eircom on Pat Kenny tomorrrow - Get your views in

damien

Someone from eircom (probably David) is going to be on the Pat Kenny show tomorrow touting broadband and answering broadband questions. Got any questions yourselves? Send them in:

On-air Phone: 1850 715 900
GB & N. Ireland: 0845 7857777
Fax: 01 2082634
Text No: 087 627 22 22
Email: todaypk@rte.ie


Ooops. Just seen other post. Can this be merged?

JohnC.

That makes it sound more like a free advertising feature than a discussion.

Rovi

This item will start very shortly, if anyone wants to listen in.
Here's the audio stream-
http://www.rte.ie/smiltest/radio_new.smil

.

Blaster99

It was painful to listen to that.

1. Smart can deliver broadband to lots of people because they ignore the line test and just get on with it.

2. ADSL is delivered to longer distances at lower speeds in other countries, the UK notably.

3. I love these "we're removing carriers", "we're fixing lines", type of statements. It's unfortunate that nobody in ADSL Sales have ever heard of these programmes.

kaizersoze

Painful indeed. There were three things that stood out for me.
1. If you're connected to an enabled exchange but your line is failing you can put in a firm order for BB with Eircom and they will sort the line problems. I presume he was talking about the "Amber Project". But what if you wanted to go with BT or any of the others and not Eircom?
2. If fixing your line means you need to be removed from a carrier, the carrier is not removed completely. Some other poor soul is put onto it in your place.
3. He basically called that guy in Cork, whose neighbour got Smart BB, a liar.

paulm17781

kaizersoze wrote:

2. If fixing your line means you need to be removed from a carrier, the carrier is not removed completely. Some other poor soul is put onto it in your place.

Hypothetically, would the carrier not eventually get removed or would they just say "No room in the exchange"?

kaizersoze wrote:

3. He basically called that guy in Cork, whose neighbour got Smart BB, a liar.

I didn't hear it, what did he say (Guy from Cork and Eircon guy).

Blaster99

kaizersoze wrote:

1. If you're connected to an enabled exchange but your line is failing you can put in a firm order for BB with Eircom and they will sort the line problems. I presume he was talking about the "Amber Project". But what if you wanted to go with BT or any of the others and not Eircom?

There have been many people on Boards who have said that the Eircom reps say that an order cannot be placed if the line fails. So it's seemingly impossible to do what he suggests.

jwt

Chicken and egg situation.

You can't get your line repaired unless you place an order.

You can't place an order unless your line is repaired (or passes the test)


Have spoken to eircom sales people about this myself and got the " your line doesn't pass so we cant process the order speil"

John

paulm17781

jwt wrote:

Have spoken to eircom sales people about this myself and got the " your line doesn't pass so we cant process the order speil"

Have you tried to escalate it? "on the grounds DMcR said...." kind of thing.

bk

kaizersoze wrote:

2. If fixing your line means you need to be removed from a carrier, the carrier is not removed completely. Some other poor soul is put onto it in your place.

Personally I don't think this is necessarily bad, most telecoms companies in Europe do this, however I think it should only be allowed based on the following requirements.

1) They actually do it.

I've seen no evidence that they actually do this. From what I've seen if you have a carrier, your line fails the BB test and you can't order BB or get your line fixed. Eircom need to actually start doing it and make their staff aware of the program.

2) The program is open to all bitstream and LLU operators.

You should also be able to order BB from another Bitstream operator like BT and Eircom should be still required to remove the carrier. This should be a simple and transparent process for the other bitstream operatos and their customers (yeah right like this is going to happen!!).

I believe it is already in place for LLU, if someone orders BB from a LLU operater and the line has a carrier on it, Eircom are required to remove the carrier, that is probably why many people who fail the Eircom line test can sign up for and get Smart BB.

3) When Eircom runs out of carrier free lines in an exchange they are required to start replacing and running new lines to people who order BB. Again it should also work for the other operators.

Sponge Bob

There is no escalation, computer says no therefore droid says no .

jwt

In the interests of science I decided to perform a small experiment with eircom.

NOTES

Currently our land line is with BT Ireland line rent and all.

We are showing as “RED” so the amber programme does not apply in our case.

But I was interested to see what knowledge of the scheme the operators have.

The conversations below are from memory and are not guaranteed to be correct or 100% accurate but do offer, to the best of my ability, a fair reflection of the call.

So off to the BTIreland site, looked up the sales telephone number and rang looking for broadband.


BT “Sorry sir you line is showing Red on our database from eircom and was last tested on 18/02/2006. so we can’t help you.”

