ADSL prices possibly £175 (per month) wholesale!!!

LegacyUser

The Irish Times (sorry can't find link yet) has an article on page 2 of Business section 1, stating that

"Eircom’s wholesale ADSL broadband Internet service could cost subscribers as much as £175 (222(euros)) per month when it is introduced next month."

There more I look into this article, the more I feel they've made some serious error however. Possibly shock tactics!!!

Here are a few more choice quotes,

"The service will be capable of receiving data at 1 megabit per second, and sending data at 356 kilobits per second. However, up to 24 users can share the line’s capacity at the same time – a contention ratio of 24/1. This means actual data delivery is likely to be much lower in practice, depending on how many people are online at the same time."

"Eircom also indicates in the document that it will only offer one product. Therefore, competitors must purchase the entire product and would need to offer full ADSL packages to customers, or break down the product into other niche offerings themselves. This is expected to decrease the likelihood of a lower-priced consumer ADSL offering, at least initially. Small businesses are expected to be the primary customers for ADSL after its launch."

"One source said Eircom would be looking for a price that would enable it to recoup much of the cost pf providing ADSL. The source said this approach was part of a wider industry move to stop underwriting the cost of ADSL for consumers in the current troubled telecommunications market. BT has already announced it will increase prices.

“No one cares about market share any more, they care about profit”, the source said. While prices remain low for ADSL in the US – about $40 per month – there are indications they will begin to rise. Almost all independent competition has gone out of the US market as former challengers to the big US carriers such as Covad, have filed for bankruptcy. The document says Eircom will review its prices on an annual basis. Eircom also said in the document that it would gradually supply ADSL to all Dublin exchanges and then to other regions in the Republic.
"


AARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH, in the font page of the business section of the same paper an article states that Chorus are putting up theur prices 29% later this year to allow it to "fulfill its pledge to roll out digital television and improve its poor customer service record." http://www.ireland.com/business/news/2001/0817/news2.htm

"Ms Doyle, who must sanction any price increase for cable television services, said she would consult on the proposed price increases and issue a determination by the end of September. However, it is understood the regulator will approve the increase. She has already decided to consider the application outside a standard adjudication framework set out by her own office."

Well Sir Anthony I hope you give us something back since we will be lining your pockets for years to come!!!!

[This message has been edited by Dangger (edited 17-08-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Dangger (edited 17-08-2001).]

LegacyUser

The logic used by Chorus is perverse ... we are offering a really bad service and as people are complaining please allow us to charge them more. If we keep increasing the price the complaining is bound to stop.

Regarding ADSL most of what was published in the Irish Times has already been confirmed by a number of my sources and while I had been warned that the price would be high I assumed they meant 80 to 100 pounds per month.

My sources had already provided the following information:
(1) There would be only one level of service
(2) The service would be a premium service aimed at Small to Medium Business users.
(3) The service would be priced to be substantially more expensive than ISDN

Regarding availability:
Some contacts told me that about 30 exchanges in Dublin were ADSL ready and the service could be made available almost immediately.
Others told me that the roll out would be slow due to a lack of skilled installation staff.

Regarding price:
While I had been warned that it would be high 175 pounds per month really shocked me. I suspect that this information had been leaked so that there will be a wave of protest and then they will reduce the price to what they had always intended (approx. 100 per month) and we will all feel happy as they were forced to reduce their price.

Questions? Is ther likely to be an installation charge a well as the monthly charge.
Does the 175 include the normal line rental for voice?

LegacyUser

Guys,

I thinks its pretty obvious that the Irish Times has got it wrong.

Think this through a moment:

1. Eircom is trialling the service to both home and business users, and have said on numerous occasions that the service will be for home and business users.

2. Home users will not pay more than about 50/60IEP or so per month.

3. Eircom (according to the Times) has only one product offering - a 'one size fits all' business or home user product.

4. As Eircom's DSL service is regulated, meaning that Eircom must sell OLOs the same DSL service as they sell themselves, whatever they offer to the OLOs must cost less than the 50/60IEP that Eircom plan on charging home users.

Personally, I think the Times is quoting the setup charge for the service - about 150-200 setup is the norm overseas for wholesale DSL service in other countries. I would venture that the monthly rental, going by what BT charge, will be about IEP40-50.

LegacyUser

hudson806 i think you have it wrong, this is wholesale, and while eircom.net may have mroe then oen product, its quiet easy for eircom telecom to have 1 whole sale product,
as stated its up to them to market it,

But the irish times did get one thing wrong for sure, the 356k up speed. since we allready know it will be 1mbps/256kps

allso this isnt as bad as it sound things about it, this is the way bussiness work, they are going to sell it wholesale in a package of 24 users, now esat will pay 175 per user or it can split it and you get a price of £85 per user,

but the quailty of service just gos out the window when you do that,

LegacyUser

OH MY GOD.... 175 a month..... FFS

And I taught £80-100 was waaaaaaay to expensive, especially when you can get the same service in england for I think £40 a month. My god, Eircom are really dragging their feet on this.....

