Eircom Lines

mossie

Some months ago some eircom engineers carried out work on the phone lines
on the road leading to my house and my brothers house. This involved
putting the lines underground. Immediately following this the internet
connection speeds on our lines dropped from 46 – 48 kbps to 28 – 30 kbps.
At the time the line to my brothers house was checked by an Eircom
technician but no fault was found. We both checked with our Internet
Service Providers and no problem was found with our settings, and trying
different ISPs was of no benefit.

In the last few days I spoke with a former Eircom technician who said it
sounds to him as if we are now sharing one phone line, or effectively we
have half a line each leading to connecting at half the usual speed. We
would both be interested in getting broadband (if it ever becomes available
here) but he said that it would be impossible for us to get broadband when
we share a line. We are both very disappointed with the situation and very
unhappy with Eircoms service in this matter. I have written to Eircom, but
given my past experiences with them do not expect an answer. Can anyone
tell me if this is a regular occurence with eircom? What is the legal
position, ie are they obliged to supply one line per house or can they
share lines in this way?

Many thanks.
Mossie

Ziycon

Your not sharing lines inf you both have different numbers as when your line goes to the junction box on the road it is then connected to a multicore cable which will run to the nearest exchange. You cant have a line shared otherwise yous would have the same number or yous would be able to listen into eachothers calls.
I have been talking to a few people as i work in the tech. industry and have heard increasing rumours of telecoms compnaies trying to "decrease" the quality of dialup and ISDN to try and make customers move onto broadband, how true this is i dont know but its going round!

Hope this helps.

bminish

It sounds like your line has been pairgained. This allows for one copper pair to the exchange to provide separate service to a number of houses. Pairgained lines rarely do better than around 28K and are used in ireland as a cheaper alterntave to running new copper lines in areas where there is a shortage of lines to go around
Pairgained lines cannot carry ADSL (or ISDN) so if you try to order ADSL on this line it will fail.

if one was to order ISDN then they would have to remove the pairgain. If one was really sneaky one might try ordering IDSN and once your dialup speeds increase try to cancel same. Dunno if you would get away with it though

.brendan

Sponge Bob

as neither of you "Requested" a new line and as eircom put you on a pairgain because of a request by a third party for a line you are entitled to have them removed or else to remove one line and share BB between ye on the other (no longer needs a pairgain) line.

email the CEOs office phil.nolan@eircom.ie and demand the pairgain be removed from each of your lines as you never requested a pairgain or made a request of eircom requiring you be pairgained (each send the same email) and formally complain about this , also ask for a refund on the extra online time caused by this deliberate slowdown.

if this is not sorted out in 10 days

contact info@comreg.ie and explain that you were pairgained with no consultation and that you want both houses back where they were 'months' ago please so you can both order broadband

also note to comreg that eircom, by dropping your line below 28.8k, have removed "Functional Internet Access" from each of your lines you are legally entitled to "Functional Internet Access" defined as minimum 28.8k as comreg will confirm

ask eircom and comreg for a partial refund on your line rental for this loss of "Functional Internet Access" , say 50% rebate since eircom did it or €12 a month and ongoing until fixed

should do it

send on all correspondance with phils office to Comreg

layke

Yup.

When I downgraded from ISDN way back (I knew my line could handle DSL) they didn't rewire the house properly so it showed me as a dud. They wouldn't send anyone to fix it either regardless of my knowlege of the problem.

Esat got me out of that Jam. Ordered DSL and when the line wouldn't work they sent an engineer. A alot of "tut tut" and head shalking later he redid the lines and said it was a sloppy job.

Go wireless if you can mate, cheaper and not usually as restrictive as Eircom's policy's.

mossie

Many thanks for the help and suggestions. I will get on it straight away.

Mossie

dub45

You are going on the assumption that you have been pairgained nobody here can confirm that so be careful in what you write to Eircom and Comreg you may be making baseless allegations. I would ask Eircom to investigate the deterioration in your dial up speed following on repairs that they carried out - no need to make unsupportable allegations at this stage.

bminish

dub45 wrote:

You are going on the assumption that you have been pairgained nobody here can confirm that so be careful in what you write to Eircom and Comreg you may be making baseless allegations. I would ask Eircom to investigate the deterioration in your dial up speed following on repairs that they carried out - no need to make unsupportable allegations at this stage.

