More National Press coverage of €ircon courtesy of the SBP

Eurorunner

Those good people at the Sunday Bizz Post have done it again:D

eircom flotation: Eircom yields profits for the wealthy few
Minister gets tough on telecoms competition
Esat beats Eircom to land €151 million BoI contract
eircom flotation: More trouble down the line for network

BigEejit

Youve gotta love those SBP reporters ... they dont pull the punches ... looks like Ahern is finally getting comreg to do something now that that bollix of a media mogul has fucked off to rape some other countries infrastructure .... and you can be sure that there will be no fallout for him for having created the mess that we have to live with

jbkenn

Choice piece from SBP article
eircom flotation: More trouble down the line for network
ComReg reply to some poor ba$tard expecting some action from them

"Dear David, Under the current legislation and their Universal Service Obligation (USO), Eircom is obliged to provide customers with a line that is capable for the transferral of telephony (voice) data only. This means that Eircom is not under any obligation to provide you with a line that is sufficient for internet access.

"If you have requested broadband from Eircom, and your line has failed the relevant test, Eircom does not have to undertake measures to improve the line to facilitate this. As long as the line is still capable of transmitting telephony services,they are meeting their legislative requirements.

"A line can fail the test for broadband for many reasons, such as if there is a splitter on the line, if there was bad weather at the time of the test, if Eircom extra services such as call waiting, call answering are on the line etc, and Eircom is not under obligation to give an explanation as to the reason for failure. I hope this answers your query and do not hesitate to contact me should you need more information."

This of course was the edited reply from ComReg here is the full letter

"Dear David, Thanks to our gross incompetence, and, inability to pull our head out of our ar$e,while framing the current legislation with regard to their Universal Service Obligation (USO), Eircom is only obliged to provide customers with a line that is capable for the transferral of telephony (voice) data only. On the other hand if you lived in Denmark the USO is ISDN at minimum., but, what would them Danes know about Communication Regulation, after all, they dont have to deal with Dr. Sir A.J. F. "Beans meanz Heinz" O'Reilly. This means that you are screwed and Eircom is not under any obligation to provide you with a line that is sufficient for internet access.

"If you have requested broadband from Eircom, and your line has failed the relevant test, Eircom does not have to undertake measures to improve the line to facilitate this. As long as the line is still capable of transmitting telephony services, i.e., you can ring Biddie on 1901, they are meeting their legislative requirements.

"A line can fail the test for broadband for many reasons, such as if there is a splitter on the line, (I think we were supposed to do something about that, but, its not my department so you will have to contact them directly yourself, ring 11811, and they will give you the number, bit of advice though, dont let them put you through or you will be robbed by the per minute charges while you are on hold) if there was bad weather at the time of the test, if the cat had kittens, if the sun was high in the sky, in fact, any one of a hundred lame excuses, if Eircom extra services such as call waiting, call answering are on the line etc, and Eircom is not under obligation to give an explanation as to the reason for failure (Cool or What :-). I hope this answers your query and do not hesitate to contact me should you need more information. I would of course appreciate if you would contact someone else here, as I am at present in the course of preparing a 1600 page tender document for a new coffee machine for the canteen, you would'nt believe how complicated we can make things here

Your obedient Servant

Gobnait O'Lunacy
G.I.C. (Gob****e in Charge)
Punters writing in expecting us to actually do something Department
ComReg"

p.s. Please do not make the full content of this letter public ,or, people might begin to wonder what they pay us for at all

What amazes me is people still actually believe the ComReg are capable of putting our abysmal communications fiasco right.

jbkenn

spongebob

Originally posted by jbkenn
Choice piece from SBP article
eircom flotation: More trouble down the line for network
ComReg reply to some poor ba$tard expecting some action from them

"Dear David, Under the current legislation and their Universal Service Obligation (USO), Eircom is obliged to provide customers with a line that is capable for the transferral of telephony (voice) data only."

Comreg are wrong as usual.

The current legislation / USO (it is both as it is a transposed EU Directive) mandate that all analogue lines must be capable of supporting "Functional Internet Access" .

Its just that Comreg recently reduced this minimum data speed from 2.4k in the 1999 USO to 0k in the 2003 USO . It was entirely their idea. Faced with the same EU directive the UK regulator Oftel decided to set the lower limit at 28.8k , up from 2.4k .

As we are the E-Tub of Europe I feel that Comreg should be commended for their consistency . There is no real point in pretending that inIreland we aspire to anything more than **** all as a leading proponent and developer of advanced comunications technologies.

0K it must remain !

M

maxheadroom

Hmmm - I wonder if you could take ation against eircom in the European courts for failing to provide functional internet access... maybe some kind of class-action suit?

SkepticOne

Originally posted by maxheadroom
Hmmm - I wonder if you could take ation against eircom in the European courts for failing to provide functional internet access... maybe some kind of class-action suit?

What you could do is inform the Information Society DG that Ireland has not yet defined what is meant by functional internet access in the Irish context. They could then take Ireland to court for not defining it. Note that it is Ireland would be at fault here, not Eircom (or ComReg).

Ireland has in the past been investigated for matters relating to LLU.

yellum

Originally posted by SkepticOne
They could then take Ireland to court for not defining it. Note that it is Ireland would be at fault here, not Eircom (or ComReg).

What kind of resources would be involved in doing this though ?

spongebob

Originally posted by yellum
What kind of resources would be involved in doing this though ?

Emails!

Originally posted by SkepticOne
What you could do is inform the Information Society DG that Ireland has not yet defined what is meant by functional internet access in the Irish context. They could then take Ireland to court for not defining it. Note that it is Ireland would be at fault here, not Eircom (or ComReg).

This is the sequence.

The government must transpose the EU legislation, in this case the USO Directive of 2002 . This has been done and on time too, namely the 25/07/2003 . The legislative framework is in place.

The national regulator then undertakes the implementation of the directive within the new Legal constraints. This they have 'done' over in Comreg as they themselves see it.

As the USO directive is exactly the same in all EU countries , meaning that all EU citizens are entitled to "Functional Internet Access" the question for the Information Society DG is this.

"Why has Ireland defined "Functional Internet Access" at 0k while the UK has defined it at 28,800 k " ?

maybe this bit too

"Could the Commission please investigate the miracle that has been wrought her in Ireland whereby the Internet is "Functional" when the data being transferred during the connection is no less than 0 , and no more either!"

and if you feel really lucky

"Could ye ask Comreg to also show ye the three card trick and their funky **** with loaves and fishes while ye are over visiting us lads !? "

Contact Information for the Information Society Commissioner ( Erkki Likkanen), and for his staff in Brussels may be found Here . Anybody who has been messed around by Comreg or who has a substandard Analogue line should get it on in Brussels right now.

M

yellum

Ahhhh right, the EU Information Society, thought you meant the Irish crowd.

BigEejit

Originally posted by yellum
Ahhhh right, the EU Information Society, thought you meant the Irish crowd.

Its easy to see how the two could be confused ....

/whispers other side of hand "call the men-in-the-white-coats .... he's lost it"



But seriously, arent the Irish Information Society a bunch of civil servants that write reports on stuff that is in use already and try to make out that using an ATM is an example of the "information society" (think of Dr. Evil saying "laser" when reading that)...