WE HAVE to bring this price issue up in the seminar ....

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gladiator:
hudson806 i think you have it wrong, this is wholesale, and while eircom.net may have mroe then oen product, its quiet easy for eircom telecom to have 1 whole sale product,
as stated its up to them to market it,
</font>

GLadiator - try reading my post. Eircom are required to offer OLOs the same services they offer themselves, at the same prices the offer them to themselves.

Therefore Eircom are legally precluded from offering Eircom.net a different wholesale price/package than anybody else. Therefore what Eircom.net seem likely to charge 50-60IEP for definitely costs them less than IEP50-60 (since they are also forbidden to sell below cost.)

LegacyUser

i am discussed and i need to lye down

Basically incase you cant understand my post, because of that price you have an option,
1)over expensive bog standard adsl
2)still very expensive below bog standard adsl.

much, o the options

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by hudson806:
GLadiator - try reading my post. Eircom are required to offer OLOs the same services they offer themselves, at the same prices the offer them to themselves.

Therefore Eircom are legally precluded from offering Eircom.net a different wholesale price/package than anybody else. Therefore what Eircom.net seem likely to charge 50-60IEP for definitely costs them less than IEP50-60 (since they are also forbidden to sell below cost.)</font>

what im saying is they will leave the option to what service they provide, they will probably allow esat to cut the bandwidth and split the cost

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by hudson806:
Guys,


Personally, I think the Times is quoting the setup charge for the service - about 150-200 setup is the norm overseas for wholesale DSL service in other countries. I would venture that the monthly rental, going by what BT charge, will be about IEP40-50.</font>

If my memory derves me correctly, the reporter in question does not have a history of accuracy in relation to ADSL and appears to do nothing more than reproduce sections of press releases supplied by Eircom "Confidential Documents".

I hope that you are right about the Irish Times confusing installation charge with monthly charges. They did mention that it costs Eircom 2500 to set up ADSL (I assume that this is spread across 24 users) so 175 pounds installation would make sense.

At 175 pounds per month the service would not even appeal to small business users.

The feedback that I have received from friends and contacts within Eircom is that Eircom themselves would only be offering one service and it would be expensive (I had been lead to believe that this might be between 80 and 100 pounds per month so was a bit shocked by the 175 price mentioned in the Times).

This does not prevent other operators from offering different lower cost services. From Eircom's point of view this would make sense in that Eircom could concentrate on Business Users while other operators could service domestic users by offering a variety of services.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gladiator:
what im saying is they will leave the option to what service they provide, they will probably allow esat to cut the bandwidth and split the cost

</font>

According to my contacts this appears to be correct

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gladiator:
what im saying is they will leave the option to what service they provide, they will probably allow esat to cut the bandwidth and split the cost
</font>

Huh? OK, Glad, because its you, I'll run through in detail:

DSL is regulated. Eircom have to publish the price and exact technical details of its DSL product. They are not allowed to offer anybody (including Eircom.net) anything that is not on this list. They are allowed to add products to this list. So far, there is one product on this list.

So, say Eircom came up with a DSL product that they charge 175/month for.

Eircom.net orders 10000 connections. They pay eircom Ireland IEP1.75m/month for those connections, exactly the same as anybody else. Eircom.net (as part of Eircom) is then legally bound not to sell those connections for less than it paid EIrcom Ireland for them.

Therefore the lowest price Eircom.net can sell DSL for will be IEP175+their ISP fee. If they sell it for less they will be fined.

Now, Eircom have consistently said they will launch an end-user product, and it seems pretty clear that it will cost about IEP50-60. Therefore the wholesale price must be less than IEP50-60, or Eircom.net would be fined.

LegacyUser

Buried on page 4 of the business section is a tiny article that states:

I know I should not reproduce this article, apologies, I cannot find a link to it on the site. Forgive me just this once!

Title : Eircom keeps quiet on charges.

Eircom would seem to have the best of it whatever way you look at the new regime on charges for providing enhanced telecoms service to customers.

It has issued a list of charges to Esat Telcom, the one rival looking for access to its lines in order to deliver digital subscriber line (DSL) technology- which would allow operators to provide high-speed internet access - but only on the basis that they are not made public. In fact, Esat is said to be under threat of a fine of millions of pounds if it divulges the details.

It has been widley forecast that the charges will be so high that they will make it effectivley impossible to market the enhanced service to private customers, and that they will trigger a legal challenge and possibly a review by the European Union, which is looking for competition and transparency.

So why the secrecy?

It seems Eircom is keen to keep the proce under wraps until it has a chance to put together its slate of charges for customers looking for DSL - something that it does nor have to make availaable until three weeks before the product goes live.

