eircom running out of steam

probe

Eircom are running out of news, presumably as a result of cutbacks imposed by the latest financial structural fiddling...?

In the "good old days" one might come across an announcement listing 20 or so "exchanges" that have been DSLized.

Today, eircom's home page has an item listing just one new area where this €5 billion+* company has managed to install a DSLAM (i.e. handful of DSL modem cards).

Drumshambo.

probe


*indebtedness

Quote:

Latest News
Drumshambo exchange broadband enabled

The Drumshambo, Co. Leitrim exchange was broadband enabled on Wednesday 7th June 2006.

Find out if your line is suitable, our broadband tool will test your phone line. If it's suitable, you can order eircom broadband today. Take a look at our broadband section.
eircom broadband is subject to survey, availability and compatibility.

Unquote

www.eircom.ie

zuma

They are not going to spend any more big money until the Aussies have total control.

We'll then see how much more money can be squeezed from this company....line rental increase?

kaizersoze

It has nothing really to do with the Aussies taking control. Eircom have come to the end of their current DSL exchange enabling program which started last year. This phase involved enabling exchanges in areas with a population of 1000 or more (it could also have been exchanges with 1000 lines or more. Can't remember which).
The bad news is that's all they are planning to do, so there will be no "next phase". They have said that exchanges smaller than that would not be economical to do. They have hinted at government money to do the rest.
The new owners might take a different view but time will tell.

probe

kaizersoze wrote:

It has nothing really to do with the Aussies taking control. Eircom have come to the end of their current DSL exchange enabling program which started last year. This phase involved enabling exchanges in areas with a population of 1000 or more (it could also have been exchanges with 1000 lines or more. Can't remember which).
The bad news is that's all they are planning to do, so there will be no "next phase". They have said that exchanges smaller than that would not be economical to do. They have hinted at government money to do the rest.
The new owners might take a different view but time will tell.

The plans of the new owners are surely irrelevant if preiswert loop unbundling is put in place by gov/comreg.ie.

As we see in France. 100,000 customers a month dumping France Telecom. Fairly soon they have almost zero customers.

It has woken up dozy state owned France Telecom and now they are offering HDTV in time for the world cup, as well as converged 2+3GSM mobile / VoIP fixed phone + internet.

Time to pull the monopoly rug from under eircom and make loop unbundling a reality. They may wake up when their market share falls to 25%?

probe

damien

Carphone warehouse signed up 340,000 customers for their LLU service in 8 weeks. That's some number!

Robxxx7

I think the FT issue in France is a different scenario, FT has 3 seperate companies, Orange (Mobile 2g/3g), Wanadoo (ISP) and Equant (Traditional Voice, Voip,IPT data to business'). What you have seen is that these companies have now come under the one banner 'Orange' so that consumers whether residential or Business can get all the telecom supplies from one company. This is most prevalent in France where FT as a monopoly have used this in order to try and offer their customers something more ..but i believe that they have been forced to do this in order to compete and offer something a bit different.

probe

Robxxx7 wrote:

I think the FT issue in France is a different scenario, FT has 3 seperate companies, ...

What is different about it?

France Telecom (FT) has been forced by a massive loss of customers week in week out to competitors due to loop unbundling to escalate the convergence thing to match the alternatives available. Virtually all the loop unbundling competitors offer TV, broadband and free phone calls in their package.

FT has decided to go one better and add in Mobile and converge the marketing and brand into “Orange Open”.

So when your Orange mobile phone is at home, calls from your mobile will be free and travel over your orange Wifibox into the VoIP system instead of to the nearest mobile cellsite. This bit of the package starts on 1 September, and will no doubt reduce the volume of traffic growth that cellsites have to carry – thereby helping reduce environmental pollution.

The Orange package will be very compelling for the customer. One web portal, One customer service number, HD and regular TV, digital radio, converged mobile and fixed line telephony, with free phone calls 24h/24. It wouldn’t have come about without the aggressive unbundling position of gouv.fr.

This will hit mobile only networks such as Vodafone hard. While they only have a minority interest in F-SFR, the convergence thing will no doubt be replicated in most countries in time. Vodafone have about €100 billion in intangibles still left in their balance sheet, and most of this will have to be written off as the mobile market gets tougher with lots of mobile traffic that used to be 20c / minute now going for free. Almost guaranteeing that this company will be making losses for the foreseeable future!

