Irish and Greek broadband costs most

dahamsta

Irish and Greek broadband costs most
Friday, August 22 2003
by Frances Gleeson

Ireland is among the most expensive countries in Western Europe for broadband, second only to Greece, according to a new survey by Forrester.

Since consumers have different levels of disposable income and overall consumer prices range, Forrester ranked broadband prices in Europe on a scale of zero to five to provide an accurate indication of actual costs. Five indicates the cheapest and zero indecates the dearest. On this scale, which Forrester calls its Broadband Price Index (BPI), Belgium topped the list with a perfect 5. Italy, Austria and Sweden ranked high as well with scores of 4.7, while Ireland and Finland ranked lowest with 2.6, ahead of only Greece, which scored a zero.

In terms of Forrester's listed prices for broadband, the company said the average Irish price is EUR43.87 per month, ahead of EUR72.68 in Greece, but well behind prices in Belgium, Italy and Portugal, where prices range between EUR21 and EUR22, according to Forrester's calculations.

[...]

Whut? €43.87? According to this thread, the cheapest broadband provider in the country is NTL at €30, with a stretching-the-definition 128/128 product. Aside from their 600/128 product at €40, every other product in the country comes in above €43.87, with most weighing in at €85 or more. I'll give it a day or two in case I'm wrong, but if I'm not, Forrester's getting a bollicking.

adam

dahamsta

I've been thinking about this and I still don't get it. Even if you factor in Eircom's dominance of the market and NTL's low price, it still doesn't work: Eircom probably has a majority of customers but their cheapest product is €54.45*, and even if the average is round or about that mark, NTL couldn't bring it down much further because their availability is extremely low; plus there must still be a fair few on ADSL connections and Esat's expensive ADSL and SDSL loops to bring it back up again.

Anyone wanna help me out here? I can't find anything on the Forrester site so I can't figure out exactly where these numbers are coming from. I'd like to know where Forrester get theirs for a start.

adam

*Consumers, right?

echomadman

I-scream enhanced is setting me back 169+vat per month.....

I guess i've always been above average

unkel

Also apples and oranges. Very few very lucky people (myself included :cool: ) have NTL for €40 per month which is heaven in Ireland :rolleyes: . This is as we all know an unlimited 600 kbps service. Surely you cannot compare this to more typical broadband services on the continent where you get a lot more for a lot less. Nowadays I would classify broadband as something in the range of 5000 to 100000 kbps as real broadband for a fee of less than my NTL subscription. How about wireless:

http://www.iswitch.nl/index.php

Mind this is European. In the far east they do understand progress and most connections are now 100000 kbps delivered as standard to new apartment blocks (Japan and South Korea)

Ireland was, is, and will remain to be the retard of Europe :mad:

Serbian

Originally posted by dahamsta
Aside from [NTL's] 600/128 product at €40, every other product in the country comes in above €43.87, with most weighing in at €85 or more.

It certainly looks like he was calculating this ex-VAT, which still should have averaged it over €43. But that makes the average cost of Broadband in Ireland (including VAT) €53.08 - As far as I know only Sweden, Denmark and Belgium have higher rates of VAT, so that will make our product even more uncompetitive.

As for most weighing in at €85 or more, well, those are generally the business packages. The scope of his article was really the home user so he has to make an edumacated guess as to which is targetted at the home user and which are targetted at the business.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by dahamsta
I've been thinking about this and I still don't get it. Even if you factor in Eircom's dominance of the market and NTL's low price, it still doesn't work: Eircom probably has a majority of customers but their cheapest product is €54.45*, and even if the average is round or about that mark, NTL couldn't bring it down much further because their availability is extremely low; plus there must still be a fair few on ADSL connections and Esat's expensive ADSL and SDSL loops to bring it back up again.

Eircom do have the majority of customers but not by as much as might be expected. Last figures I saw was something like Eircom: 3,800, NTL: 3000 so NTL are able to bring the average down significantly.

It is also quite likely that Forrester don't include leased line substitute products like SDSL in their definition of broadband.

I would not pay too much attention to these figures. If it was only NTL selling broadband in Ireland (like it was until recently), then we'd have very low broadband prices despite only around 30,000 homes being able to avail of the product.

What they should have done is weighted the numbers by the availability of the services not simply the amount sold. The vast majority of people in Ireland either can't get any form of broadband or else the cheapest is Eircom or one of the bitstream resellers.

raeGten

Wouldn't the fact that NTLs 600kbps service is selling in Tallaght for €20 per month inc vat bring the average down a bit as well? That is where most of there broadband customers are at the moment.

Serbian

Originally posted by SkepticOne
Eircom do have the majority of customers but not by as much as might be expected. Last figures I saw was something like Eircom: 3,800, NTL: 3000 so NTL are able to bring the average down significantly.

I would not pay too much attention to these figures. If it was only NTL selling broadband in Ireland (like it was until recently), then we'd have very low broadband prices despite only around 30,000 homes being able to avail of the product.

What they should have done is weighted the numbers by the availability of the services not simply the amount sold. The vast majority of people in Ireland either can't get any form of broadband or else the cheapest is Eircom or one of the bitstream resellers.

Good points, however, although he didn't point out availability of broadband or state of copper etc, the penetration rate of 0.7% says it all for me really. I think you are right though, there is very little use for these figures. They tell us things we already know, and in less detail.

That said, it would be difficult to provide an exhaustive survey of the state of broadband in every country in Europe without making a few assumptions, allowances or mistakes.

Moriarty

The OT stuff has been split to a new thread here.