One thing to ascertain fairly accurately is to measure your line voltage, if it's well below 48V (say 30V DC or less) with no attached devices or active calls it's pretty safe to assume that you are on a pairgain.
Last time a looked Aldi had a nice cheap (& reasonably accurate) volt meter for sale.

.brendan

icom

I was on a pairgain. Line was always failing for DSL.
Luckily I was friendly with the local eircom engineer as we are both involved in Amateur Radio. He swapped me onto a single line to the exchange. Two weeks later I had broadband.
My dialup went from 28k up to 49k after the changeover.:)

bigpaddy2004

bminish wrote:

It sounds like your line has been pairgained. This allows for one copper pair to the exchange to provide separate service to a number of houses. Pairgained lines rarely do better than around 28K and are used in ireland as a cheaper alterntave to running new copper lines in areas where there is a shortage of lines to go around
Pairgained lines cannot carry ADSL (or ISDN) so if you try to order ADSL on this line it will fail.

if one was to order ISDN then they would have to remove the pairgain. If one was really sneaky one might try ordering IDSN and once your dialup speeds increase try to cancel same. Dunno if you would get away with it though

.brendan

Bminish it sounds to me that your are referring to a carrier line, dutch technology, where eircom were able to serve up to 50 subscribers over a few pairs of copper. But, it is now Eircoms policy not to "set up" and more carrier lines. They are in the process of taking them down to allow the high dsl frequencies to travel further from the nearest enabled exchange. Also another fact, Eircom do not guarantee internet access. Ask any rep or technican this.

watty

Eircom have always insisted to me that the line only has to handle voice, not fax or modem at all! It took 4 years nearly to get them to come and physically check line here rather than automated exchange test. The line had degraded from 33k down to 19k with frequent drops and mostly failled connect attempts (each billed at 3m call as Eircom's ISP server would answer then hangup due to bad line) Partially one legged at box 100m away from house. They pulled in a new cable. Then the line was 42k.

bminish

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

They are in the process of taking them down to allow the high dsl frequencies to travel further from the nearest enabled exchange. Also another fact, Eircom do not guarantee internet access. Ask any rep or technican this.

The are not taking them down around here, It's possible that they may not be installing new pairgains but they certainly have no qualms about moving existing customers onto pairgained lines when they need to free up a copper pair for an ISDN order.

.brendan

Sponge Bob

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

Eircom do not guarantee internet access. Ask any rep or technican this.

every household is entitled to Functional Internet Access of 28.8k minimum on an analogue line, this is called the USO obligation , U means Universal

They must guarantee that.

mossie

Just a follow up on this. I wrote to Eircom 5 times, no reply. One letter to the Examiner and I had eircom all over me. Techs calling, phone calls from press office etc. New line installed and improved dial up. Promise of broadband early next year. In the meantime I've got amocom wireless which does the job.
Mossie

paulm17781

mossie wrote:

Just a follow up on this. I wrote to Eircom 5 times, no reply. One letter to the Examiner and I had eircom all over me. Techs calling, phone calls from press office etc. New line installed and improved dial up.

Good work.

Dcully

Can you give the rest of us the address you wrote to for the examiner please?
Im having an absolute nightmare with eircom and they refuse to address the issue.

Sponge Bob

Its not your line dcully, its the more pertinent fact that they do not have enough backhaul capacity for ALL their customers in north munster , I am sure the examiner would be most interested in that

Dcully

lol im willing tio ytry anything at this stage

Sponge Bob

If I was you I would start a thread on eircom slowness in or via Limerick, wait for contributions from other victims, and then email the editor with your letter and a link to the thread

I would say it affects all of Clare/Limerick/Tipp/Laois but you need to gather a bit more info first to make sure . Cork was in tatters earlier this year for a while.

Dcully

Yeah i made a few threads RE: Limerick a while back but got little feedback,anyways sorry to origional poster for hijacking their thread.

mossie

Sorry, wasn't here for a while. I wrote to letters@examiner.ie .