UTVip and FRIACO

Scott Taunton

I am conscious that here at UTV Internet, we have not been as active on the boards in recent weeks, but I can assure you that it's not because we've had our eye off the ball. We have been busy trying to develop a FRIACO model which will allow us to continue with our ambition of expanding consumer choice for internet services in the Republic of Ireland.

Given the proposed pricing set out by Eircom in late February, this proved to be more difficult that we had at first thought. While the pricing, at first glance, looked attractive, we discovered two key problems:

1. As an ISP, we are unable to directly order the ports from Eircom and must use a third party telecoms provider.

2. The pricing of €14779 per FRIACO port per annum excludes install and backhaul charges. In some cases, this lifted our base price to over €50,000 per annum, or €140 per line per month.

Clearly this made it difficult for us to get in place a model that represents value to Irish consumers, while allowing us to recoup the other costs of admin, hardware, marketing etc. Furthermore, all orders needed to be placed with Eircom by no later than 12 March for delivery by 25 June.

I am delighted, however, to announce that we have now ordered these circuits and will be operating our FRIACO service in all 48 primary exchanges. Therefore, our offering will be available to anyone with an Eircom phone line. We will be publishing full details of the service offering in the coming weeks.

I would like to thank everyone involved in the process for their assistance. We see this as a positive step toward the goals of Ireland Offline and a strengthening of the competitive landscape within Ireland. Ireland Offline, Esat, ComReg and Energis have been supportive and we are grateful for their efforts. Of course the dedicated team at UTVi have worked hard to prove that UTVip is a valuable stepping stone for us and demonstration of the value of quality service and support.

Whilst our final pricing is still being modelled, I would like to show our appreciation to our existing customers and give the following assurance.

Any UTVip customer, active on or before 1 June 2003 will pay no more for our 24/7 FRIACO product than they currently pay for their UTVip off-peak subscription. We will allow all of our customers to convert to the 24/7 product at no extra cost and without any setup or admin charges. Of course, should our FRIACO price be less than our UTVip service, your subscription will be changed to reflect the price reduction.

UTVip Lite customers will be able to maintain their existing service, although they will be able to use their account during peak times as well as off-peak as part of their 30 hours per month.

We will keep you posted on developments with our FRIACO offering when we are in a position to do so. We would also like to encourage debate within this forum about the final product itself. This occured with UTVip and led, we feel, to a better product for all.

Scott Taunton
Managing Director
UTV Internet

tribble

I'm just about to go home and try out my new 150 hour account with you.


Cheers,

tribble

BArra

wooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooooo




baz

SkepticOne

It is great that day time use will now be brought down in price. This will help those who work from home or are tied to the home, such as people with disabilities and the disabled.

One thing I'd like to see is an affordable off-peak product priced in such a way as to bring in moderate users of the internet in addition to heavier users. Although the ~10 euro packages in the UK might not be possible, the lower the price the better. At a higher price it won't attract the 62% of people that use such services in the UK, but I think that demand would be considerable.

Raskolnikov

Nice one Soon we'll finally have FRIACO, certainly a far cry from the days when we used to be getting charged €100's per month for a few measly hours on the net.

Well done all at UTV and keep up the great work

PiE

Well I'd just like to thank you for informing us of the situation Scott and to say that you'll definately have my custom in the future, whatever happens with DSL & FRIACO.

Tazz T

Another example of superb customer service from UTV. eircom take note.

Even if eircom come out with a lower priced FRIACO product, I very much doubt there'll be anyone from these boards taking it,.:D

Congratulations to you and your team Scott. You deserve every success for listening to your customers, talking to your customers and developing products centred around customers needs.

DMT

Originally posted by Scott Taunton
Any UTVip customer, active on or before 1 June 2003 will pay no more for our 24/7 FRIACO product than they currently pay for their UTVip off-peak subscription.
We will allow all of our customers to convert to the 24/7 product at no extra cost and without any setup or admin charges.

Will this be done automatically, or will the UTVip user have to request it?

RicardoSmith

Music to my ears. I can't get DSL or really even need it. But I need FRIACO. I assume you still need to switch the telephoney to UTVip aswell? BTW I think that you need to offer a backup connection with different routing for people who need to be able to hook up 24/7 for biz needs etc. In case theres ever problems with the primary connections. Personally I don't use much bandwidth but spend a lot of time surfing for info for development info and also email and forums etc. I haven't switched before since the down times that have happened with dialup users concerns me. The IDSN guys seem to have had no problems however. Also I wouldn't be online 24/7 but need to control the cost of my surfing, so its the primarily the cost saving aspect that has me sold on FRIACO.

Mark_irl

Now I can definitely tell that anoying little sh!t from Eircon who keeps ringing me up to change back to them, where to go. Fair play UTVip, I am going to name my first born after you!!!!

mike65

:eek: At this point I'd just like to say...
Thunk!

Sorry, I fainted!

Mike.

ps

Of course, should our FRIACO price be less than our UTVip service, your subscription will be changed to reflect the price reduction.

Thats what I like about UTVip- unbridled optimism!

