ComReg quarterly stats

vinnyfitz · 29-04-2005 5:00pm #1

Out this evening.
Why do ComReg publish so much of their stuff on Friday evenings? (and on bank holiday weekends?)

Anyway, the latest Amarach survey stuff is available in PDF from here

Amarach now seem to be predicting that home internet penetration is reaching "saturation" at 36%

:

Home connection to broadband has also increased substantially from the previous quarter and correspondingly standard telephone line/regular dial-up has decreased from the last wave suggesting migration in the marketplace is taking place and Internet penetration may be coming to a saturation point in the Irish market

Funny choice of word - "saturation". For sure there may be a plateau and most people currently taking up broadband are switching from dial-up - big surprise! But why would this be saturation level for home internet connectivity in Ireland? In fact no reason is given at all for this assertion.

But, let's read on: It turns out Amarach found a whopping 44 people in their 1000 person sample who say they do not intend to get internet in the home in the future. Why so few? Because they only asked this question to the small proportion of people who had PCs at home which are not connected to the internet (approx 120 people). I'm not really sure why they published the statistically dodgy table showing why these 44 people did not intend to get home access in the future? (Half of them aparently said "don't need it" whatever that means.)

Could it be we are now being softned up to be told that 36% home internet penetration is a success and that the roll out job in Ireland is done and dusted - all that's left to do is to migrate a few more people to broadband...

Anyone know what average home connectivity rates are in other countries?

damien · 29-04-2005 5:25pm

Just reading bits now:

Just over half (52%) of those who had their phone line installed last year were satisfied with the service they received when they installed their phone line, while just over one in ten (11%) were dissatisfied.

Over four in ten of those with a fixed line phone are aware of single billing, however, 40% of respondents are unlikely to switch suppliers based on the availability of single billing.

Single billing was brought about for competition right ?

The average bi-monthly fixed phone bill for Irish adults is €102

28% spent more than €100 every bill.

How does that compare to the famous "basket" ?

What factors would encourage you to move from a dial-up Internet connection to a broadband Internet connection?

Better Price/VFM 57%
Higher Speeds of connection 49%
Higher capacity available for upload/download of information 46%

We are also witnessing the more advanced take off stage for broadband internet access – a trend which will continue to gather pace throughout 2005.

However, in this wave broadband appears not to be contributing to a net growth in internet access and instead merely substituting among existing users.

Lovely.

eircomtribunal · 29-04-2005 7:59pm

ComReg's reports are an abominable waste of money. The results of this type of survey are mostly worthless gob****e. And the official interpretation of the data is pathetic.

Page 32 of the Trendwatch doc about household internet connectivity shows a drop of 73% to 63% for "Standard telephone line dial-up" and a growth from 8% to 15% for "ISDN line" Internet connection as well as a growth of ADSL from 6% to 16% (and a drop of cable broadband from 9% to 2%!!!)

Look how ComReg tries to gloss over the fact that we have this unwanted growth of ISDN (dial-up!), when we should have the migration to broadband:

ADSL and ISDN have grown in the last two quarters at the expense of dial-up internet access, suggesting a migration from dial-up to internet capable of faster download speeds.

Other figures (page 33) in the doc show that we still have well over 100 000 users who are mis-sold the useless "subscription" dial-up packages (9% and only 6% are on the socalled FRIACO)

P.

dahamsta · 29-04-2005 8:08pm

What I'd like to know is when ComReg are going to start laying off some of those extravagantly paid staff now that they've decided to outsource studies in lies and deceit that could easily have been done in-house.

(Ooh, that one's gonna see a few irate emails land in my inbox.)

adam

Capt'n Midnight · 30-04-2005 4:50pm

vinnyfitz wrote:

Out this evening.
Why do ComReg publish so much of their stuff on Friday evenings? (and on bank holiday weekends?)

It's standard practice when you're trying to hide bad news. Too late for Saturday papers, Sunday papers are usually done and by Monday it's old news. Governments are well known for it. Because they are a communications regulator they can't pleed ignorance about the negative connotations of the timing.

Love the spin on the answers but
page 35 - 57% wanted broadband because of "Better Price/VFM"
Page 36 - only 17% said the reason for NOT moving to broadband was that their "Current Internet access package sufficient for my needs"

Sponge Bob · 30-04-2005 6:04pm

Biz section Irish Times today commented on reduction of landline households from 79% of all to 76% of all in a year so it was not entirely too late.

d-j-k · 01-05-2005 5:49pm

I honestly can't understand where they're getting the mid-70% for households with either fixedline or mobile phones.

Who did they survey!?

If you add up the raw number of subscribers to Meteor, O2 and Vodafone divide it by the total population ... you'll find that the number is SUBSTANTIALLY higher than that. On a household basis it should be close to 100%!!

Also, if you take the raw number of eircom residential lines (this can be done by asking eircom rather than doing a complicated survey) dividing by the population (estimate the average size of a household) you'll also find that the fixed line penitration is FAR higher than that given in this survey.

I'd argue, based on that simple analysis that this survey's totally inaccurate and utterly meanless drivvle and if anything it's painting a excessively negative image of the Irish market that is damaging to consumer confidence, international image and thus investment etc.

Are they exclusively surveying those over the age of 95 who live in remote areas of counties sligo and leitrim who answered their door between the hours of 8:00 and 8:02 on saturdays? or did the people who carried out the survey, like those that carry out most surveys, simply make most of their answers up to save time and get paid quickier?

I'm also very supprised that EsatBT came out at only having 2% of the phone market according to this survey when they're supposedly the number 2 player in the residential market. Doesn't make a lot of sense!

Also, why would you survey anyone to find out how many prepaid vs bill paid customers there are? Surely ComReg can get this information striaght from the horses mouth from the 3 operators?

I'm utterly flabergasted that ISDN connections outnumber DSL, considering that there are supposedly (According to eircom etc) quite a signifigant number of DSL connections while ISDN (residential) isn't even been heavily marketed anymore. Surely that many people didn't switch to ISDN (7% seems RATHER high)

And apparently cable modems were used by 9% of respondents in Q4 2004 (hahah.. yeah right! pull the other one!) and only 2% in Q1 2005 (2% is more like it but I'd consider it totally inflated given the fact that there are only a handful of cable connections in Ireland via NTL/Chorus)

Don't forget most of the people who do the groundwork for these things are broke students who need money for drink!

Amarach and ComReg can analyse it all they like, but if you've bad data to start with there's utterly no point in writing a flouncy and meaningless report.

Come on ComReg! You CAN do better than this sort of nonsense!

Can't you get some real statistics from the actual telcos that you are responsible for licencing?

How does anyone expect to be able to produce any sort of future plan / legislative framework for broadband / communications policy in general when this is the sort of utter useless nonsense that is available in terms of statistical analysis!

Sponge Bob · 01-05-2005 7:49pm

d-j-k wrote:

Can't you get some real statistics from the actual telcos that you are responsible for licencing?

How does anyone expect to be able to produce any sort of future plan / legislative framework for broadband / communications policy in general when this is the sort of utter useless nonsense that is available in terms of statistical analysis!

Eircom will produce even worse crap at the drop of a hat so its NO to that idea I am sorry to say.

ComReg quarterly stats

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