Scott taunton on UTV broadand date

p2p

According to an article in Computers in business UTV will not be bring out a broadband equivalent until late this year or early next year

Scott :

We want to provide it as a service and are able to, but we're waiting to see if the market reacts. I think it will be late this year or early next year. We think that's the way people will access the internet in the not too distant future. We offer it in the North and it's very successful

No wonder they've been so quiet here

Care to comment Scott?

tribble

As posted to utv.support - not exactly what you asked but very similar.
9th 4th 03
_________________________________________
>In the IT supplement with the Sunday Business Post a UTV spokesperson states
>that UTV will wait to see if the market grows before offering an ADSL
>product and that it may be into next year before they do!!!

Hmmm ... news to me. I'll find out in the morning whether that's
going to be the case or not. Was the spokesman named ?


>Hmmm ... news to me. I'll find out in the morning whether that's
>going to be the case or not. Was the spokesman named ?

Turns out thon quote was an old one from before there was any announcement
by Eircom's reselling to other ISP's.

_________________________________


tribble


[edit] removed names to protect the innocent, if you have utvip look in the support newsfeed for more info. [/edit]

kamobe

Why would it be profitable to wait and see how the market reacts? If it reacts at all, then your prospective customers have already been locked into contracts, and if it doesnt react, then nothing happens.....

Either way you loose, whereas if you at least offer the service you place your company with a chance of taking some of the market share....

That would be my humble opinion anyway

damnyanks

I know that I'd use utvip if it was released soon, I am a very happy customer atm

Hannibal_12

Originally posted by kamobe
Why would it be profitable to wait and see how the market reacts? If it reacts at all, then your prospective customers have already been locked into contracts, and if it doesnt react, then nothing happens.....

Either way you loose, whereas if you at least offer the service you place your company with a chance of taking some of the market share....

That would be my humble opinion anyway

I would guess that the costs involved in setting up a service to include such things as marketing, engineering costs, added burden to sales/tech support......... would be fairly substantial and very unhealthy for the bottom line if the demand was not there. €ircon and Esat are probably large enough to absorb any losses that may be incurred initially but I doubt UTV are.
As much as I am impressed with their amazing level of participation and feedback as compared to the two big E's I am not willing to wait until next year to get DSL.

Mr E

I'm just going to throw an idea out there..... see what you think.

Why don't UTV start limited tests with broadband? I'm sure they could get lots of willing little guinea pigs here on Boards.

Advantages of a limited launch? Easy....

- train the sales/support staff on a gentle learning curve.
- get some infrastructure and hardware in place (without costing them a fortune).
- get valuable feedback from one of the most internet-savvy communities in Ireland.
- stop the (reluctant) fallback to the 2 Es

Limit it to 15-20 users, first come first serve. Add another 15-20 a month, each month until commercial launch.

Boards users win. UTVi wins. The 2 Es lose.

Could it work?

- Dave.

Mark_irl

Hope the delay in announcing it isnt to do with them maybe having more of a profit margin on there 150 hr dial up product, than they will make on the Broadband offering. But I intend having Broadband before the end of April, hope im not forced to leave UTV as I find them a great company, but its looking bad.

nahdoic

I personally think UTV made the right strategic move.

People who were interested in BB before and in the fortunate position of being connected to a DSL enabled exchange will get broadband now. I don't feel it's going to open up a huge new market. eircom can barely handle the demand when the price is only approaching the realms of normality.

The price is going to drop even further in the future, and the wholesale rate must also drop. What's that figure the IOFFL chairman quoted out of a survey, if the price dropped another €10 the demand would triple.

So next year there's going to be more exchanges DSL enabled, and the price, please god will come down in price. This should mean that demand will really explode. Then I reckon we'll see UTV swooping in, and switching a lot of its FRIACO customer base over to its better DSL service.

I think it was a pretty gutsy decision to make, the natural reaction would be to go marching on and try to under cut when the wholesale rate is still too high.

Well they're my views and predictions anyway. Of course in the mean-time I've been trying to sign up with eircom since last Friday. But when UTV release their ADSL, I'll be switching back, if it's a better service.

BendiBus

Probably a good move by UTV to wait until we're coming to the end of our 1 year contracts with i-stream.

Then they can wade in as the Knight in shining armour to rescue us from the clutches of the big, bad Eircom.

Assuming we're not happy with Eircom. We won't be, will we?

