BBC Program On Boradband in the UK

Mr_Man

The Money Program,

a serious financial programme on the BBC is running a show to-night on the the boradband boom in the UK and the choices faced by consumers there. I reckon Comreg should watch this to get an idea of what a competitive market looks like.

M.

eircomtribunal

The web site link on the link you posted is worth reading.

So in the UK they have a sign up rate of 70 000 per week. Ireland having 1/14.2 of the UK population would need to have 5000 new broadband signups to keep up with the UK.
I don't think we have anything like that. We are not catching up (and soon will be forging ahead, as Isolde put it so nicely recently), we are not keeping up, we are falling further back.
And the Aussies and Danone will only change tack if they are made to do so.

With currently 600 000 Internet users on metered dial-up, bringing in revenue of € 319 million (compared to less than €75 million through "broadband and others") Eircom would be stupid to cannibalise this easy money of € 44 per dial-up user per month. The country can go to hell in the process.

P.

mike65

It got pulled!

Mike.

Mr_Man

Having watched the program it is almost heart breaking to see how far Ireland is behind the ULK in broadband, and what is even more distressing is how far the UK is behind France.

If Comreg really believe that we are making progress up the league table in broadband terms they are either totally delusional or blind

M.

Mr_Man

You are also be able to access the program on the Money Program website

M.

mike65

Ah! I was watching Three Men in a Boat again, which was scheduled for 30 mins but lasted an hour (must have edited two together).

Mike.

ednwireland

It was only pulled on ni bbc i watched it on bbc yorkshire, the interesting thing was that they basically compared what people were using and said tal talk would be cheaper no mention of caps qos or contention rations
what was really interesting was the freebox in france whinch canal plus have 23 mbit for your phone internet and streaming tv, films were 2 euro for old films and 4 euro for new ones (dont know how that compares to sky) all for 30 euro per month.

also the guy who ordered talk talk broadband was still waiting at the end of theprog not a great advertisement

bk

It was a very good show, it didn't get technical but it presented a very good and professional overview of BB in the UK and how it compares to France.

There were important lessons for ISP's to be learned from that show. Many of the people where unhappy with the customer service, how slow it took to get installed and the cost (high compared to France but cheap compared to Ireland). Some of the people said they wouldn't get BB, until these problems improve and it gets cheaper.

I believe it is the same or even worse in Ireland, many people want BB, but want it cheaper (including line rental) and easier and will wait until it is.

BTW The French BB system they were showing looked excellent, I assume it is FTTH.

bealtine

bk wrote:

BTW The French BB system they were showing looked excellent, I assume it is FTTH.

No the French system is ADSL2+. It is branded Freebox.
They get speeds of around 24Mb/s to the home. Some of the bandwidth is dedicated to TV. Generally users get around 16Mb/s.
www.free.fr have a nice interactive map of their coverage areas too.
It also includes information on when currently uncovered areas will be covered.

You get free calls (to most countries) 24Mb/s DSL, and TV streaming all for E30
a month.

FTTH is in very few areas of France notably around Paris.

In fact this is one reason why we are thinking about moving our business activities to France (that and the general cheaper cost of living in the "most expensive city in europe")

John R

mike65 wrote:

Ah! I was watching Three Men in a Boat again, which was scheduled for 30 mins but lasted an hour (must have edited two together).

Mike.

No, it was always 1 hour long, it was bumped back 30 minutes and the broadband programme was shifted to after Newsnight to 11.20 in NI so they could put crappy Ulster GAA highlights on at 9pm.

I Hate BBC NI, they are always ditching quality network programmes for parochial Northern Irish crap.

John R

The attitude of the elderly woman on the programme who wanted to stick to BT (because they must be better) reminds me of a very common Irish attitude.

There are a lot of people who will keep eircon no matter how expensive they are just because.

All in all that programme depressed the fuk out of me, there is no hope of any proper competition here in the BB sector as long as eircon are allowed to "own" the market and the regulation is a sham.

ro2

http://60hud.com/videos/moneyprogram.wmv

Requires Windows Media Player 11 or VLC.

juliuspret

ro2 wrote:

http://60hud.com/videos/moneyprogram.wmv

Requires Windows Media Player 11 or VLC.

Thanks for the link as I didnt see it and all the talk about it here got me interested!

EDIT;
It appears that the file becomes corrupt after about 4 minutes.

mike65

As for the French remember they had Minitel and we were all agog, so they've miles ahead of us right from the off!

Mike.

bk

John R wrote:

There are a lot of people who will keep eircon no matter how expensive they are just because.

Well in fairness, if all you can get is Bitstream DSL then Eircom is one of the best, all the others are unsatisfactory (BT's accounts and CS problems, etc.).

ro2

This one should work:

http://60hud.com/videos/money-programme-broadband.asx

eircomtribunal

bk wrote:

Well in fairness, if all you can get is Bitstream DSL then Eircom is one of the best, all the others are unsatisfactory (BT's accounts and CS problems, etc.).

Well, most DSL users can only get Bitstream and should thus take Eircom's? What did you smoke tonight?
P.

watty

That's because Eircom wont:
a) LLU
b) offer any particular QOS g'tee on Wholesale bitstream
c) port properly

spuddy

Don't get too carried away with how brilliant the BB is in France. It is excellent value, but the ping rate is woeful. My folks 2meg BB at home is far more responsive than the 20meg connection I had in France.