Damien Mulley on Prime Time.

swiss

Apologies if this has been mentioned but I've just seen Damien on Prime Time giving a very competent overview of the current situation with Smart telecom. For those who haven't seen it, the basic points that were made was

- Smart set very aggressive and ambitious market penetration goals of 70k subscribers but only managed a relatively small percentage of that goal.
- Owing to much of this deficit is the tardiness in which LLU has been deployed by Eircom
- Smart is now in fairly serious financial difficulty
- This could be very bad for telecoms in Ireland as it could discourage other competitors
- Ultimately Eircom could benefit from this as reduced competition will benefit the incumbent.

Succinct and accurate. Well done.

Valentia

Well done Damien. Very authoritative and to the point.

mike65

Oh Crap! Missed it dispite seeing the start of the feature.

Mike.

machalla

Caught the end of it. What little I saw of Damien got the point across. Good job. Glad to see someone fighting the spin. Some sickening stuff coming out of EirComReg at this point.

Sarsfield

Just caught the end of it. From what I saw, I also thought Richard Curran had a good grasp of the situation.

oscarBravo

Available in RealPlayer format on the RTE website - watching it now.

Foxwood

oscarBravo wrote:

Available in RealPlayer format on the RTE website - watching it now.

http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/230-2178933.smil

Prime Time isn't normally available online until Tuesday morning - that's probably the one advantage of this happening on the day of Berties troubles.

jward

Damien hit the nail on the head. I seen ComReg's press release and its made me feel ill. They thanked eircom for their help.

We would like to acknowledge eircom’s co-operation for putting in place these interim measures which will give a service to the affected customers.

As a Smart Telecom customer I'm extremely annoyed at the way things have gone and ComReg's role in this.

Here's a snippet from ComReg's site (http://www.askcomreg.ie/home_phone/Thinking_of_changing_telephone_company.88.LE.asp)

Switching is easy. You just have to sign an authorisation form or confirm your consent over the telephone (a process known as Third Party Verification). Third party verification is an industry agreed process that allows you the flexibility to sign up with other companies for Carrier Pre-Selection (CPS) over the phone. Your new service provider will take it from there. There will be no disruption to your telephone service and no need for anybody to visit your house. You can keep your telephone number and your directory listing. It is important to note that you may need to contact the losing operator in advance of changing service provider to check to see if any cancellation notice or cancellation period/penalties apply.

However when switching to Smart Telecom you were forced to change number. This put an awful lot of people off despite Smart Telecom offering a very good broadband package. I switched regardless, but I'm sure this had a huge impact on consumer uptake.

ComReg did nothing to force eircom to comply. If Smart Telecom does go under ComReg has a lot to answer for and we'll all be forced to pay more for less. I also think the impact of this will go well beyond Smart.

I've contacted ComReg to highlight my concerns but they haven't replied. If you care about the situation I'd urge others to do the same.

John
Blog

Sponge Bob

consumerline@comreg.ie is the main email address.

Tom Young

People your missing the point.

[I've not posted here for some months, but on this matter I feel the need.]

The Minister, ComReg and eircom all supported Smart. This boards subscribers to a large extent supported Smart.

Smart was flagrantly burned cash, overpaid employees and sought(got) funding where funding should not have been given.

Get an interview or two with a few people who were on the workforce [past tense].

I disagree completely with the premise that the Regulator is at fault in this matter. If anything the matter is purely contractual and eircom were within their rights.

Yes, the consumer is burnt. Yes, the reputation of the industry is damaged. Yes, competition will suffer. A properly run operation and company would not be, or let themselves get into such a problem.

I'd like a formal enquiry into why the former CEO and CFO are not being held to account for this mismanagement. Director of Corporate Enforcement, where are you now?

Tom.

jward

I agree that in recent months Smart has been burning cash and been irresponsible. Thats a fact.

Another fact is that their initial takeup projections would have been based on the reasonable assumption that ComReg would enforce Third Party Verification allowing switchers to keep their number.

I think the precedent is set. If you want to take on eircom aggressively you're doomed.

Tazz T

Tom Young wrote:

The Minister, ComReg and eircom all supported Smart. .

How did eircom support Smart? They fought Smart every inch of the way, making it deliberate for customers to sign up. And Comreg did nothing to help.

Maybe Smart was badly managed, but it's fair to say that eircom made sure they hit them financially too.

machalla

I'm really beginning to wonder how many fifth columnists from Eirscum and Comwreck we have on these forums in the last day or two.

Sam Johnston

I just called Smart Telecom today Wednesday 3 October (we have connections in Harmonstown and Tallaght) and got straight through to a rep who apologised and said that we would be receiving calls again within 2-3 days.

In light of all that's happened (and over what, 1.7m? ie the corporate equivalent of a cup of coffee) I'm impressed and will be standing by Smart Telecom and encouraging others to do the same. It's Eircom and ComReg along with the relevant minister(s) that should be feeling heat over this.

Sam

Tom Young

Tazz T wrote:

How did eircom support Smart? They fought Smart every inch of the way, making it deliberate for customers to sign up. And Comreg did nothing to help.

Maybe Smart was badly managed, but it's fair to say that eircom made sure they hit them financially too.

Eircom allowed Smart 19 wholesale credit term infractions. Allowed/supported them access to WLR, CPS, LLU, Interconnection .....all wholesale offerings. So the statement is wholly accurate.

Yes, eircom's retail arm fought Smart, as they would any competitor. Not on the wholesale side where Smart were treated as a paying customer of eircom plc and now eircom Ltd.

....problem is, and its doesn't take a genius to work this out, they didn't pay. I think 19 infractions is generous.