The mobile networks in Europe have been fat and pig inefficient for the past decade and loop unbundling will ultimately force them to cut prices and increase efficiency. One of the Ernst & Young entrepreneurs of the year in 2004 runs a mobile network in India and said that they make 34% net margins with call charges of just 2c per minute. They pay the same price for network infrastructure as everybody else. They are installing 20,000 cellsites this year across India and have their eye on the European market.

Ireland needs to get serious about loop unbundling and to offer a few more mobile network licenses!


probe

Robxxx7

I agree upto a point, the difference is that Eircom are only a national company, not that well known outside of Ireland for the delivery of telecoms, Whereas FT, have outside of France a big international network, where they can provide services (rather than just rely on the french consumer) Eircom do not have this and thus the more competitive the Irish market becomes, the more diluted that Eircom become.

We know that in France, the government is always there to help FT (and they have shown this in the past -- help in reducing the debt), But with Eircom , unless they change ..they will only ever see a reduction in consumers and revenue.

probe

Robxxx7 wrote:

I agree upto a point, the difference is that Eircom are only a national company, not that well known outside of Ireland for the delivery of telecoms

France Telecom is not going to ignore the French consumer market and focus on international operations because the home broadband market has got too competitive. They have decided to make the FT phone line loop more important to the consumer by offering a full range of communications / media products – internet, HD & regular TV, mobile phone, landline phone, home security, and a DVD rental kiosk in one package.

The whole point of my postings is that eircom will not change unless it is dragged screaming and shouting into an era of mass loop unbundling by government. Price initiatives that drastically cut the total cost paid by eircoms’ competitors to unbundle a line. The wide spread loop unbundling reality must be put in place before eircom will modernise their network and make always-on IP based services (which includes home broadband internet access) affordable to every household that has at least one PC, (as well as business users).

And this needs to be done urgently.

€54.17 month (the monthly total eircom charge for the slowest always on DSL broadband service) is by no means in the affordable category. www.neuf.fr charge just 14.90€ for providing almost 20 times that speed of DSL internet access using an unbundled France Telecom line, (with no service set-up charges and no minimum subscription duration).

For another €15 a month, Neuf will throw in unlimited French and international calls, 61 TV channels (+ the option to subscribe to 150 extra channels), a WiFi modem router box, a security package and 9 gigs of space to store stuff on the net on one of their servers.

The vast majority of eircom’s customer base is still served by antiquated 30 year old circuit switched infrastructure. Sponge Bob did a test of DSL availability via eircom’s system* and found that 52% of lines in a certain rural area failed the DSL suitability test. No surprise to anyone who drives through the countryside with their eyes open. Eircom’s line plant across the countryside is in tatters.

Eircom’s charges have been among the highest on the planet. They have squandered this money on heavily leveraged buyouts, investment banking fees, huge payouts to staff and interest payments. Funded by the monopoly victim customer – most of when are stuck with dial-up internet access – ALL OF WHOM IN IRELAND ARE PAYING FAR MORE FOR DIAL-UP INTERNET ACCESS than your average French subscriber pays for broadband.

The French Government doesn’t support France Telecom with handouts – quite the opposite they have been thrown into the sea of loop unbundling and this has taught them how to swim (by providing a converged service package to the customer). The same will have to happen in Ireland. If eircom ultimately goes into liquidation as a result (and the faster the better if they want to commit hara-kiri), it really doesn’t matter because the line plant will be there to be unbundled off by a “liquidator”.

Probe
* http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=51529134&postcount=5
edit=typo correction

Sponge Bob

probe wrote:

Sponge Bob did a test of DSL availability via eircom’s system* and found that 52% of lines in a certain rural area failed the DSL suitability test. No surprise to anyone who drives through the countryside with their eyes open. Eircom’s line plant across the countryside is in tatters.

I did a quick sample when the business post started to moan about low takeups in Granard Co Longford and when I tested 40 lines Granard Co Longford ....like a proper paper should have.....52% of them failed.

