eircom wins VPN contract for another year

iwb

I am surprised this hasn't been covered here. I'm not sure how it was justified that this could have happened, even for a year. The Irish Times reported it on Saturday. Sorry but I don't have an account there anymore to grab the piece.
They say the whole telecoms spend with eircom is worth up to 100M per year. They also mention at least that Noel O'Flynn among others suggested that Gov't spending be used to help the marketplace. I guess finance didn't listen.
Pathetic. Another area for IrelandOffline to focus on.....................

Moriarty

I'm presuming this is the government telecoms contract?

iwb

Sorry, yes. I wanted to get it in there but am too tired to type in the article. Anyone with access to the premium content on Irish Times?
The VPN part is the volume discount on leased lines. This should not have gone to eircom again. There was no mention of a competitive tender nor did I see on on the eTenders site. Probably exercising an option to renew.
The only good thing is that it is for a year and not three.

Ripwave

Originally posted by iwb
They say the whole telecoms spend with eircom is worth up to 100M per year.

It's worth a hell of a lot more than that! This time last year, the Department of Social Welfare was paying over €7 million per month, including VAT to eircom for the "free telephone allowance" that is provided to over a quarter of a million people in Ireland.

You might call it the eircom dole!

ednwireland

the gov vpn is a private network linking gov depts it isn't visible and runs over eircoms network and is managed by lancomms, its also cheaper than an equivalent leased line
don't think anyone else in ireland has the network to supply this to all the bits of ireland that are linked using this. (or they're certainly not prepared to do it (i.e esat has very little precence in many parts of the country certainly if you've no train line your unlikley to have an esat pop)

iwb

I don't know if I agree that nobody else could do it. If it was out to bid, a consortium of companies could offer the service or EsatBT might be able to cover a large percentage themselves and sub the rest.
More concerning is the overall amount of business that eircom gets from the Government. Much of it possibly just because, rather than having made informed decisions or looking at the big picture and doing like O'Flynn said and many others before him.
In Alberta, the Government used its buying power to create a province wide network where it is possible to get up to Gigabit ethernet at affordable prices in the smallest towns and villages. It is not complete yet but is already being used to great advantage.
The incumbent, Telus, when it realised the threat became very sensible and sold a load of fibre to the project rather than see it lose all value if someone built parallel infrastructure. Telus will proably be a big customer of SuperNet over time.
While it doesn't necessarily work to do the exact same thing here, it makes sense to look at the same overall strategy. Giving eircom all your business, even if it is the most cost effective isn't a wise thing to do, and I doubt it is the most cost effective anyway. Is it ever?

tomk

Originally posted by ednwireland
don't think anyone else in ireland has the network to supply this to all the bits of ireland that are linked using this.

Well, of necessity, any national network is going to have to use €ircon infrastructure for a good portion of their connectivity, but that doesn't mean that €ircon have to get the business directly. The company I work for has a country wide IP network, running over both €ircon and E$AT lines. We wouldn't be competing for this kind of business, but I mention it to support iwb's idea that a consortium could handle it.

iwb

Thanks tomk for the support:)
I am a little surprised there wasn't more reaction to this subject but then again, perhaps many people are by now totally fed up with the Governments inability to get it right.
I think it is more a case of disjointed thinking than anything. I often get the impression that finance and comms don't communicate very effectively.
Perhaps if the Mary Hanafin role was full time and she had the time to concentrate on it solely, we would see more integrated strategies coming out of Government.
Other evidence of a lack of big picture are the likes of Gweedore getting GBS funding when it has just had lots of money spent on a MAN. Also, if you look into the choice of towns for the next phase of MAN's, there are other anomalies like this one. Isolated thinking to be sure.

jwt

Originally posted by iwb

I think it is more a case of disjointed thinking than anything. I often get the impression that finance and comms don't communicate very effectively.

The sad reality is that the tender evaluations by default always favour the current vendor.

Reasoning goes like this
We know what we are dealing with
We know what we'll get
We wont get sacked for going with an already approved vendor
"Nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM" syndrome
Don't know what this new crowd do.
If it f**ks up our neck is on the block
etc
etc
etc

The we in there is deliberate, cause it's usually a committee of people involved in the tender evaluation.


Its not politics, favouritism, back handers etc just self interest from ordinary joes doing a job.


That said the tender process is rigorous and anyone not following procedures is going to get short shift, so there is hope. But by and large if its close to a 50/50 the current vendor gets it unless the newcomers can prove a definite advantage.
That would be hard for any other organisation to prove when it comes to country wide connectivity.

Eircom make a point of being ultra nice and ultra efficient when dealing with govt departments. You would be amazed what they can achieve when they think a Gov department is going to be miffed with them and the tender is up for re-evaluation.


John