So Esat knows the charges and can do nothing about it for the moment and Eircom can maximise its competitive advantage in both the structure and timing of its own offer, knowing any challenge by Esat will take time to be adjudicated.

In the meantime of course, the customer is kept in the dark.

</end>

So have the Times got an Esat mole? Did they see the article or is it all a stall tactic to drag the EU into it to buy time?

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by hudson806:
Huh? OK, Glad, because its you, I'll run through in detail:

DSL is regulated. Eircom have to publish the price and exact technical details of its DSL product. They are not allowed to offer anybody (including Eircom.net) anything that is not on this list. They are allowed to add products to this list. So far, there is one product on this list.

So, say Eircom came up with a DSL product that they charge 175/month for.

Eircom.net orders 10000 connections. They pay eircom Ireland IEP1.75m/month for those connections, exactly the same as anybody else. Eircom.net (as part of Eircom) is then legally bound not to sell those connections for less than it paid EIrcom Ireland for them.

Therefore the lowest price Eircom.net can sell DSL for will be IEP175+their ISP fee. If they sell it for less they will be fined.

Now, Eircom have consistently said they will launch an end-user product, and it seems pretty clear that it will cost about IEP50-60. Therefore the wholesale price must be less than IEP50-60, or Eircom.net would be fined.</font>

i know this all to well, but you seem to be missing the point,

we heard of £60-£80 for a 512k service, this is twice the speed,
is it not logical at all that while esat and eircom.net pay for 1mps at £175 they can sell it at half the price by suppling 516k to 48 users instead of 1mbps to 24. why is it that everything has to happen at eircoms end

Think just because a supermarket buys in wholesale of 200 iteams at a time, and this is the only way a whole saler will sell it, doesnt mean a supermarket has to sell all 200 iteams at once to the one person.

this is all im saying



[This message has been edited by Gladiator (edited 17-08-2001).]

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gladiator:
i know this all to well, but you seem to be missing the point,

we heard of £60-£80 for a 512k service, this is twice the speed,

is it not logical at all that while esat and eircom.net pay for 1mps at £175 they can sell it at half the price by suppling 516k to 48 users instead of 1mbps to 24. why is it that everything has to happen at eircoms end
B]</font>

Uhuh, and what I have been saying is that this is incorrect - its not technicaly possible. Esat still has only rented a certain number of ports, so even if they split the bandwidth, they have no additional ports to plug the bandwidth they have saved into.

That's what I've been saying - there's 1 product.

LegacyUser

well then that just plain stupid what there doing. There is only that amounth of bandbidth going to the dslam for the 24users, with would lead to extreme shortage, i fail to see how its possible that anyone could even reach half the speed they are offering, 2 people are on at of 24 at the same time you speed is halfed.
i fail to see how the odtr could allow this,


Edit if this is true it only confirms what i was sayign about eircom just releaseing adsl to competite with chorus wireless fr bussiness on the south side

[This message has been edited by Gladiator (edited 17-08-2001).]

LegacyUser

Some one please correct me if I am wrong but,

the article states

"up to 24 users can share the line’s capacity at the same time – a contention ratio of 24/1. "

and then says

"An informed source says a single ADSL connection costs Eircom £2,500 per line to provide."

so is that £2500 divided by the 24 users on a line? Which would be £104.17 per user a year?????

So 24 users sharing a line paying 12*175 will result in revenue of £50400 - £2500 (cost of line) giving a profit of £47900 at the supposed rate.

Surely there is a mistake here?!

[This message has been edited by Dangger (edited 17-08-2001).]

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gladiator:
well then that just plain stupid what there doing. There is only that amounth of bandbidth going to the dslam for the 24users, with would lead to extreme shortage, i fail to see how its possible that anyone could even reach half the speed they are offering, 2 people are on at of 24 at the same time you speed is halfed.
i fail to see how the odtr could allow this,
[This message has been edited by Gladiator (edited 17-08-2001).]</font>

Erm, we've discussed overbooking before. Ad nausum. It doesn't work like that. There's not much documentation on the public internet about it. Basically, an overbooking rate of up to about 35:1 causes very little hit in service quality (depending on what kind of users are on the network, obviously)

LegacyUser

Don't panic!!!

I just had an eircom engineer installing the business type ADSL here at work. He had a list of all the flavours and when asked he gave me the prices for some of them.

'These aren't supposed to be known' was how he started then he pointed at one and said 'That one will be around 60 quid' (think that was the home flavour). He also said the other will be around 95 quid (think that was the business type).

So, unless he was lying or clueless (I would think neither) then thats the type of pricing we can expect).