Whats the Line Rental in France probe (incl Vat) ....just so you can display the total cost of ownership Ireland vs France .

probe

Sponge Bob wrote:

I did a quick sample when the business post started to moan about low takeups in Granard Co Longford and when I tested 40 lines Granard Co Longford ....like a proper paper should have.....52% of them failed.

Whats the Line Rental in France probe (incl Vat) ....just so you can display the total cost of ownership Ireland vs France .

The line "rental" is irrelevant if you unbundle with a competitor - i.e. the €14.90 a month offer of 20 Mbits/sec broadband from neuf telecom is similar to the €35 offer from Smart Telecom. Except that Smart's product is much slower.

As an aside, France Telecom has lots of different line offers. The basic line (L'Abonnement principal) [if you don't have student or other discounts] is €13,99 including VAT. (i.e. a little over half eircom's charge). The installation fee €55 (TTC). But you don't need to "rent" a France Telecom line to get DSL in France - the unbundling fee paid by the ISP to France Telecom covers this.

probe

Sponge Bob

There is partial and full unbundling in most markets. If the €14.90 were for a partially unbundled line you would have to pay line rental to FT on top .

If fully unbundled it is indeed the equivalent of the Smart €35 product .

delly

kaizersoze wrote:

It has nothing really to do with the Aussies taking control. Eircom have come to the end of their current DSL exchange enabling program which started last year. This phase involved enabling exchanges in areas with a population of 1000 or more (it could also have been exchanges with 1000 lines or more. Can't remember which).
The bad news is that's all they are planning to do, so there will be no "next phase". They have said that exchanges smaller than that would not be economical to do. They have hinted at government money to do the rest.
The new owners might take a different view but time will tell.

Thats great news for me :mad:. I live in a large estate near Drogheda which has over 750 homes, but because we are not in Drogheda or classed as our own toen, we get nothing. Well done Eircom!

probe

Sponge Bob wrote:

There is partial and full unbundling in most markets. If the €14.90 were for a partially unbundled line you would have to pay line rental to FT on top .

If fully unbundled it is indeed the equivalent of the Smart €35 product .

I had a quick look at neuf’s small print and the €14.90 offer is based on partial unbundling while the €29.90 product is based on full unbundling. i.e. for you get 20 Mbits/sec broadband + a cable TV replacement for just over €5 per month (on top of eircom’s line rental equivalent). [€5 would buy less than 2 hours of daytime dial-up internet access on eircom’s 1892 service].

probe


Cette offre, disponible seulement sur Internet et sur les zones dégroupées par Neuf, combine toutes les innovations en termes de services sur l'ADSL à un prix très avantageux, modem compris.
Connexion internet haut débit
• Le débit maximal accepté par votre ligne jusqu’à 20 Méga (tester)
• Une connexion permanente et illimitée
Ligne téléphonique incluse
• Fini l’abonnement téléphonique auprès de France Télécom
- Neuf est votre interlocuteur unique
- vous n’avez plus qu’une seule facture pour tous vos services
• Tous les services de confort sont inclus : messagerie, dernier appelant, présentation du n°, conférence à trois, transfert…
Téléphone illimité en France et à l’international
• Appels illimités 7j/7 et 24h/24 vers les fixes des 25 pays de l’Union Européenne (dont la France), les Etats-Unis, le Canada, l’Australie, la Nouvelle-Zélande, la Chine, Taiwan et Singapour soit 32 pays en tout !
• Des tarifs compétitifs vers les autres destinations et les mobiles
Télévision numérique avec accès à plus de 200 chaînes et services
• Neuf TV comprend de base 61 chaînes dont toutes les chaînes TNT gratuites et des services interactifs gratuits (programmes TV, alertes, météo, trafic, visio, audience en temps réel, chaînes favorites...)
• Accès à plus de 150 chaînes en option et aux bouquets TPS, Canal+ et CanalSat avec le même décodeur
• Avec MP9 Premium, ajoutez à Neuf TV des fonctions de timeshifting et de MediaCenter
Et aussi dans cette offre : modem-routeur WiFi, sécurité et stockage
• Neuf Box WiFi avec un dongle pour connecter sans fil un ordinateur
• Pack Neuf Sécurité : antivirus, antispyware, parefeu et contrôle parental
• Neuf Giga : 9 Go d'espace de stockage et de sauvegarde partageable en ligne