French BB takeup rises by 8.3% in 3 months

Yep. It's great alright, and while I'm on...
God bless Exeem, Limewire and Azureus. Amen.

Although it is tempting to say that low LLU rates is the answer to most of the problems in Ireland, I don't think this is the case.

If we put the LLU rate at close to zero, for example, we would solve some problems but create others. We would be focussing all competition onto a crumbling legacy telephone infrastructure. We would remove the incentive of competitors to build their own competing infrastructure and thereby remove the incentive for Eircom to invest in their own.

Of course, in a country where that legacy telephone infrastructure is very good or where lots of people live in high-density developments close to exchanges, the LLU route makes a lot of sense. In these countries a much larger proportion of the population will get the advertised speeds of ADSL2+ and varients. It may create some problems in the future but these problems would be further down the line.

The question to ask in Ireland is:
1. Do we have a great telephone infrastructure?
2. Do we generally live in high-density developments?

Having said that, if take up of broadband is the goal then LLU is a good way to go. Competition over existing infrastructure is always going to be cheaper and quicker than building competing infrastructure and competition of any sort will bring down prices and bring up specifications and this will lead to increased up take.

I think, however, that take up of broadband is the wrong goal to have. In the past low broadband penetration was used to argue for the availibility of broadband. Of course, it was argued, there was going to be low take up when broadband was simply not available to the vast majority. But somewhere along the line it seems to have become a goal in its own right rather than merely one of the indicators of supply.

IMO, the key figure in the top post is the 94% availability, not the 600,000.

Lets get the availability figure up to to 94% and beyond in Ireland. Continual focussing on up take figures only distorts our thinking on the subject and leads to potentially harmful shortcuts that are may not appropriate for Ireland.

eircomtribunal wrote:

Let the incumbent n o t make a killing and allow him only a meagrely profit from metered dial-up, which is the death nail of Internet/Broadband success, and all the issues potentially hindering Broadband roll-out (long lines, no apartment blocks South Korean style, dot.com crash and what have you) will melt away.

I agree that removing the profit from dial-up would remove some disincentive from Eircom to roll out broadband, however this still leaves Eircom with a broadband monopoly. Removing the dial-up profit would give a one-off boost to broadband rollout. However, to get progressive improvements in order to keep up with other countries we would still need proper competition outside of Eircom's monopoly.

LLU is probably the answer most people will give at this point. However this merely adds back a disincentive for Eircom. Why should Eircom maintain their infrastructure to a high standard if competition is going to benefit.

This is the point I was addressing.

If I was an ISP and made €30 a month on Dialup with 250MB of data downloaded...do you think I would willfully spend hundreds of millions upgradeing my infrastructure so my customers still spend only €30 a month but pass 25GB(100 times as much!) through my network???

NOT A HOPE IN HELL!!!!

As long as they can get away with making HUGE money on DialUp eircom wont push themselves in getting the remaining 40% of the population DSL access.

And as eircomtribunal has already stated...forcing eircom to offer unlimted DialUp for €10 a month is the way to go as that same €30 a month for DSL will then look far more attractive!

Blaster99 wrote:

You would (and you do) for a number of reasons:
- You have to or somebody else will and if you're a telco, you'll lose your call revenue as well.

Nobody can sell dsl where eircom have not enabled the exchanges or have not fixed the lines on enabled exchanges.
The competition from other providers, offering broadband via wireless and cable is not strong enough to undermine eircom's position.

Blaster99 wrote:

You would (and you do) for a number of reasons:
- You can potentially sell an awful lot more broadband connections than you can dialup connections as dialup is essentially useless.

Dial up is useless to the customer (to be exact to about 50% of customers, assuming from the state of affairs in other countries), but it is useful for the incumbent as it provides higher profits than "going" for broadband (under the current regulatory regime).
As long as the potential bb customers are not taken up by the competition, they are not lost to the incumbent and he will milk them for expensive dialup for as long as possible.

Blaster99 wrote:

You would (and you do) for a number of reasons:
- The margins are very good, particularly in Ireland.

Broadband margins are not as good as dial-up margins. Not by a long shot. This is exactly the point. Read the citigroup report on eircom where it is stated explitely (page 21):

"eircom’s attempt to balance growth in broadband with the managed cannibalisation of its own dial-up internet base goes a long way to explaining this lacklustre development – this is a different and potentially dangerous balancing act."

P.

eircomtribunal wrote:

Nobody can sell dsl where eircom have not enabled the exchanges or have not fixed the lines on enabled exchanges.
The competition from other providers, offering broadband via wireless and cable is not strong enough to undermine eircom's position.

Very peculiar, though, isn't it, that Eircom has bothered to roll out broadband into areas where there is currently no competition?

The reality is that Eircom's roll-out or lack thereof is a combination of many things. Current and future competition, profits to be made from broadband now and in the future, likely demand, revenue from dial-up, cost of upgrading a particular exchange. It's not as simple as you make it out to be.

eircomtribunal wrote:

Dial up is useless to the customer (to be exact to about 50% of customers, assuming from the state of affairs in other countries), but it is useful for the incumbent as it provides higher profits than "going" for broadband (under the current regulatory regime).
As long as the potential bb customers are not taken up by the competition, they are not lost to the incumbent and he will milk them for expensive dialup for as long as possible.

You're missing my point. My point is that the total potential revenue for broadband is a lot higher than it is for dial-up. I would have thought that's obvious.

eircomtribunal wrote:

Broadband margins are not as good as dial-up margins. Not by a long shot. This is exactly the point. Read the citigroup report on eircom where it is stated explitely (page 21):

What is perhaps more indicative is that Eircom's share price falls whenever they show poor broadband results. Strange that, if they are to make so much money on dial-up isn't it? Dial-up is a dead-end. Eircom knows it, analysts know it, we know it.

You may also note that citigroup says "dangerous balancing act".