It's a strategy that can work well for smaller players.

flamegrill

If any of you are on UTVip have a look at the newsgroup, i'd say this to whoever it was quoting Carl, i'd ask first before i'd put it here, just say in brief that he said X and where people can find the original text.

Esat are far from large enough to absorb the losses, they are hugely in debt and as far as im aware are racing toward a fast approaching deadline to become profitable again.

Eircom of course as we all know, don't give a sh1te about joe soap, and thus have placed tactics in smaller area's similar to this:

They say they cant test the lines in your exchange yet you know 2 people already who have it. They then claim there is not enough
interest in your area and pull out of it. I've seen this already, for 1 week after an exchange came online and a few people ordered it they suddenly cant test lines. This is ongoing around the country, they say there are 700,000 lines that can have ADSL, yet they wont test half of that and say "we cant test your line now call back in 4-6 weeks".

I'm annoyed, very annoyed at this point. I've been told on 4 occasions by "Biddy" as they are refered to that they will call me back and let me know whats going on. To date 2 and a 1/2 weeks later i've not recieved the call back. I ring everyday and I shall continue to do so until they either pass my line or fail it. </rant>

UTV will bring out a product this year, if they don't they are nuts :-)

Paul

amby666

I think a lot of people (apart from the early sheep with the big E) are holding off on taking a decision in case UTV make an announcement. I know I am, but will probably go with VIA in the next week if I hear nowt.

I'm kinda Pi**ed off with VIA because of adding the rip off domain I don't want, that could buy for a tenth of their price if I did want it, and host where I liked. But as well as no cap, they only insist on a two month contract, so if UTV appear, I can jump without having to wait a year.

Considering how helpful and proactive UTV have been here in the past, a post on 'intent' would I'm sure be appreciated by all.

Páid

I'm also anxiously waiting to hear from UTV.

Are Via reselling Eircom's product?

Jorinn

Yes

Páid

Surely in the long term then they won't be able to sustain the "no cap".

Could €ircom charge Via for each customer's excesses over €ircoms cap of 4gb and force Via to pass it on to their customers?

In short, does the wholesale product have a cap?

RFHost

That's not true. Eircom provide the actual DSL connection to the exchange and then the data is transfered on to the resellers network. So Eircom's wholesale product is not capped as they do not provide the bandwidth.

Originally posted by Páid
Surely in the long term then they won't be able to sustain the "no cap".

Could €ircom charge Via for each customer's excesses over €ircoms cap of 4gb and force Via to pass it on to their customers?

In short, does the wholesale product have a cap?

Mark_irl

As of 2 o'clock today UTV say they are still in talks with Eircom.

jonski

I'm in the same boat as alot of the rest of ye ie:with utvip and extremely happy there , but if there is no word from them in relation to adsl then i think i will go ahead and order the iolbroadband.....fiver cheaper and with an extra gig on the cap , I can't understand why anyone would go for eircom over this.

Also I think the longer utv wait the harder it will be for them to get customers , cause most of the ppl interested in b/b have waited long enough and are not willing to wait indefinitely.

Páid

I'd love the extra speed and I can afford ADSL at its inflated price but I'm prepared to wait until Utv say what their plans are even if that takes months.

Price won't come down until there is real competition and that takes time. I'm not sure that a telco reselling €ircom's product is competition either. In fact because NTL aren't in a position to compete in the broadband market it will be as a result of wireless companies that we see any real competition and price reductions / mass takeup.

pete

Originally posted by jonski
I can't understand why anyone would go for eircom over this.

Might this have anything to do with it?

26th April 2001

IMPORTANT NEWS FOR IOL NOLIMITS CUSTOMERS

Having analysed our customer usage pattern of our IOL NoLimits service, it has come to our attention that some of our customers are using this service excessively. This over-usage puts considerable pressure on service capacity and affects the overall quality of the service for all of our IOL NoLimits customers.

Esat Fusion will no longer continue to support this high level of usage of IOL Nolimits as it is not in keeping with the spirit of the service and it is affecting the overall quality of the service for all IOL NoLimits customers. It is with great regret that I am informing you of this decision and that your usage level falls into this "over-usage" category. Consequently, your IOL NoLimits service will be discontinued on May 31st, 2001.

Urban Weigl

I am not defending Esat, but Eircom are many times worse, so that doesn't make any sense.

shinzon

the broadband situation in this country doesnt make a whole lot of sense to anyone anymore.

