Eircom blasted over 'bias' in phone charges to businesses

Eircom blasted over 'bias' in phone charges to businesses

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A FURIOUS lord mayor has blasted Eircom phone tariffs, which he says are "blatantly" biased in favour of Dublin businesses.

Cork Lord Mayor, Fine Gael's Colm Burke, accused Eircom of persisting with a charging policy which allows Dublin-based businesses to access three times as many households at local call rates as traders in Cork, Limerick, or Waterford.

Last night, the lord mayor expressed fury that Eircom had ignored his repeated complaints about high provincial telecom charges.

"Since I raised this issue last August, Eircom has failed to take any remedial action. More recently, Eircom has signalled the intention to further increase the cost of renting a phone line," he stated.

Cork's first citizen claimed that Eircom's local call charging regime was unfair on non-Dublin based businesses.

Cllr Burke argued that phone users in New Zealand enjoyed vastly lower telecom charges than Ireland - despite the countries being almost identical in size and business terms.

But Eircom last night disputed the lord mayor's claims - stressing that all businesses in Ireland enjoyed a range of discounts, depending on the scheme they operate on.

An Eircom spokesperson pointed out that most businesses enjoyed substantially lower rates that those specificed by Cllr Burke.

Eircom argued that a better comparison with telecom charges in the Irish market would be the UK, rather than New Zealand model.

And the phone company pointed out that Ireland was now 31pc below the average UK business telecom rate.

Over the last five years, Irish bills have also been reduced in overall terms by 25pc, it pointed out.

Eircom specified that it was also the only utility which had guaranteed that its bills would not increase beyond the inflation rate.

However, Cllr Burke pointed out that Dublin businesses could access 30pc of Ireland's population at local call rates - compared to just 10pc for Cork businesses.

The figure is even lower in other provincial parts of Ireland.

"If you look at the effect of these charges on businesses, the results are even more startling," he claimed.

"The Dublin region produces 39pc of Irelands GVA (similar to GDP) and the businesses in that region have access to it at local call rates. This compares to just 17pc in Cork and Kerry."

"Given that making a local call will save 61pc instead of dialing an STD number, businesses in Cork are suffering increased costs as a result of this pricing policy," he declared.

Even general pricing policies came in for flak from Cork's lord mayor.

"When you examine the Irish situation, Eircom is 5.6pc per minute more expensive for daytime local calls than the nearest competitor. But this is only one of the issues which Eircom must now address," he said.

He warned that, whereas Eircom customers must fork out 5.07c for local daytime calls, people in New Zealand paid only 2.38c - less than half the Irish rate.

"In New Zealand, local calls for residential customers are free of charge. However, businesses are charged - but at a much lower rate than is levied by Eircom. New Zealand businesses are charged at a daytime rate equivalent to 2.38c," he said.

Ralph Riegel

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1120214&issue_id=10397