Another Business Post €ircon article

Seth Brundle

-- duplicated article removed --

Sarsfield

That's from last weeks paper. Been covered in an earlier thread.

Seth Brundle

so I now see. There is another article in todays post which I had thought this one was! Can't find it but the basic jist is similar to the above story in that eircon are massively underfunded and have (one of) the worst telecom co.s in europe.

spongebob

click on the articles, they are dated a week back, todays is not yet online, should be up shortly

M

Sarsfield

Some juicy stuff in this weeks edition. The article on Sir Anthony himself is a great read. The SBP is really not pulling any punches this week :cool:

Eurorunner

Jesus, €ircon must really have píssed off the Bizz Post! They're relentless..More great coverage...

- Front page: Another union leader complains about Con Scanlons big payout.
- Sir Tony gets a section all to himself - and non of its complementary!
- One full page on broadband & the state of the network
- Another page picks over the €ircon prospectus and the dodgy accounting behind it.


At the rate we're going, i cant wait to pick up next Sundays copy:D

Seth Brundle

I meant to post the BB article yesterday

iwb

I saw the Post reporting on increased readership on Sunday. They deserve it based on the last few months reporting, especially on the telecomms industry.
Nobody else is doing this at the same level right now. I wonder why the Indo doesn't pick it up?:D
Really though, this type of reporting puts the whole thing into perspective. We are being denied a decent infrastructure in this country due mainly to a few people who are already mega rich putting a few more million into their pockets. I think I must be becoming a socialist but I hate that type of behaviour. Can't these guys have some sort of social conscience at some stage in their lives?
Are they to be admired for this 'success'? In business circles, are O'Reilly and Soros getting pats on the back for raping the country?
That of course is not to mention our friends in Comreg being the other part of the equation.

vinnyfitz

Originally posted by Eurorunner
Jesus, €ircon must really have píssed off the Bizz Post! They're relentless..More great coverage...

- Front page: Another union leader complains about Con Scanlons big payout.
- Sir Tony gets a section all to himself - and non of its complementary!
- One full page on broadband & the state of the network
- Another page picks over the €ircon prospectus and the dodgy accounting behind it.


At the rate we're going, i cant wait to pick up next Sundays copy:D

Well the temptation for the SBP to beat up on the owner of their main competitors - Tribune and Indo would be too much to resist...

Of course the corrollary is that this is precisely why the SBP should run good Eircon stories - Shure who else would?

sceptre

Originally posted by Muck
click on the articles, they are dated a week back, todays is not yet online, should be up shortly

The Sunday Business Post website is temporarily out of date.
We apologise for any inconvience caused by this.
Content from the Sunday paper from the Sunday 14th March will be available tomorrow.

At least they've put the notice up - yesterday it did look like the articles sitting there were from yesterday's paper (there's a date on top of the articles but it's easy to miss)

Eurorunner

Ok the SBP has posted the articles on their site:

Tensions rise on Eircom deals
Eircom accounts queried as revenues nosedive
Eircom dividend cover to plummet
The Back Room: O'Reillys Image Loses its Golden Glow
Broadband:The Wait Goes On

And in the Letters section...

Money for jammed networks


I dare say the SBP would give serious consideration to publishing your letters on the subject:D



Letters to the editor

Correspondence should be addressed to the Editor, Sunday Business Post, 80 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2 or faxed to 01-6796496/498; e-mail sbpost@iol.ie

dahamsta

Originally posted by Eurorunner
Ok the SBP has posted the articles on their site:

It would be nice if we could guarantee that these articles crossed the desks of investors that are likely to flush their money down the Eircom toilet...

The Back Room: O'Reillys Image Loses its Golden Glow

The thing that scares me is that the Independent is apparently the best-selling newspaper in the country. Do people not know that the paper is not owned by O'Reilly, or are they just... well... stupid?

Thanks for posting them Eurorunner.

adam

spongebob

The Pathfinder document referred to by the SBPost in HTML format.

All Eircom SEC filings for the last 6 months are Here should one care to peruse them .

