Line Rental Increase

Mr E

http://breaking.examiner.ie/text/story.asp?j=58274300&p=58z7489x&n=58274989&x=

The price of phone bills is set to increase.

Eircom is putting up its line rental charges by over 6% from June 1.

The move comes just two months after the phone company increased line rental by almost 8%.

Eircom says the price hike coincides with the provision of wholesale line rental.

This will allow other operators to rent lines from Eircom at wholesale rates.

More money for Eircom :mad:

- Dave.

BoneCollector

so they sell it whole sale and pass there losses on to its customers.. but when it make profits!? the reverse never happens.??

also.. if there selling wholesale should we!! be able to buy the rental at retail from the carrier!??

Mr. Fancypants

And the wholesale rate will only be 8.5% less than what Eircom charge us. Not a lot of room for competition.

http://www.onbusiness.ie/2003/0512/eircom.html

MadsL

Am I right in thinking I can move my phone service from June. That is get one bill instead of two?? No more eircom bills??

MDR

And the wholesale rate will only be 8.5% less than what Eircom charge us. Not a lot of room for competition.

Its not like DSL where the reseller will have to provide backhaul etc, the reseller in this case has very little to do, hence the tight margin, its just to elimate the new situation.

On another point, This is absolutely f*cking scandalous, this is the second line rental increase in a year on what is already way more expensive than the next most expensive european neighbour. Muck ... do the sums !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and lets get busy.

Mr E

"2nd increase in a year" might be tolerable, MDR. This is the 2nd increase in 2 months!

Criminal.... thats the only word for it.

- Dave.

echomadman

aggh my DSL gets delayed anf this in the same day

PiE

Two increases in such a short space of time? This is turning into a fncking joke lads. There must be something we can do... like force ComReg to make Eircom justify the price increases?

Mr_Man

I would suggest that Comreg force Eircom to delay this increase until such time as they have agreed to provide a realistic mechanism for allowing subscribers to transfer to another provider. The latest news on this front I believe that there is still no agreement on this as Eircom want to use a manual system to provide the changeovers, while the other operators would like an automatic system. Until this gets sorted there will be no single billing, and I can see it happening by June......

M.

zz03

Originally posted by MDR
Its not like DSL where the reseller will have to provide backhaul etc, the reseller in this case has very little to do, hence the tight margin, its just to elimate the new situation.

We are taking wholesale "line rental" here. R Kinsella telecom decides to go into the phone business competing against eircom in the Dolphin's Barn area.

He knocks on every door in the area and signs up customers for his new phone service. He pays eircom a monthly fee of €16.81 + VAT for every line he unbundles and incurs lots of other fees detailed here.. He buys his own telephone exchange from Ericsson or Nortel Networks or Alcatel and rents a building to house it. He runs cables from his exchange to the eircom exchange in Dolphin's Barn. The charges payable to eircom include a per hour access charge for access to their premises + rental which goes up to €560 / M2 in the case of Beggars Bush exchange.

One provision in the crappy one sided agreement provides that R Kinsella shall have a maximum liability to eircom of €63,500,000 should they manage to pin anything on him - whereas eircom's liability to R Kinsella is limited to €635,000! Even if they shut his business down. More detail here

It is obvious that people will be queuing up to go into this wholesale line competition business - no doubt there are lines of people around eircom's headquarters as you read this!

Seriously folks, this (double price increase) is incredible.

When will the infrastructural meltdown end ?

zz..

spongebob

Analogue line rental goes to €22.50 a month including VAT from €21.15 now and €19.60 in February

New vulnerable user scheme (kinda prepaid bundle for those in debt to stop them getting cut off) This is USO related .

All detail in this Pending Changes document (PDF 100k)

The increase is 6.5% on top of 8% in March. Phew. Thats over 70% higher than the EU average which is c.€14 a month now.

The good news I hear is that this will pay for the removal of every pairgain (splitter) in the country and its replacement with your own copper...save where the work involved is 100 Man Hours per line in which case they can charge extra or refuse to do it.

The USO will therefore guarantee 33.6k data speeds for everyone who isnt a 100 hours of work case and is less than 5 miles from the exchange. Effective July. That will dramatically cut the number of BB test failures in Urban areas BTW

The draft USO is, of course, 2 weeks overdue by now but this announcement is closely related to it.

M

zz03

Originally posted by Muck
New vulnerable user scheme (kinda prepaid bundle for those in debt to stop them getting cut off) This is USO related .

