Magnet releases 2mb uncontended broadband for €15

damien

From press release:

Magnet Entertainment has pushed the boundaries of the Irish broadband market again by launching a new broadband service today (Tuesday 2nd May) for ˆ15 per month that beats all its competitors. The price is the less than the price of a pair of cinema tickets.

The service consists of an uncontended 2MB broadband connection with no time limits on the amount of usage. Magnet Entertainment is the only broadband provider that gives its customers an uncontended service. This means their broadband connection will not fluctuate during peak time, unlike rival services, thus providing customers with the service they paid for. For
example, during peak times the eircom service’s speed can drop to a snail’s
pace because their connection is being shared with other customers.

...

The service excludes line rental, however when compared to eircom broadband time service (ˆ19.99 per month for only 20 hours), the ˆ15 offer is a
significant improvement and a ground breaking offer. There have been numerous complaints about time based broadband services as users often find that they pay twice the price because the customer went over the time limit. Magnet Entertainment hopes that the offer will appeal to consumers who are still using dial-up or time-based services, in order to take advantage of a true broadband speed always-on service.

There's a map on their website too with areas they are in now and will be in soon. http://www.magnet.ie/pdf/dublin-map.pdf

Sponge Bob

Its shared and not full LLU I take it so no loss of number and rental goes to Eircom.

Good news for Dublin and Galway where magnet is live .

cgarvey

Does uncontended at the DSLAM make any difference if the peering/tier1-3 connections are all contended.. It's still down to managing contention and how good or bad they are at it. Only time will tell. Smart do the same, no? They don't yet have the custom to worry about contention of peering/upstream, but it remains to see what happens when they do get the custom.

Where does it suggest shared LLU? The Magnet Starter spec says "· Per minute charging billed at Magnet Networks standard rates for local, national, mobile, international and premium calls." for telephone service.

Sponge Bob

cgarvey wrote:

Does uncontended at the DSLAM make any difference if the peering/tier1-3 connections are all contended..

true, they may have 2.5gbits Dublin-Galway and 1000 customers so there is no contention until it hits core network in Dublin or a transatlantic pipe.

Where does it suggest shared LLU? The Magnet Starter spec says "· Per minute charging billed at Magnet Networks standard rates for local, national, mobile, international and premium calls." for telephone service.

Magnet are starting to confuse me now cg.

Blaster99

What is the definition of Shared LLU? I thought I knew but I'm confused now.

Sponge Bob

its where number stays with eircom and calls stay with eircom or a CPS carrier and rental stays with eircom unless WLR is used and only the BB goes fully unbundled to the other carriers.

Thats Partial LLU aka Shared LLU as distinct from Full LLU which is what Smart does.

Blaster99

Maybe that's why Magnet uses VoIP, to get control over the calls. But you'd think if they are using Shared LLU that they could just use CPS and let the customer keep the phone number.

How does the separation of broadband work? If eircom terminates the line, how do they break out the broadband aspect of the line to another provider?

I'm guessing this Shared LLU lark allows Magnet to do the "sign up for 2Mbps broadband while we get the exchange ready" offer that wouldn't make any sense if there was the usual one month+ downtime during the switch-over.

Sponge Bob

and if you ring their customer service /sales for clarification you will understand why this sponge is confuzzled so you will The only way they can 'make' you put their calls into them is if they 'abolish' the telephone socket or not provide a filter <cough> and kinda force you to use an ATA built into their modem

cgarvey

Anyone know more about Shared LLU practice (as against theory) here? I remember when Esat BT started unbundling they were offering me either Full LLU and I'd pay no line rental, but have no voice service on the line (VoIP wasn't huge then), or Partial LLU (with normal Voice service from eircom). However I couldn't get Partial LLU if I had CPS (WLR was but a pipe dream then).

Partial LLU would mean that you don't have to change number, but it also means regular eircom line rental (and, therefore, the LLU provider loses out on the rental). So Smart, for example, couldn't use this and remain competitive.

I called Magnet earlier for the craic. Her line was that I'd have to change my number (for the 15 quid service, am on an exchange that isn't unbundled), when it came to unbundling the exchange. In the meantime I could keep the eircom voice service/number "if I really wanted to". She was a bit confused sounding though, so I'd take that with a pinch of salt. I didn't want to be more insulting than asking "are you sure about that" twice.


.cg

bk

cgarvey wrote:

I called Magnet earlier for the craic. Her line was that I'd have to change my number (for the 15 quid service, am on an exchange that isn't unbundled), when it came to unbundling the exchange. In the meantime I could keep the eircom voice service/number "if I really wanted to". She was a bit confused sounding though, so I'd take that with a pinch of salt. I didn't want to be more insulting than asking "are you sure about that" twice.

Well, according to the Magnet site, if you want to keep the Eircom line rental, the BB will cost €29 pm excluding line rental (look at the bottom of the page):
http://www.magnet.ie/packages/index.shtml

Sponge Bob

bk wrote:

Well, according to the Magnet site, if you want to keep the Eircom line rental, the BB will cost €29 pm excluding line rental (look at the bottom of the page):
http://www.magnet.ie/packages/index.shtml

That would deconfuzzleate this particular Sponge, Magnet must do full OR shared LLU depending on package. Now if they could train their sales droids a bit better

eircomtribunal

cgarvey wrote:

Anyone know more about Shared LLU practice (as against theory) here?

Is the ComReg proposed shared/partial LLU price reduction to some 50 cent gone through, or is it still in consultation phase?
See ENN article

ComReg published its consultation on the pricing of LLU line share on 12 November and expects responses to the consultation by 3 December. The regulator has recommended cutting the price of local loop unbundling (LLU) line sharing from EUR9.00 to just EUR0.39.

I know that a lot of LLU in France is via their partial LLU.

Whatever way LLU is going to be done. Thanks to our now officially "less muscular" (Dempsey) and "toothless" (citigroup) regulator granting one of the highest landline subscription and LLU prices in Europe (the latter fixed until Dec 2007) whatever way LLU will be done by courageous competitors, Eircom is guaranteed the lion share of what the consumer pays.

If the proposed low shared LLU pricing is already in place – and I have no recollection of that happening – competitors could use that avenue, but I can't see it making much sense, as the consumer will still have to pay the full telephone rental to Eircom. And what with VOIP in that partial LLU scenario?

P.
P.S.: There is an article on TheRegister today about CarphoneWarehouse (buyers of TELE 2) in the UK complaining to Ofcom about incumbent BT favouring partial LLU over full LLU by discounting once off partial LLU migration charge (to £ 20) but not the migration charge to fully unbundled local loops (£ 34.86). Ofcom wants to settle for something just under £ 30.
How are Irish prices in this regard?