M

BigEejit

from the SBP, Questions to John Doherty, ComReg Chairman

Q: Are you concerned with the Eircom Access Network?
We have always been conerned particularly on the access network efficiencies when we compare them with international best practise. Eircom does not come out of very well. We see there are costs to be taken out of that, and the pace of that change is not as rapid as we would like. There are other metrics to suggest that the network perormed reasonably well. There have been no particular colapses of the network.
It is broadly an overmaning issue. We have quantified that there are inefficiencies in these networks, and we continue to pursue Eircom to reduce these inefficiencies.

Emphasis is mine ...
Firstly ...the twat didnt answer the question, (I dont think so anyway) "efficiencies" are not equal to "quality" of the network which I think was what the questioner was getting at

What metrics show that the network is performing well??? ... especially as the SBP has reported that consultants and internal managers have suggested that the network is one of the worst in the world ... core cabling is obsolete and in rural areas no carriers are to be removed even though they comprise about 40% of all lines!!

As for the collapses of the network, if there were collapses in the core network its too damn late to be investing/upgrading/fixing ..... if he was talking about exchange to premises collapses wasnt there ~1 million line faults reported last year? ... WTF is this guy doing regulating???? ....

SkepticOne

The quote of Doherty above and the one below illustrate the unique perspective of the regulator.

Doherty: The uptake is running at 1,500 a week. The problem with broadband has not been the infrastructure, but the price point. That is not to suggest that you won't get to a point where the access network will be a barrier.

This is a very different point of view from what you might call "consumer oriented". Here, Doherty appears to be concerned only with bulk uptake figures. If only a certain section of consumers can get broadband and the rest are denied, this doesn't matter if demand is sufficiently strong within the section that can get it.

In reality, availability has always been the problem. This focus on uptake is very damaging and is not limited, unfortunately, to ComReg. It leads to pointless demand stimulation exercises while ignoring the real problems.

iwb

Fair point SkepticOne. This again illustrates how in sync Eircom and Comreg really are. Eircom couldn't give a toss who does or doesn't get broadband as long as they can sign up 1,500 a week.
In a year or two, when orders begin to slow down, Eircom might start to look into the reasons why people don't qualify and just maybe they will start to improve the copper, if they can afford it that is.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by iwb
In a year or two, when orders begin to slow down, Eircom might start to look into the reasons why people don't qualify and just maybe they will start to improve the copper, if they can afford it that is.

Alternatively, they could put pressure on the government to subsidise take up. Say, 10 euros per month for every DSL connection. This would bring down the cost for those in enabled areas with good lines significantly and would stimulate demand. It would be a lot cheaper than upgrading copper for which the government would also have to pick up the bill.

I would be against both of these actions on the basis that they are merely throwing money at the problem.

Eircom's priority will be to get as much out of Ireland as possible while making the minimum investment, so I doubt if they themselves will be interested in replacing copper or laying new copper when splitters are removed just for the sake of selling 30-40 euro DSL connections.

iwb

You may be right but it seems to me that all these companies will do anything for a few more users once the growth curve falls off.
I know it is somewhat different but how much does it cost to have these sales guys going door to door winning back customers (dishonestly)? Do they actually get the money back in the first year even?

I totally agree that it would be p1ssing money down the drain to subsidise Eircom DSL. Real unbundling of the copper would be cool though as would the ability to unbundle at the street cabinet, bringing fibre closer to the premises.
As has been posted elsewhere time and again, (usually by Muck) the real progress will be made when the ducts in new developments are retained by the community, rather than handed over to Eircom.

eircomtribunal

And there was a third question put to our regulator in that SBP article:

Q: What about the consumers facing a 25 per cent rise in line rental charges?
Doherty: We have introduced a whole range of new products and directions because in the particular market there is quite strong regulation. The context is that calls in the UK are more expensive.

The context is of course, that we have a regulator who would say anything to cover up his failure to act for the good of the Irish consumer.

Doherty's latest blatant lie is his claim that Ireland's Internet Penetration has magically risen by 5% to 49%.

Peter