Eircom might find that the country has more vulnerable users than they bargained for. People who use the VUS line for broadband and €5 worth of "free" calls every month and use the mobile or VoIP for everything else!

I find it difficult to believe that ComReg are so asleep at the wheel that all these price increases could slip by in the dark. The fixed line costs have been increasing once or twice a year now for as long as I can remember. The only difference is that the rate of price increase seems to be accelerating.

zz..

MadsL

Not to mention the 11811 price rise in March...

Saying 'YES' to the Do you want to be connected question now costs an extra seven times the usual call charge.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by zz03
He knocks on every door in the area and signs up customers for his new phone service. He pays eircom a monthly fee of €16.81 + VAT for every line he unbundles and incurs lots of other fees detailed here.. He buys his own telephone exchange from Ericsson or Nortel Networks or Alcatel and rents a building to house it. He runs cables from his exchange to the eircom exchange in Dolphin's Barn. The charges payable to eircom include a per hour access charge for access to their premises + rental which goes up to €560 / M2 in the case of Beggars Bush exchange.

My understanding is that it has nothing to do with physical access to the line as outlined above. It simply allows another operator e.g UTV or Esat to handle all the billing. The other operator might just be offering CPS services for example. Eircom would still own and run the line, however instead of the customer paying line rental direct to Eircom, you would pay it to UTV or Esat who would then pass it on less a margin to Eircom who would be acting as a wholesaler.

As far as the consumer is concerned, you would get one bill instead of two. If you were with, say, UTV, you would no longer see Eircom on any bill. It is also known as 'single billing', unless I'm very much mistaken.

It is certainly not justification for Eircom to raise line rental.

OHP

Broadband is now 50% less!! <-- BULL! But it was a good excuse for their recent price hikes. I mean come on its Eircon!! Give 1 Cent take 20 Cent! What do ye expect?? :mad:

OHP

spongebob

Originally posted by SkepticOne
As far as the consumer is concerned, you would get one bill instead of two. If you were with, say, UTV, you would no longer see Eircom on any bill. It is also known as 'single billing', unless I'm very much mistaken.

It is certainly not justification for Eircom to raise line rental.

Single billing is not the reason for the raise, greed and inefficency are part of it, as always but the real reason is the USO negotiation which is at a critical stage.

Comreg commented on the financing of Eircoms USO obligations in the USO outline framework....on which they invited comment in December , closing 3 months ago. Thats Here . Section 10.

Pursuant to the draft regulations a universal service provider may receive compensation for the net cost of meeting the USO obligation concerned where, on the basis of such net cost calculation, ComReg determines that the undertaking in question is subject to an unfair burden.

Below is the timetable, badly slipping as we can all see.

Issue date for Universal Service consultation –
Stage 1 19th December 2002
Final date for responses to Stage 1 consultation 11th February 2003
Issue date for response to consultation (stage 2) 21st March 2003
Final date for response to Stage 2 30th April 2003
Issue date for Final Decision Notice 19th June 2003

Stage 2 is a sort of ongoing haggle between Eircom and Comreg it seems.

M

MadsL

Does quick sum...extra 2.90 for every two months say extra 17 euro a year, what 2 million lines at least in the country...

...Holy @ssr@pe Ratman! That's an extra 34 million euro!!

Krouc

Just been looking on onbusiness.ie and see Eircon have some new plans.

Eircom has announced that it is increasing its line rental charges by 6.35% from June 2. Customers will see their rental charges rise from €21.15 a month to €22.50 a month, including VAT.

If I remember correctly Eircom fought for ages in the courts to be able to do this. I think the EU puts a cap on the amount that can be charged, Thankfully.

Eircom says the rental increase is being brought in to coincide with the introduction of Wholesale Line Rental (WLR), which allows other operators to offer line rental by renting lines from Eircom at wholesale rates. This allows other operators to provide customers with one bill covering rental and calls.

What you give with one hand.....
This is what has me wondering

The company is also introducing a low users scheme for residential customers who make €10 or less worth of calls per month. This also comes into effect on June 2.

With all the hate I have Eircon, I dont use the phone for anything but Internet and now I have the family on an UTV account. It has been some years since Eircon bill me for an actual old fashioned voice call :-D
I wonder what this new users scheme? Maybe its going to be a saving but I doubt it. It's probably more going to be a minimun charge, use, dont use it, we'll still charge you. Line rental based on use? Hopefully it wont effect ppl that have left them for UTV and shouldnt that be EVERYONE by now!
I dont know what it will be but it wont be the customer they have in mind.