KdjaCL

Hmm is this the very 1st actual 100% kill on the IOFFL hit list??
This is excellent news and to me seems 100% genuine and very soon ireland will have FRIACO.

Good job IOFFL and well done UTV for the having the balls to get this product out.

kdjac

ando

We will allow all of our customers to convert to the 24/7 product at no extra cost and without any setup or admin charges

nice touch utv

jonski

-->Scott Taunton<-- he shoots .....he scores ....and the crown here go wild ....

nice one as usual ,just because we've come to except it from ye doesn't mean ye shouldn't get the praise.

dahamsta

Great stuff Scott. Thanks for taking the time to come here and update us on your progress.

adam

DeVore

Well well well... seems like this was the week for interesting developments in FRIACO...

WTG Scott and the UTV guys!

btw, I've dropped a note in your PM box if you get a chance.

DeV.

Nyum Nyum

Nice one Scott

spongebob

congrats UTV, first on the block with a firm FRIACO announcement and price(ish)...and you are a TV station not a telco.

mention it in the Net/Comms forum as well Scott.

M

crazyasafox

I have read most of the posts from the being but cant remember Scot,will isdn be supported?,cause if so I better get cracking and order one as you know how long it takes them
Thanks

Moriarty

Ive been having a think, and a few things popped into my head. Have a few seperate FRIACO offerings.

• A low-end offering that has a 1hour disconnect, 1/2 email addresses and single channel support for as low a price as you can make it. This will attract many people who are just looking for preditability in pricing from their internet access.
  
• An offering aimed at most people that has a 2/3 hour disconnect, 5/unlimited email addresses, a bit of webspace and single channel support for a mid-range price. This will attract the most of any of the three packages and should be designed as such, for a bit extra per month.
  
• Have a high-end offering that has no disconnects (or perhaps every 12 hours/similar? to stop people taking the piss ), 20/unlimited email addresses, a fair bit of webspace (perhaps with mysql etc support?) and most importantly dual-channel support for 128k isdn. Obviously customers pay a premium for this package, but i feel there is a large market for it, whatwith broadband not being available to the majority of people who want it.

Any other suggestions?

Ruu_Old

I wonder will the new package be bundled with the telephony service, time will tell i guess Congrats UTV and IOFFL

sunbeam

Originally posted by Moriarty
A low-end offering that has a 1hour disconnect, 1/2 email addresses and single channel support for as low a price as you can make it. This will attract many people who are just looking for preditability in pricing from their internet access

Well whatever about the 10-15 mins idle timout I'd hate to see the maximum session time reduced from the current 12 hours. I don't have any need for multiple email addresses or webspace, but I do download quite a few large files-and at 16.8kbps some can take a loooooooong time....

Tellox

Although Im no longer a utv customer (I've switched to esatbt broadband), I'd like to offer my congratulations, its great to see an isp working for the irish people,and my past few months on utvip have helped me keep my bill down

If you ever set up a dsl exchange in waterford,you can sign me up as a customer.

exiztone

Hey,
just wanted to say excelent work!
I can't wait to get this product although I'm worried about one thing. Although UTVip has been a perfect ISP for me to date, little to no problems. I fear adding the 24/7 deal may run down the quality of the service. Remember Esat No Limits? Remember how poor it was when all of Ireland signed up for that, no-one could connect from 6pm - 10pm. I don't want to see that happening to UTVip.

Stonemason

Im going to have to get ISDN back in which means more money for Eircon grrrr.

O well at least i can now afford to enjoy the net again

good work UTV

the corpo

that's fantastic news.

i'm in the unfortunate position of using utv dial up during the daytime a lot, and while the peak saver rate has been great, i cannot wait for june 8)

nice one, utv

Valentia

I'm a complete UTVip fan. No dropouts, Pings don't bother me. I've told the Eircon guys on the phone where to go etc etc etc.

I'm with "Great Scott" &Co for the long haul.

Well done and thanks!

Another small step to ADSL here in Trim.

LoBo

great news UTVi - been a happy user since day one - will be even happier to tell the family (I'm in australia) that they need do nothing to get the 24/7 dialup I told them was in the works.

Can I recommend you take up Devore's offer of a few weeks ago for a FREE commercial interaction forum? Go to Community->Commercial Interaction->Komplett to see how well its worked for them - I think it would be a great idea for such a proactive company as yours.


Colm

Malcolm

Originally posted by Stonemason
Im going to have to get ISDN back in which means more money for Eircon grrrr.

O well at least i can now afford to enjoy the net again

good work UTV

To clarify several points:
1. The initial service will only support single channel ISDN similiar to the existing UTVip service.

2. We will not automatically transfer existing customers to the new service as there will be a minimum three month term re-instated. We would prefer customers to request the upgrade to the new service and agree to whatever the new terms and conditions will be. In the meantime those wishing to move to the new service can request this by e-mail or telephone and we will keep this on record and process closer to launch.

LFCFan

I like the fact that Lite users will be able to use the 30 hours at peak times too. Perfect! Nice one UTVip.

Nuphor

This is indeed excellent news. Am I right in assuming that you must sign up to UTV's voice telephony service too in order to use the product?