NTL BB rollout question

MrPudding

Surely someone somewhere must know the story with the rollout?

Are they randomly sending teams out to carry out upgrades each morning? Surely there must be a plan?

MrP

JoeyJJ

Last time I asked about this I was told, to wait till I get a letter in the door saying its available..

maquiladora

Yes, we got a letter informing us that our area had been enabled for broadband. In fact, before we got the letter we actually got a call from NTL, because we had called them about 6 months before wondering about the rollout in our area.

paulm17781

I think we are missing the point. Mr P. is saying:

As a large company, NTL must have some roll out strategy, how they decide what areas will be enabled and when?

Mr P. then asks:

Does anyone know what this strategy is?

Presumably he is curious perhaps to try and work out his area.

He is not saying "How will I know when my area is upgraded?"

keyran

I am sure they know where they will be working but that’s not going to mean the area they try to realise will work. Wayleave issues and stuff for new cables probably mean they don’t want to take the chance saying 1 month they turning out to be 2 or 3 months.

bk

I'm sure they have a plan. They seem to have started with the low hanging fruit, upgrading areas with newer cable and infrastructure like Galway and Waterford and then working their way towards to more difficult areas with older cable and infrastructure (and therefore more difficult and costly to upgrade).

Of course they aren't going to tell us publically as it would be valuable information to their competitors.

MrPudding

Thank you. I thought perhaps my post was too subtle.

I just find it very annoying that it is impossible to get even a hint of a timeline.

MrP

maquiladora

MrPudding wrote:

Thank you. I thought perhaps my post was too subtle.

I just find it very annoying that it is impossible to get even a hint of a timeline.

MrP

If you've contacted NTL themselves and they were not unable to provide you with an answer, its unlikely that we would have access to some type of system that NTL support agents wouldn't.

My advice would be to call NTL again (assuming you have called them before) and ask to speak directly to a supervisor as the information on what areas would be enabled in the future would probably be higher level data not available to the average agent in the call centre.

PauloMN

You won't know until it is available, simple as that. Problem is that enabling areas is a very localised thing, it's not like they are "switching on" Blanchardstown etc., it is done on a road by road basis, and they won't give out details like that to anyone.

I rang years ago back in the days when they were testing in D6 and some of D24. Was basically told "Clonee? It could be 10 years before it's out there...".

Signed up and got connected last week, it's been in my area for years. You'll get a flyer prob. every 2 months from the time it's available.

(No problems so far, getting around 1.97Mbps solid on the 2Mbps service).

MrPudding

maquiladora wrote:

If you've contacted NTL themselves and they were not unable to provide you with an answer, its unlikely that we would have access to some type of system that NTL support agents wouldn't.

My advice would be to call NTL again (assuming you have called them before) and ask to speak directly to a supervisor as the information on what areas would be enabled in the future would probably be higher level data not available to the average agent in the call centre.

Wow, obviously I was too subtle. I was not asking someone here to provide me with the plan. I was making a comment that it was impossible to get the information as no one in NTL that you can speak seems to know what is going on.

MrP

Blaster99

What does NTL think Eircom would do, re-enable exchanges that they have already enabled? It's not as if NTL is breaking new ground exactly.

Not that anyone would pay any attention to what NTL says in any event.

PauloMN

What does NTL think Eircom would do

You're joking right? If information on the planned BB upgrade of each and every NTL cabled housing estate/area was available to the public with expected times/dates, do you not think Eircom would target those areas in order one by one?

Them and every other BB provider would do so, and they would do that even more than they hassle people trying to get lost business back from them.

Blaster99

PauloMN wrote:

If information on the planned BB upgrade of each and every NTL cabled housing estate/area was available to the public with expected times/dates, do you not think Eircom would target those areas in order one by one?

No.

BigMoose

MrPudding wrote:

Wow, obviously I was too subtle. I was not asking someone here to provide me with the plan. I was making a comment that it was impossible to get the information as no one in NTL that you can speak seems to know what is going

And people have replied explaining exactly why this is the case. Dont think subtlety comes into it! Bloody annoying as it may be (I have no idea when my road/house will be upgraded but I can understand commercially why they wont tell me). And it's not just competitors, these things never work out at the planned time so why bother to set expectations of us lot in the first place then get slated when they deviate from the plan?

bk

Blaster99 wrote:

What does NTL think Eircom would do, re-enable exchanges that they have already enabled? It's not as if NTL is breaking new ground exactly.

They would send sales people door to door, send flyers, cold call and generally lie through their teeth. To try and get as many people signed up on the area before NTL would arrive.

They use to call to my house all the time when I was a Esat customer, they use to lie constantly about how they were cheaper. Fortunately I know they were lying, but many people wouldn't. It isn't anything new.

NTL's direct advertising campaign has been highly successfull in upgraded areas. NTL have very good BB take up rates in enabled areas.

Eircom are very scared of NTL. Every NTL BB customers is not only a lost BB customer, that custoemr now also has the option of completely dropping their Eircom phone line (as the person has a mobile or blueface). So Eircom would also lose line rental, call charges and interconnect charges. Very bad news for Eircom.

You seem to have a blind hatred of NTL that simply clouds your judgement. The reality is that NTL has a very high penetration level of analogue TV into Dublin city, the single largest and most important market in Ireland. As NTL enable each area in Dublin, they can easily levarage their existing relationship with their customers to get them to take up BB and in the future voice services. This scares the hell out of Eircom, don't fool yourself.

NTL is a much bigger threat to Eircom then bitstream or even LLU.

maquiladora

MrPudding wrote:

Wow, obviously I was too subtle. I was not asking someone here to provide me with the plan.
MrP

I find that reply extraordinary given that your initial post was composed of three sentences, each ending in a question mark, the first being "Surely someone somewhere must know the story with the rollout?" That sounded pretty much like you were asking someone. Not to mention "Does anyone know what this strategy is?" :rolleyes:

PauloMN

No.

Fair enough, I beg to differ though. Eircom would grab that information and have all their little young fellows in suits go knocking on peoples' doors to try and get ahead of the game.

As the other poster says above, we're not just talking about potential BB revenue loss for Eircom here, we're talking about people dropping them completely.

dub45

bk wrote:

They would send sales people door to door, send flyers, cold call and generally lie through their teeth. To try and get as many people signed up on the area before NTL would arrive.

...................

NTL is a much bigger threat to Eircom then bitstream or even LLU.

Imagine how good they could be if they had anything approaching a decent customer service?:rolleyes:

bk

dub45 wrote:

Imagine how good they could be if they had anything approaching a decent customer service?:rolleyes:

I've never had any problems with their customer support. I've only ever contacted them about 3 times, but everytime I get straight through and they knew the answer straight off.

Fortunately the BB is rock solid and never goes down. The Digital TV use to freeze up the odd time and give weird error messages about taking the card out, it was very annoying when I TiVo programs. But it seems to have stopped happening over the last few months, so perhaps they improved the network or software.