ENN - "Broadband still too expensive: Ahern"

cgarvey

ENN - "Broadband still too expensive: Ahern"

"There is, quite simply, a market failure," Ahern stated. "The supply side is not meeting the demand. There is no meaningful competition. The price of broadband is still too high, particularly for ADSL, and must be brought down further if we are to realise the potential offered by the technology."

"There is no meaningful competition." ... (and "all your base are belong to us") .. sounds like an eircom policy.

All sounds well and good (and familiar). Now, watcha ya gonna do? And, how many times has the same ESB network been created!!?

.cg

Creamy Goodness

the prices are okay tbh it's just the stupid caps that annoy me the most

yellum

And this weeks award for stating the ****ing obvious goes to ..... <drumroll> ...

iwb

I am at the conference. I have to say that statement about the price of ADSL still being too high is the one that stood out for me most as a load of rubbish.
While the cap and contention ratio might be a sticking point, the price of DSL at as low as €30 per month is really quite acceptable.
There is a point below which the operators just won't make money anymore and that isn't in anyones interest.
Maybe with a much higher user base down the road, the price will fall further or the contention ratio will drop, or the cap will increase, or all of the above, but for now, if I was picking my fights, the price of DSL wouldn't be one of them.

yellum

The line-rental charges are something he should address too.

Urban Weigl

I agree with him, especially considering the high line rental we pay. Completely putting the line rental aside for a moment, many EU countries now have sub-20 euro packages, often at lower speeds.

For example in France you can get 512kbps ADSL for 19.99, and 1024kbps ADSL for 29.99. I think that is what needs to happen here -- 512kbps needs to become a basic service, with 1024kbps continuing at the existing pricing. Basically upgrade the current plan and add a lower cost one for casual internet use.

The other biggie, of course, is the availability of the service. If it 'aint available to most people due to splitters, bad lines, or the exchange not even being upgraded, what good is it?

spongebob

Even better news is that Comreg are having a Consultation on Wholesale BB for the next fortnight, its Here .

The BAD news is that Comreg have discovered that FTTH deployment in Ireland is 'minimal' when the rest of of thought there was no such thing anywhere in Ireland .

If Comreg are happy to define define fúck all as 'minimal' then they will probably be perfectly happy with Guaranteed 256k services with 1Gb per month caps over the fibre.....if it ever appears in this E-Tub .

Functional FTTH will be defined as 0k , 0 being both an Integer and a state of Regulatory mind in Comreg.

M

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Muck
The BAD news is that Comreg have discovered that FTTH deployment in Ireland is 'minimal' when the rest of of thought there was no such thing anywhere in Ireland .

If Comreg are happy to define define fúck all as 'minimal' then they will probably be perfectly happy with Guaranteed 256k services with 1Gb per month caps over the fibre.....if it ever appears in this E-Tub .

It is worse than that. The exact phrase they use in the consultation doc is: "Currently the take up of FTTH is minimal in Ireland."

So the problem is low take up of FTTH. Obviously, people must not want FTTH otherwise there would be greater take up of the services.

spongebob

The problem with both 0 availability and 0 takeup of FTTH (Fibre To The Home) is that Comreg cannot claim a 100% increase in the quarter (in 2023) when the first customer is provisioned in Ireland.....100% of fúck all being fúck all too....last I heard about it. It probably won't stop them all the same the lying bastards.

Mind you, as Sceptic pointed out, Comreg seem to be blaming Us , the end consumer of the non -existent product for not taking it up. With a mind set like that how can there be a meaningful consultation about wholesale Broadband ??

I look forward to an elegant explanation on the Comwreck site.

M

Capt'n Midnight

Thought NTL were rolling out fibre to Kill a couple of years ago - don't know if it got to the home or not.
So unlikely as it seems - there might just be some houses with FTTH.

Maybe someone coud ask comreg where we can order it ?

'Twould 'be nice if comreg had broken down figures into
"uptake of services priced at or below EU/OECD average" and
"uptake of services costing far in excess of OECD/EU average" ....

shoegirl

I disagree on the cost of DSL while line rental charges.
If you add rental to basic BB you get €55 per month for the absolute cheapest (and as I've pointed out elsewhere UTV don't have much savings over eircom, so you lose out on choice for call charges - where great savings are to be made) and then start adding call charges.

