugs but if the aim is to campaign for Unmetered Access we will have to set guide prices as to what we will pay. I beleive this is the approach the C.U.T in the Uk used and look it where it got them (about a thousand times faster and half the price internet services !)

Your point is valid Martin, and i will not press this topic in the future if everybody thinks it better we wait until the service is actually here. For the moment though I think we should let it run its course and then analyse the feedback.

Comments, as always, Welcome.
80p.

80project.com

dahamsta · 16-06-2001 12:27am

Just posting to agree with Martin, 80. Apologies if it seems I'm ganging up on you, but I think he's got a fair point, and I was thinking along the same lines meself. I won't just post a problem and not a solution though, so how about this - prepare a questionnaire and team up with Bard to put it on the website. That would keep it out of the public eye, and would also result in a dataset that can be organised and presented more easily.

???

adam

LegacyUser · 16-06-2001 1:14am

Personally I dont think we will evewr get a decent deal off eircom, and Im no longer holding my breath for DSL. If it comes out with a 1gb limit, im not getting it because its simply not worth it, especially even at £40. £60 huh, not a chance. I think ill stick to dialup, and go with utv internet flatrate. Im prepared to put up with the slow speed and unreliable connections to a point. We will never get fair and decent net access here not for at least ten years. sorry to say that, but if Telcos here ( i mean you eircom!! ) arent going to give us what we need then **** them!!

thanks for reading

Matfin

LegacyUser · 16-06-2001 1:38am

i'd agree with matfinn there, if there was a choice between unlimited isdn and limited broadband (1gig, 5gigs, whatever), i would go for the unlimited.

im not worried about high pings, low download speeds, my priority is not having to look at the clock/download meter every 5 minutes to check if i'm over the limit.

LegacyUser · 16-06-2001 2:58am

Anything up to £100 a month for unlimited LPB'ness would be grand for me

Oh and matfinn, get off my avatar fs, ive had it for ages

*cough*
daves l33t site 0wns j00.

LegacyUser · 16-06-2001 3:13am

A question for richindub2.

what do you mean when you say this.

"Oh and matfinn, get off my avatar fs, ive had it for ages"

??

I dont know

LegacyUser · 16-06-2001 5:22am

Originally posted by richindub2:
Anything up to £100 a month for unlimited LPB'ness would be grand for me

Ah the use of bandwidth as a force multiplier. :-) Just been on a Swiss server playing DoD and the enemy team had 3 lpbs. They learned how I got my nick. :-)

Seriously though:

What worries me is that Eircom may not have the bandwidth necessary between the towns to support reasonable throughput. With O'Reilly's takeover, I don't know if enough surplus Eircom employees can be eliminated. Eircom is probably going for a staggered implementation, hitting the business users first and then the domestic users. The reason for this is that the business users are the most likely to move their custom from Eircom - especially the leased line business users. having dealt with the people that pass for Eircom leased line sales a while ago, it is amazing that anyone ever signs up with them. I had asked for a quote on a leased line and some luser sent me a quote for routers and "Eircom" consultancy, minus the critical quote for the leased line connection. If you think that is bad, in the following quote, Eircom got itself mixed up with the internet and wanted to charge on a demand bandwidth model which worked out at twice what other companies wanted to charge. Perhaps Eircom has improved over the last while but the mess it has made of the ADSL, it is going to screw things up again. I'm not cynical, I just have seen how Eircom operates.

Regards...jmcc

LegacyUser · 16-06-2001 1:54pm

Personally, I'll pay up to £60. Its probably unrealistic to expect it to cost any less than that - with ISDN at £35, exluding ISP charges, £60 for DSL (including ISP charges) seems about right level.

LegacyUser · 16-06-2001 2:00pm

Owing to the possible sensitivity of this thread in terms of us potentially showing "our hand" as such to the telco's, I think we should as stated by Adam conduct this debate in a more private manner. For this reason I believe we should suspend the posts on this topic. As suggested though the debate should continue....

If nobody objects, I would be happy to accept e-mails on the subject and report on the general consensus. This would be in terms of matching prices with the speeds, time limits or download limits and thus reporting the findings.
I could then prepare a brief for the Committee to assist them in their future negotiations or for Bard to post somewhere on the website. I do think it is essential we come up with some ballpark figures on what we are willing to pay or accept in terms of speed, specs etc.. Eircom et al in the near future can match our official aims- "UNMETERED AND BROADBAND INTERNET ACCESS IN IRELAND " but @ what price. If we ever have future negotiaitons w/ the Telcco's we may not have a leg to stand on, because they'll just say Ireland has broadband etc. already. Given this it may be nessecary to refine our objectives slightly, maybe the need to stress the words "Affordable" or "Under £x" ??
I know the committee may want to keep all correspondence on the official site but if it is no problem I will accept e-mails and report back to you promptly on the issue.
For those interested you can E-Mail: web@80project.com . If possible please be as specific as you can in terms of prices and specs you're willing to accept.
Suggestions as always welcome on the topic
80p.

80project.com

LegacyUser · 16-06-2001 5:33pm

Matfinn - That dog thingy, the picture under your name, it looks bad having two people with the same avatar and i had it first

*cough*
daves l33t site 0wns j00.

LegacyUser · 17-06-2001 12:45am

ah, so there's a good reason for the "no life" under your avatar

regarding prices, i dont think stating your price limits will do any good. its not a good time to ask the question, we're starved of quality net access, we'd pay nearly anything. we should get prices in line with the rest of the developed world.

LegacyUser · 17-06-2001 3:22am

I support this Ireland Off Line cause but at the end of the day its Eircom who will decide the pricing for DSL. Its not a auction for christs sake

.

80project.com

Owing to the possible sensitivity of this thread in terms of us potentially showing "our hand" as such to the telco's, I think we should as stated by Adam conduct this debate in a more private manner. For this reason I believe we should suspend the posts on this topic. As suggested though the debate should continue....

Ya and thers a guy outside my house with a trench coat and readin a newspaper.

[This message has been edited by Unhappy (edited 17-06-2001).]

LegacyUser · 17-06-2001 7:32pm

If eircom do impose the rumored 1gb limit for a connection that is up to 20 times the speed of modem dialup we are in a hell of a lot of trouble. Chorus's version is £40 a month and has a 3gb limit, but that is for a connection that is only 8 to 10 times faster than dialup. with the advent of microsofts rental software, streaming tv and every other new development of the web, 1 gb is going to be about as worthless a month as a 10mbyts are at the moment. I'm strongly against these massive restrictions that we always have to face when a new product is released, its these kinds of chains that have kept us held back, in the new tech stakes, in this country for so long. And i suggest that everyone make it clear that we wont stand for it.

Ours is not to reason why!!