You order with esat, takes months then they lose you application form and say they have no record of you ever applying in the first place (this has happened to 2 people that i know).

You know my situation with Eircom so no need to rehash that.

And via makes ou pay more for a domain name that your never going to use just so you can avail of a cheaper service.

you know you need a heavy hitter to come in and sort all these people out so im looking forward to the day that AOL finally decides to come into the republic.

Whatever anyone says about em and god knows ive heard it all cause i work for em the one thing i can tell you is that they take no **** as far as TELCOS go, you make damn sure that the service is working or else and i mean or else.

So until the stranglehold is broken well have to continue to take this **** from eircom et al

SHIN

Mark_irl

as of 23:14 tonite utv say "we just don't have that info yet :-( I'd love to give you what you're looking for (all the staff would ;-),but at this stage we're stillworking on it. We can't even confirm (right this minute) whether or not we will be supplying an ADSL service. But we're working with Eircom on their new RADSL service and would hope to have something to say soon.

Fallschirmjager

I really dont understand the 'we have to wait and see if their is
interest...'. if everyone waits we cant express our interest cos we cant buy anything. To express a pepsi-coke challange in the Broadband market, i dont want to be told what they will taste like -- i have to taste them..This is a real chicken and egg situation here i feel...and yes i know eircom have to do the exchanges story...

Also are Irish people from a different planet, when it comes to broadband?!...if it works all over the planet, and people want it all over the planet, and we have massive dialup interest, call me old fashioned, but i would hazzard a guess it will work here...Finally i am exhausted with the 'next year syndrome'...it has been next year for the last i dont know how long...is their any company, anywhere, that is actively trying to own this market? i dont believe so and to UTV i would say. If i am contractually obliged to eircom or the other e for a year if and when i get it (and that is a big IF), i CANT choose you.. I would suggest the sooner you push to sooner you own..

:rolleyes:

Martin-UTVi

we just don't have that info yet :-( I'd love to give you what you're looking for (all the staff would ;-),but at this stage we're stillworking on it. We can't even confirm (right this minute) whether or not we will be supplying an ADSL service. But we're working with Eircom on their new RADSL service and would hope to have something to say soon

Just to repeat what someone previously mentioned, this is a post quoted directly from our support newsgroup utv.support. I don't have much to add here except to say that we are still investigating an ROI ADSL product.

amby666

Thanks for the reply Martin.
I suppose investigation shows some form of 'intent', but it just depends on you managing to put a deal together.
From my point of view, without any other info, I've got to assume that even if you can work out a deal, put a package together and bring it to market, it's not going to be this week or next (how long is a piece of string).
I hope you can get something organised and I hope you can let us know as you proceed. I think you can see you have a hugh amount of goodwill built by your responsiveness and offerings.;)

LFCFan

none of this matters a jot to me and a lot of other people as €ircon have no intention of upgrading my exchange.

p2p

Martin,

Firstly I think UTV have done miracles in terms of customer service, and I think you know we all appreciate yourself and Scott coming on the boards here and interacting with us.

Thats why I was somewhat surprised to read Scotts quote in the paper the other day.

How much market analysis do you need?

As you know the uk broadband market is flying high at the moment, and all over the world it seems.
It was virtually impossible to get through to eircom from friday, and this was before any mass market advertising campaign began.

How long does it take to realize there is a market for this?
How many post have you seen, giving the thumbs up to other competitors in the market like Via? How much of these 'inbetweener' customers are you losing day by day?

I do not want to sound as if I know anything about running a Telco, especially in these turbulent times, but small margins aside I really do believe that you're on to a winner with this one provided you get the volume.

Hannibal_12

I may be wrong but I believe that UTV are concerned with the relative dearth of public awareness when it comes to broadband in Ireland.
In most other developed/developing countries broadband is now an accepted and fairly well known medium but as you all know thanks to a wonderful combination of backwardness, profit protection, a single user un-friendly telco and impotent, incompetent regulation bodies/politicians we now have a terrible situation for broadband awareness/usage at the moment (not to mention misleading advertising "Hi-Speed").

As I said before setting up a DSL service when you are a relatively small telco in such circumstances may be a risk senior management are unwilling to take.
There are of course the "if you're not in you can’t win" advocates but I don’t believe in the current telecoms climate that many telco’s will be willing to take what they perceive to be a big financial risk.
Having said all that the very second UTV do offer something I'm sure many will immediately drop Ecrap or €ircon for what is a vastly superior and user friendly company.