Of course most people will be on EsatBT or eircom at about 40 a month so the basic cost is 65 a month - very expensive if you consider you can get both in most other places for about 45-50 or sometimes less. I'd be more interested in seeing line rental back down to the levels it was at 2 or 3 years ago first.

vorbis

in fairness line rental is always going to be more expensive in Ireland as eircom won't be able to realise the same economies of scale as BT with regard to repairing lines.

dahamsta

A little bit more expensive, yes. I very much doubt it's anything close to scale though.

adam

Gonzo

i would also rate the cap issue and bad quality of most phonelines stopping potential broadband customers far more serious than the current cost.

watty

The Eircom techie fixing my line yesterday said that places like Patrickswell have a "trigger level" set for broadband internally deemed to be unreachable. So that they don't have to provide it. It is a small place and trigger level is 362. I signed (though I don't want it) to see if http://dsltrigger.eircom.ie/broadband.jsp actually changes. it does!

Also you need an Eircom account. This means for the minority (smaller since 30th March 2004) that get phone without paying calls or line rental to Eircom, you can't sign in and get closer to trigger.

watty

You can actually get fibre into your office in Raheen Industrial Estate in Limerick and possibly parts of Plassey, Limerick and even Shannon.

It is expensive, so I can't see homeowner wanting it, nor have I heard of it offered. Esat rep actually in person offered it to me in an office in Raheen 5 years ago.

Capt'n Midnight

Originally posted by vorbis
in fairness line rental is always going to be more expensive in Ireland as eircom won't be able to realise the same economies of scale as BT with regard to repairing lines.

Yeah they have a big factory up near Milton Keynes where they repair all the faulty lines :rolleyes:
The guys in vans have to go to the faults - Rural Ireland means longer travel times. The law of dimishing returns means that if you can't get BB economies of scale in a city the size of Dublin/Cork/Limerick then you are in the wrong business. Also since the repair rate is so poor many people don't bother chasing faults through so you could argue that the network is cheaper to maintain in than in the UK (or across the boarder)

watty

Scotland, Wales, Yorkshire, Northumberland and NI, not to mention all those fiddly Islands are pretty rural.

1/3rd of Ireland lives in greater Dublin Area.

Rural Ireland Population is dropping as Towns fill (Limerick the boundaries don't reflect real city suberbs etc).

I can't see any overall saving for BT in UK vs. Eircom in Ireland.

Urban Weigl

Originally posted by vorbis
in fairness line rental is always going to be more expensive in Ireland as eircom won't be able to realise the same economies of scale as BT with regard to repairing lines.

Something Ian Paisley could have said about Irish telecoms.

watty

Originally posted by Urban Weigl
Something Ian Paisley could have said about Irish telecoms.

I can't imagine him saying ANYTHING about Irish telecoms, since it has neither connection to Pope nor Terrorism.

Though he is pretty much against organised crime. Does Eircom come under that category?

Urban Weigl

The point is that if he did say anything about telecoms in Ireland, that's something he could have said, since he's always talking against Ireland and why Ireland will always be inferior to the UK for whatever reasons he makes up.

Hence the usage of the word could, not did or would.

Agent7249

Originally posted by watty
The Eircom techie fixing my line yesterday said that places like Patrickswell have a "trigger level" set for broadband internally deemed to be unreachable. So that they don't have to provide it. It is a small place and trigger level is 362. I signed (though I don't want it) to see if http://dsltrigger.eircom.ie/broadband.jsp actually changes. it does!

Also you need an Eircom account. This means for the minority (smaller since 30th March 2004) that get phone without paying calls or line rental to Eircom, you can't sign in and get closer to trigger.

eircom broadband is available in your area.

If you would like to order broadband, you can contact the following companies who currently offer DSL Broadband services in Ireland


eircom www.eircom.ie
esatbt www.esatbt.ie
Leap www.leap.ie
Netsource www.netsource.ie



Does this mean that I can get it, because when i check for my line it says I cant get it, does that mean my line is damaged? (I'm not far out past south hill in a place called ballysheedy: [Limerick])