In trying to find out what that meant the sales girl stuck to the party line despite me trying to find out whether this meant I wasn’t on a bb enabled exchange (I am) or whether I’m to far way (I am) or was their a carrier on the line (not to the best of my knowledge)

She kept repeating the “your line is showing red so we can’t help you” please contact eircom.

So off to eircom.

Rang the 1800 number and asked “Can I have broadband please?”

Gave my number and waited while it was checked.

Eircom Lady “I’m sorry Sir your line is failing.”

She then proceeds to tell me that the lines are checked regularly and the engineers attempt to repair any that are failing.

ME “That’s great so if I wait a few weeks an engineer will repair my line?”

Eircom Lady “Well your line is checked every few weeks”

“OK then, it’s just that my wife heard D. McRedmond on the radio today with P. Kenny saying that if we placed an order and there was a problem an engineer would attempt to repair the line”

Eircom Lady “emmm, I haven’t heard that, please wait a moment while I check with a supervisor”

A few minutes later

Eircom Lady “We’re not aware of that sir, but obviously we wouldn’t be aware of something that was just mentioned today, but if you ring customer care I’m sure they can help you”

“Their number is 1800 blah blah”

“Ok Thank You for your help”

So that’s a bust.


Now whatever about the girl on the line not knowing, surely the supervisor she spoke to would know?

Anybody else want to try the “Amber Programme Test”?

Even better if your on an amber line.

Blaster99

He did, for the record, mention this a long time ago, and BT even have a press release on their site saying that "we will send out an engineer to fix your line". I've never been able to find an eircom press release about it, though. That would have carried a bit more weight seeing as it's eircom who does the work at the end of the day.

I think this the BT PR I was thinking of: https://home.btireland.ie/echannel/esat.portal?_nfpb=true&aboutUs_actionOverride=%2Fpageflows%2FaboutUs%2FdisplayPressRelease&aboutUscontentNode=%2Fechannel%2Fpressreleases%2Fstories%2Fenglishrelease%2F6-2005%2FmediaPRJune0105.html&aboutUsbreadCrumb=June+2005&_windowLabel=aboutUs

Sponge Bob

Project Amber is a cod of the highest order and is solely designed to give the gullible some faint hope . Mind you if the pole outside with the pairgain on it had to be repaired after an unfortunate argument with a chainsaw then I can assure you that Eircom would indeed send an engineer out .

Nobody in here knows anybody who ever actually got an engineer sent out because their line was flagged amber ....do they ??????

jwt

It’d be an interesting thing to get the membership to do.

First get people to check if their lines are green, amber or red. Just to see rough percentages. Specifically to see what percentage are red and amber.

Then get anyone on amber that hasn’t got Bb and wants it to initiate an order to get the line repaired. See how many of those amber lines get repaired.

John

Sponge Bob

How can they tell whether they are amber or red John ..as in which line checker will tell them and how ?

lucernarian

I noticed that sometimes the Netsource checker had blank results even though there was a test date beside it.

I tried the numbers and they came up as a "pass, pending engineer visit" or something along those lines on the eircom checker.

Edit: It seems that the line checker has changed somewhat. I tried a line in an industrial estate in Drogheda as they're far enough from the exchange and it passed but ironically only for the residential-targeted services - Enterprise and Corporate could not be ordered.

jwt

Sponge Bob wrote:

How can they tell whether they are amber or red John ..as in which line checker will tell them and how ?

No idea with BTIreland Muck, just heard her typing in the background.


One would assume with the eircom lady it was their own.

AFAIK eircom pass their database out to the various telecoms on a regular basis, so what BTIreland would have been looking at was a static copy of the database?


John

damien

It's a live database that the OLOs log into via a web interface from what I've seen.

jwt

Glad I put "AFAIK" then :eek:

Sponge Bob

jwt wrote:

Glad I put "AFAIK" then :eek:

We all know about the line checking portal on the Eircom Wholesale site.

I am not aware of any such feature in the 'domestic' line checkers on the various bitstream resellers websites though so there is no way for J Punter to know that she is amber rather than red unless she rings an ISP who is willing to check the Eircom Wholesale site.

jwt

Sorry misunderstood the question.


None of the line checkers I've seen show amber status so whoever would be checking their lines would have to ring up, which they'd be doing anyway to attempt to get eircom to "fix" the line anyway.

