Has €ircon reached 100,000 Broadband Customers?

LFCFan

I saw ads in Landsdowne Road yesterday during the game which stated that €ircon had reached 100,000 broadband customers. Is this true or are they counting all the customers the likes of UTV, Esat etc are reselling to?

dahamsta

I'm just guessing, but I think it's pretty unlikely they'd have 100,000 retail customers.

adam

viking

They are counting the number of bitstream (wholesale) customers that they have.

This total includes all the customers eircom has plus all the other operators customers (except Esat's LLU customers).

But I'm sure all the other ISP's will come out and tell the media how many of the 100,000 each of them has.... won't they?

V

LFCFan

I think it's an absolute disgrace that they can get away with this. The Ad specifically says 'Customers'. I am with UTV Clicksilver and I am NOT an €ircon Broadband customer. Time for a mail to the ASAI me thinks!

Moriarty

Gosh, imagine how much money would be down the drain if they had to remake all those posters? Those poor dears..

viking

By all means register your complaint with the ASAI, just don't expect anything to be done about it for about 3 months until they put out their "newsletter".

By that stage, everyone will have forgotton about the misleading posters anyway.

A slightly more productive approach would be to send a letter to the letters page of one of the national papers. At least it would be seen by more people.

V

EDIT: Where are the OLO's disputing eircom's 100,000 customers, as per usual leaving it for IOFFL no doubt...

damien

viking wrote:

But I'm sure all the other ISP's will come out and tell the media how many of the 100,000 each of them has.... won't they?

We'll wait and see I guess.

jwt

I wouldn't hold your breath.

Seems like the other OLO's are quite happy for IOFFL to do all the running with these types of comments.

Either they don't care or couldn't be bothered it would appear.

John

Blaster99

They don't have much to gain from this particular complaint and they need to work with Eircom so why piss them off?

The likes of EsatBT are strangely quiet generally speaking when it comes to regulation etc. Back in Denis O'Brien's days they were quite vocal. I could understand it if EsatBT was profitable and they had a comfortable niche, but they're not and they don't.

damien

This just went to our media list:

###BEGINS###

[FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE]

eircom's 100,000th broadband signup is not a success

Internet business and consumer pressure group IrelandOffline today poured
scorn on eircom's current campaign highlighting the 100,000 broadband
subscribers in Ireland. According to the group this figure is most
certainly not something that we should be boasting about at an
internationally televised event.

IrelandOffline spokesman Aidan Whyte stated "Far from being the achievement
eircom would have everyone believe, it is a serious embarrassment that
Ireland Inc and eircom in particular should be very concerned about. This
'milestone' still leaves Ireland languishing in 18th position of 21 OECD
countries for broadband penetration. eircom should not be congratulating
itself on achieving a thoroughly substandard goal."

According to the group, in a period when EU countries are achieving
broadband penetration rates of 40% Ireland now has a dismal 7% broadband
take-up, a rate which greatly concerns the Government's own Information
Society Commission. Added to this are the stark facts that Ireland has one
of the highest line rentals in Europe, the 2nd highest LLU charges, no
definition of functional Internet access and a line failure rate of 24%
compared to a failure rate of less than 1% in Northern Ireland. Furthermore
the 100,000 figure includes resellers of Eircom's bitstream product.
IrelandOffline wonders how many OLO customers are included in the
100,000 figure?

Commenting on the reasons why less than 50% of Irish business users and
consumers can avail of broadband, IrelandOffline Committee member John
Timmons stated: "Broadband is constrained by supply not demand. In
particular by the appalling state of eircom's copper network, by eircom's
unambitious broadband rollout plans and by eircom's low capital expenditure
which is currently running well below the level of depreciation. Coupled
with an insincere regulatory attitude from ComReg, Ireland is rapidly
becoming a text book scenario on how not to do it."

Timmons added "Watching the football last night showed Ireland can do
better than many of our European rivals on the pitch, but the advertising
from eircom at the match highlighted that we are static at the bottom of
the European broadband league."

Spokesman Whyte stated "IrelandOffline now calls on eircom to develop a
broadband rollout plan for the 80% of exchanges for which they currently
have no plans whatsoever. IrelandOffline supports the latest statement from
the Information Society Commission and calls on the Minister for
Communications to follow up his announced aspiration of 500,000 broadband
subscribers by the end 2006 with a detailed plan on how this is to be
achieved as per the Joint Oireachtas Report"

Paddy20

Goodie goodie, me likes very mucho gracias

P.

damien

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news4a.nv?storyid=single4089

Eircom scores own goal with broadband boast, say critics

18.11.2004 - Eircom claims to have signed up 100,000 broadband customers but critics have slammed the announcement as an “embarrassment” in terms of the country’s adoption of fast internet access. It has also emerged that other internet service providers helped Eircom’s wholesale department to attain this figure.
The former state telco revealed the total as part of a pitchside advertising campaign at Tuesday’s soccer international between Ireland and Croatia. The company had claimed that it would reach this target before the end of the year.

However, Eircom did not achieve this figure all by itself; the company’s retail division and Eircom Net, its internet service provider arm, contributed approximately 75,000. The remainder came from other operators that supply DSL to their own customer base by reselling access provided through Eircom’s wholesale division. Esat BT for example is understood to have delivered 20,000 of these customers and other ISPs including UTV Internet and Netsource would have accounted for other amounts to bring the total to 100,000.

It is understood that there may be a further 15,000 Irish users of broadband in the wider sense of the term, who connect to the internet at high speeds via leased lines, satellite, cable modem or fixed wireless access. However as these services are supplied by other providers and do not use DSL, Eircom cannot claim them as wholesale customers.

Eircom’s broadband product is Digital Subscriber Line or DSL, which delivers internet access over existing copper wire phone lines at much faster speeds than dialup.

Fintan Lawler, head of Eircom Net, the telco’s internet service provider division, nonetheless called the figure “an important milestone for the company and for the internet in Ireland”. In July of last year, the broadband penetration rate stood at just 10,000 users and the company stated on several occasions since that it would meet the target of 100,000 by December of this year.

According to Eircom commercial director David McRedmond, the company plans to make an announcement on further targets in the near future. He added that the extensive TV and radio advertising for Eircom broadband was “benefiting everybody”, including other suppliers.

Aidan Whyte, a spokesman with the internet pressure group IrelandOffline criticised the figures: “This ‘milestone’ still leaves Ireland languishing in 18th position of 21 OECD countries for broadband penetration. Eircom should not be congratulating itself on achieving a thoroughly substandard goal.”

Various estimates exist as to Ireland’s exact broadband penetration rate although most observers agree that it has been extremely low to date, particularly when compared to other countries. Recent research from Amarach found that 10pc of home internet users currently connect to the internet over DSL and 33pc of business internet users do so. IrelandOffline claims that Ireland has 7pc takeup of households, a figure the group described as “dismal”. In pure percentage terms, 100,000 subscribers equates to approximately 2.5pc of the entire population of the state.

Earlier this week the Information Society Commission warned that Ireland would not meet the Government’s stated target of being in the top decile of OECD countries for broadband by the middle of next year. The group also expressed concern that the DSL option may not be able to deliver sufficient capacity over the longer term and recommended maintaining investment in a variety of broadband options to maximise competition and to avoid over-dependence on any one technology platform.

By Gordon Smith