Krouc

shinzon

this thread already covers that im afaraid

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=95472


Regards

SHIN

Gordon

Well that is good for the UTV freephone accessors surely

Any idea on what the low user line rental bill will be?

Krouc

Delete this mother. Sorry.

Gordon

Skeptic one, I think you are right in saying that. I think Eircon is going down the lines of American telcos where the carrier doesn't bill the customer anymore but passes on the line rental to the sur-carrier for want of a better word.

GerardKeating

Originally posted by MadsL
Am I right in thinking I can move my phone service from June. That is get one bill instead of two?? No more eircom bills??

Only if you give all your calls to a single company, than that company can (with your permission of course) take one the line rental and give you a single bill

If like me, you give international calls to one company, and local/national to another, then i have to leave my line rental with Eircom..

Dustaz

merged...

this had 0 replys when i started reading the forum a few mins ago...goddamn

Balfa

it seems to me like eircom are intentionally trying to lose every customer they have. they raise prices on purpose because their monopoly on line rental is ending?? I've honestly never heard of something that stupid before. Don't monopolies tend to keep prices artificially high, and then drop them once there's competition? Isn't that what compe-freakin-tition IS???

I really don't get this company at all. the government REALLY badly needs to take the lines back out of their hands.

I'm not nauseous and i can't eat lunch, goodbye.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Balfa
it seems to me like eircom are intentionally trying to lose every customer they have. they raise prices on purpose because their monopoly on line rental is ending?? I've honestly never heard of something that stupid before. Don't monopolies tend to keep prices artificially high, and then drop them once there's competition? Isn't that what compe-freakin-tition IS??

They are not losing their monopoly. Only the illusion of competion is being allowed here - not real competion. Different name on the bill but most of the money will still go to Eircom who control the wholesale market.

gandalf

This increase is absolutely crazy. Who do I complain to in Comreg about this, does anyone have a actual name of someone in there. I want them to justify this.

Eircom supply me with a Analogue line that has failed the DSL test, when I ask them how to sort it they shrug their shoulders and say "install another line" (which may or may not work!). When I ask them if I can downgrade my ISDN line to Analogue and transfer the number across they can't even confirm or deny they can do this, and I pay the highest line rental for the privilage of this level of service from them. I'll be sending a email into Dermot in the Dept of Comms tomorrow but I'd also like a contact in Comreg to direct this too.

I think IOFFL have to highlight this in the press especially with the "rip off Ireland" head of steam thats gathering in the media out there.

Gandalf.

Mossy Monk

Originally posted by Muck
The good news I hear is that this will pay for the removal of every pairgain (splitter) in the country and its replacement with your own copper

The USO will therefore guarantee 33.6k data speeds for everyone who isnt a 100 hours of work case and is less than 5 miles from the exchange. Effective July

is this for real. Eircom should have been doing this with years. even 33.6 k is more than twice what i'm getting at the moment. it doesn't justify another increase though :mad:

zz03

Originally posted by SkepticOne
My understanding is that it has nothing to do with physical access to the line as outlined above.

Not being a native English language speaker, I took “Eircom says the price hike coincides with the provision of wholesale line rental” to refer to unbundling of eircom lines for various purposes.

If eircom are effectively delegating the billing function to a competitor, surely this is a reduction in costs for them?

If anything it should result in a reduction in the monthly subscription for a phone line to reflect the cost savings achieved?

If, on the other hand delegated billing costs eircom any money to set-up or administer, these should surely be borne by the ESAT BTs and UTVs of the world?

The story defies logic. Do they (eircom/comreg & cie) come from another planet, I wonder?


zz..

zz03

I have just had a look in my dictionary regarding the meaning of “coincide” as in “Eircom says the price hike coincides with the provision of wholesale line rental”. (The c word also appears in the press release which has recently appeared on their website).

Coincide : to occupy the same space or time

Coincidence : the occurrence of one event at the same time as or following another without any causal connection

So are eircom not also admitting that there is no real (ie cost justifiable) connection between the price increase and the new billing arrangements? It’s a good excuse. We haven’t had a price increase for two months. Let's fire one in, and go down to the pub?

Mr Muck referred to the universal service obligation review. Will that too be a “good excuse” for another price increase in two months time? They are probably working on it this very day!

zz..

dahamsta

In the past, on occasion, Eircom has "solved" the margin squeeze problem by /raising/ the retail price, which Etain Doyle has found perfectly acceptable in her wisdom. I wonder if that's what's going on here?

adam