Eircon to raise line rental

esperanza

http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS-qqqs=news-qqqid=16746-qqqx=1.asp

Line rental currently stands at €24.18 p/mth. In two countries with very similiar VAT rates, France and Belgium, rental is €15 and ca €17 respectively.
The company state high labour costs as one of the main reasons for the potential rise. Yeah right, any excuse. While labour costs are not as high in France and Belgium, any difference is made up by the higher social insurance costs.

I'm not sure if Eircom offer a special rate for those who only need the line for broadband, but here in Belgium I pay only €6.95 for my line rental, as I just don't use the telephone line to make any calls, only receive. The bulk of my communication is done by VOIP.

If Eircon insists on increasing line rental, they are sure to lose even more customers, especially with the competition from UTV, Smart and all the rest.

fatherdougalmag

It'll be interesting to see if the WLR goes up to and what the other providers will do - absorb or pass on.

ircoha

esperanza wrote:

http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS-qqqs=news-qqqid=16746-qqqx=1.asp

Line rental currently stands at €24.18 p/mth. In two countries with very similiar VAT rates, France and Belgium, rental is €15 and ca €17 respectively.
The company state high labour costs as one of the main reasons for the potential rise. Yeah right, any excuse. While labour costs are not as high in France and Belgium, any difference is made up by the higher social insurance costs.

I'm not sure if Eircom offer a special rate for those who only need the line for broadband, but here in Belgium I pay only €6.95 for my line rental, as I just don't use the telephone line to make any calls, only receive. The bulk of my communication is done by VOIP.

If Eircon insists on increasing line rental, they are sure to lose even more customers, especially with the competition from UTV, Smart and all the rest.

Lucky you in Belgium:) .

The reality here is that there is no real competition for the line rental, particularly when quality of service and country wide reach is taken into account. COMREG is unable to free up the local loop/line rental market.

The Gov will capitulate to big business again as it has done in the last few years on issues like food labelling, drink advertising, contaminated blood, chewing gum levy, just to mention a few.
In hindsight it is a miracle that the smoking ban got through the powerful lobby groups

esperanza

fatherdougalmag wrote:

It'll be interesting to see if the WLR goes up to and what the other providers will do - absorb or pass on.

Well, they shouldn't have to absorb, this seems to be a problem with eircon in particular.

If they do absorb, then I'm sure consumer groups will protest.

These price rises are also only taking place because people are spending, spending, spending. if we spent less, we'd all be better off.

Ziycon

we're moving our phone line over to one of the BT Ireland bundles as we have BT broadband already! Getting away from eircom!

Urban Weigl

Eircom won't be able to keep increasing their line rental indefinitely. I think it will be interesting to see what happens when the mobile operators here start offering landline replacement services. For example, in Germany you can get a GSM "landline" from €5 a month from both O2 and Vodafone.

If people have the choice between a Vodafone "landline" for €5 and an Eircom landline for €30+, will they stick with Eircom? Inertia being what it is, I wouldn't be that surprised if many do... "I've been with Eircom for 30 years" and all that. But at the very least, it should help ensure that they can't put up line rental forever, or risk losing a great many customers.

Foxwood

Wanna bet that your GSM "landline" will cost a lot more than €5 a month when it's introduced in Ireland?

Foxwood

esperanza wrote:

I'm not sure if Eircom offer a special rate for those who only need the line for broadband, but here in Belgium I pay only €6.95 for my line rental, as I just don't use the telephone line to make any calls, only receive. The bulk of my communication is done by VOIP.

Don't be silly - eircom are far too cute for that sort of malarky!

They were required to introduce something called the "Vulnerable User" scheme a couple of years back, so that Comreg could claim that the line rental increase would only impact people who could afford it (!!!!). With this "scheme" (such an appropriate description), people who spend less that €5/month for calls could, in theory, save money. They'd still have to pay the full €25 odd for their phone, but the first €5 of calls would be included. So instead of paying €30 to make a 5 minute call each weekday (100 minutes of daytime calls cost about €5), it only cost €25. Woohoo!!!!

The really sneaky thing is that the next €6 worth of calls are charged at double the normal rate, so that by the time you make €11 worth of calls, your "vulnerable user" is actually paying more than the ordinary user. And you can't get any of eircoms "option" plans with the sheme either.

There were only a couple of hundred users on the scheme when the scandal finally broke. But eircom doesn't even bother listing the scheme in their price lists any more - you can find some of the details if you search on www.eircom.ie for the word "vulnerable", but no mention of how to sign up.

And it doesn't offer any benefits for "data ony" users.