LegacyUser

well please explain it to me,
because ive looked at overbooking and this is overbooked twice as much as bt which some say is to overbooked itself,

bt is 50:1 ratio with a 2mb link suppling 516k

eircom is a 24:1 ratio with a 1mb link suppling 1mb

so please explain how it doesnt hit that badly

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gladiator:
well please explain it to me,
because ive looked at overbooking and this is overbooked twice as much as bt which some say is to overbooked itself,

bt is 50:1 ratio with a 2mb link suppling 516k

eircom is a 24:1 ratio with a 1mb link suppling 1mb

so please explain how it doesnt hit that badly</font>

I'm not going to discuss the vagarities of statistical time multiplexing on ATM connections - go join the IEEE and download some of their papers on it if you want that.

You seem to not undestand the ratios though:

50:1 for 516k connections means that for every 100 users at 516k, BT will supply (100 * 516 /50) = 1032k.

24:1 for 1mb connections means that for every 100 users at 512k, Eircom will supply (100 * 1024 / 24) = 4255k.

I know whcih service I'd prefer (though if Eircom charge 175/month for the service... )

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by hudson806:
Guys,

I thinks its pretty obvious that the Irish Times has got it wrong.

Personally, I think the Times is quoting the setup charge for the service - about 150-200 setup is the norm overseas for wholesale DSL service in other countries. I would venture that the monthly rental, going by what BT charge, will be about IEP40-50.</font>

Has anyone got Karlin Lillington's e-mail address? so that I can mail her to ask if she confused installation price with monthly charges.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by hudson806:

50:1 for 516k connections means that for every 100 users at 516k, BT will supply (100 * 516 /50) = 1032k.

24:1 for 1mb connections means that for every 100 users at 512k, Eircom will supply (100 * 1024 / 24) = 4255k.
</font>

this is questionable, sure there that bandwidth but only 1mb of it is available to you and thats split between 24 people

LegacyUser

Nobody knows for definite what the prices, link ratios, upload & download limits, speeds etc will be until officially announced by eircom/odtr. Everything mentioned above is pure speculation. I think we should adopt a "wait and see" approach and maybe we might be pleasantly surprised. Of course we might also be disgusted but then at least we'll have something definite to go on apart from arguing about rumours.

Just my humble opinion

LegacyUser

Here here java, I agree completely.

I am the guilty one for posting the details of the article, but I was raging after nearly choking on my cornflakes after reading the article!!!!

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by java:
Nobody knows for definite what the prices, link ratios, upload & download limits, speeds etc will be until officially announced by eircom/odtr. Everything mentioned above is pure speculation. I think we should adopt a "wait and see" approach and maybe we might be pleasantly surprised. Of course we might also be disgusted but then at least we'll have something definite to go on apart from arguing about rumours.

Just my humble opinion </font>

incorrect, the connection ratio is 1mbps/256kps 24:1
it was in a recent eircon release
the speed the trial users are on is 516k/128k

and this wait and see atitude doesnt work, its what has allowed them to get to this stage.

LegacyUser

What eircom release ? The only mention I have seen of ratio 24:1 is the IT article this morning.

The nature of any "trial" is experiment. So anything set for the trial doesnt necessarily mean it will be carried through to live dsl.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by java:

What eircom release ? The only mention I have seen of ratio 24:1 is the IT article this morning.

The nature of any "trial" is experiment. So anything set for the trial doesnt necessarily mean it will be carried through to live dsl.</font>

If you visit http://www.eircom.ie/bveircom/pdf/adsl.pdf
you will find what he is saying is correct.

I do not agee that because something is called a trial it must be an experiment ... the purpose of some trials is to gain experience and to provide staff training. As Eircom have carried out so many trials over the last few years we must hope that they are well past the experimental stage and it is fairly certain that the technical and business decisions have been made.


[This message has been edited by infomat (edited 17-08-2001).]

LegacyUser

go to eircoms site and search for adsl, you iwll find a pdf files full of lovely info, like ratios and exchanges to be upgraded, no priceing tho,

allso it seems logical to trial a service close to the one you going to provide

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Spunj:
Don't panic!!!

I just had an eircom engineer installing the business type ADSL here at work. .</font>

I assume that this is a trial offering ... what are the technical details of your service and how good is the performance?

LegacyUser

Details are:

i-stream Business Enhanced, SOC BMSSI, SOC_TYPE:C, OL(LONG):ADSL ENHANCED CONN, OL (SHORT):ADSL ENHANCED CONN, DL:ADSL RETAIL CONN, FL:ADSL RETAIL, D/S - U/S: 1M/256k, Static public IP address, Unlimited Monthly Downloads, PPPoE Client CD.

Thats taken from the sheet he did the pricing off.

I did ask him about the Irish Times article and the 175 charge that it stated. He said that that was wrong and the prices are as I posted above.

I see no reason to believe he had it completely wrong, he seemed confident of the prices he gave...

LegacyUser

Apologies Info/Glad - didnt read the doc properly.

Logic - thats a new word to eircom !