On the eircom tester it only ever seems to show green for pass and red for unsuitable (not fail mind you but unsuitable)


John

Blaster99

Eircom... while they do provide a good service once they get around to it, they're a pretty funny bunch to deal with. I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but it always takes two goes to get anything done with them. The latest saga is that I ordered an upgrade to 5Mbps. Called in last week to get this done. A week later, nothing. Called up today, "oh... your line can only handle 2Mbps". Really, so how come it's running at 3Mbps now? How about just sticking it at 5Mbps and if it works it works, otherwise downgrade me again. (this concept has apparently never occurred to anyone in eircom). "oh... actually your line can handle 5Mbps", the upgrade will be done by tomorrow. I have no idea what they did with the original order. And of course invariably, I was passed around between about five different departments in the process of quering this, or maybe it was two departments that I passed between five times...

shinzon

Im 99.9% sure that the only reason i have bb now is because of the amber programme, when i cancelled the BB trial when my line passed the first time the line went back to failing again, and after the usual shouting roaring promised callbacks none happened etc etc, i got a call saying they were checking the line right now and theyd call me back, so thinking yeah right off out i went

Came back the mother said to me Eircom rang (after picking my jaw up off the floor), i said well what they say expecting the worse, what my mother said was that the agent or whoever, said are you sure you want to go ahead with the order (we never did order just asked them to do line test), my mother said yes we do, thinking it was just the test at the time, so we heard nothing for about 2 weeks when what came through the post, only router cables the whole shebang.

thinking this was very strange i setup the router and no DSL light, i said ok must have been a mistake, rang eircom and the agent said to me, oh no mr so and so your dsl will be switched on within the next day or 2, 3 hours later bang it comes on and has been on ever since (now at 2 meg)

I reiterate they were only testing the line for us, we never actually said we wanted a firm order, except when the mother said we did, so i can only assume because my mother said yes to the order, they fixed the line and enabled it for dsl again, i cerainly did nothing my end like plug out everything etc etc, left everything as is.

and to this day my line stilll fails the checkers on BT, Netsource et al, which i find incredibly annoying.

Shin

Blaster99

Many lines with ADSL on them fail the test. You can still move to a different bitstream provider.

jwt

I wonder if I rang BTIreland and asked them to switch the line on, would they?

John

eircomtribunal

It annoys me that McRedmond is accepted on air again and again, when practically each time he tells some sort of lie or peddles deliberate misinformation. I sent the Forfas graphs to todaypk, showing how Ireland is also the second worst country with regards to dsl availability.
Did anyone listen to Pat Kenny the day after the first show with David McRedmond? Was anything said about how McRedmond had lied when he'd repeatedly claimed that Ireland was as good as any other European country with dsl availability now?

P.

jwt

[Injured voice]
But Peter 90% of telephone lines are connected to BB enabled exchanges

We’re growing faster than the leading BB economies

Lines that fail are being fixed under the amber programme

[/Injured voice]

From eircom handbook on interview techniques

1. If asked an awkward question laugh first then deprecate the question

2. Never mention number of lines that actually succeed in running BB

3. Always ignore references to growth where starting point is mentioned

4. If in doubt answer a different question to the one asked

5. Continually emphasise that eircom are trying their best to help everyone, everywhere, everyway.

6. Never mention line rent

7. If asked about investment always quote relative to turnover NOT depreciation costs

8. If asked about small rural communities always angle towards Gov. subsidies first then increasing costs (not line rent, never mention line rent see 6 above, and don’t refer to lines outside silly 3.5km limit see 2 above)

9. LLU questions rebutted with laugh (see 1 above) then compared to any country where LLU is a small percentage of BB lines typically countries where alternative technologies such as cable provided the incentive (but don’t mention that)

10. Keep referring to 90%

11. If it appears that lots of texts are arriving and interviewer mentions this, laugh (see 1 above) make oblique reference to small number of troublemakers/activists (possibly include a reference to “doing Ireland down”) then answer a different question see 4 above, if really feeling your oats try the "dragging up old history" angle)

12. If a short answer will do, use a long answer, particularly if anyone is sharing the interview until such time as the interviewer exceed allotted time.

13. In the event of an unsuccessful interview, immediately contact media outlets owned by senior shareholders for a rebuttal

14. Remember! Never mention line rent!

15 And please remember not to use the expression "Absolutely [Insert Interviewer Name Here], " when fudging the facts!

Mr_Man

one of the things which McRedmond mentioned on the PK show was that Ashford wasn't BB enabled because it only had 1000 lines into it and so fell below the threshold level of 1500.

Now I am sure that this is totally unrelated [NOT} but 4 guys from Eircom turned up to-day to enable the Ashford exchange. I wonder if this will be mentioned when PK follows up on all of the complaints that were passed on to Eircom during the show

M

Cork

eircomtribunal wrote:

It annoys me that McRedmond is accepted on air again and again, when practically each time he tells some sort of lie or peddles deliberate misinformation.

P.

I believe that he cannot contiue to bluff and bluff.

Pat Kenny was not great.

Politicians need to be reminded of the situation with the forthcoming telecommunicatiuons bill and elections on the horizon.