Frankly, the main looser here is the paying customer. By reckless trading both eircom, the end-users and other telco's are now left holding the debt and also without services.

Once must pay ones bills.

machalla: Correct me if I am wrong in assuming that a chat/message board is in-fact for that purpose. 5th Columnist?

machalla

Try this. But you can't trust wikipedia remember. Not unlike certain Telecoms Monopolies..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_column

What exactly is there to correct? Oh wait, name spelling.. machalla not MACCALLA

johncorleone

swiss wrote:

Apologies if this has been mentioned but I've just seen Damien on Prime Time giving a very competent overview of the current situation with Smart telecom. For those who haven't seen it, the basic points that were made was

- Smart set very aggressive and ambitious market penetration goals of 70k subscribers but only managed a relatively small percentage of that goal.
- Owing to much of this deficit is the tardiness in which LLU has been deployed by Eircom
- Smart is now in fairly serious financial difficulty
- This could be very bad for telecoms in Ireland as it could discourage other competitors
- Ultimately Eircom could benefit from this as reduced competition will benefit the incumbent.

Succinct and accurate. Well done.

Personally I thought that Richard Curran (Sunday Business post) gave a more balanced and insightful view on the situation. The reasons for Smarts demise are many, but one that fails to be understood (or recognised) by many of the readers of boards is the fact that Smart were spending vast sums of money on a business case that didn't work.

For those who seem to want to blame Eircom, remember they are a publically owned company who have a legal duty to do everything they can for their shareholders, so they have acted and are acting correctly and in their best interests. They have done nothing wrong. If you want to lay blame place it firmly at the governments (And by that Comregs) door.

Tom Young

Here here paragraph 1.

Can't agree with paragraph 2. The fiduciary duty to both shareholders and stakeholders (to include customers) luys firmly at the feet of the Board of Directors. If this was the USA this company would be filing for chapter 11 and the likelihood is that the officers would face criminal prosecution akin to Enron/WorldCom in 2002/2003. Its not the US though. We don't have such rules and the UK market listing would complicate matters further.

You can't lay blame at either the government or ComReg's door. Both acted impartially and fairly. Rumour and reports also state that they (both) through intervention may have brokered a deal with the disputing parties.

Blame: Board of Directors at Smart [Past]. Failed in fiduciary duties to investors, shareholders, suppliers and customers.

PS: I wonder did the schools [Broadband for Schools Initiativ] and Court Services loose services also?

machalla

Someone on here had the perfect quote to fit whats happened.

"Eircom are only doing what any monopoly in a de-regulated market would do".

I would suggest that Eircon have done things wrong that we cannot prove at the moment but we can certainly surmise. From a commercial point of view Eircon have thrown €4m down the drain here but eliminated a competitior who forced them to actually compete on BB prices (somewhat).

Smart were looking through rose-tinted glasses if they ever thought they were going to get a level playing pitch when Eircon effectively own Comreg and the government care not a whit until things like 40,000 people getting cut off happen in a pre-election year.

Of course ****ing away how many million on sponsoring the weather and head huntin (not the way I'd like them to do it) Eircon middle-management didn't help matters

uncle_sam_ie

johncorleone wrote:

If you want to lay blame place it firmly at the governments (And by that Comregs) door.

When they have that really nifty website and a hip commercial that explains what BB is, how can you really blame poor Noel.

jward

Tom Young wrote:

You can't lay blame at either the government or ComReg's door. Both acted impartially and fairly. Rumour and reports also state that they (both) through intervention may have brokered a deal with the disputing parties.

I'll reiterate but the key questions for me are:

1) Why did eircom not allow you to keep your number when switching to Smart
2) Why did ComReg not force them to comply

Blaster99

johncorleone wrote:

Personally I thought that Richard Curran (Sunday Business post) gave a more balanced and insightful view on the situation. The reasons for Smarts demise are many, but one that fails to be understood (or recognised) by many of the readers of boards is the fact that Smart were spending vast sums of money on a business case that didn't work.

Very good, and what was the primary reason the business case didn't work?

machalla

Sorry this is a little offtopic but I didn't want to go starting a whole new thread for it.

I'm writing my own little missive to Mr.Dempsey (info@noeldempsey.ie) at the moment. I wanted to just check, we are the only country in the EU that cannot port landline numbers from the one company to another (ie.Eircon landline numbers couldn't transfer to smart)?

Sponge Bob

and Bulgaria too, do not forget them please !

thebman

Tom Young wrote:

Here here paragraph 1.

Can't agree with paragraph 2. The fiduciary duty to both shareholders and stakeholders (to include customers) luys firmly at the feet of the Board of Directors. If this was the USA this company would be filing for chapter 11 and the likelihood is that the officers would face criminal prosecution akin to Enron/WorldCom in 2002/2003. Its not the US though. We don't have such rules and the UK market listing would complicate matters further.

You can't lay blame at either the government or ComReg's door. Both acted impartially and fairly. Rumour and reports also state that they (both) through intervention may have brokered a deal with the disputing parties.

Blame: Board of Directors at Smart [Past]. Failed in fiduciary duties to investors, shareholders, suppliers and customers.

PS: I wonder did the schools [Broadband for Schools Initiativ] and Court Services loose services also?

Eh you can blame the government or comreg depending on whose responsible for allowing customers of Smart that have done nothing wrong to be cut off from a phone service. There should be regulations in place to protect consumers in this case.

The dispute is between Smart and Eircom not Smart customers and both Smart and Eircom acted irresponsibly IMO. There were obviously no guidelines by the regulator for this situation so they did whatever they felt like.

johncorleone

Blaster99 wrote:

Very good, and what was the primary reason the business case didn't work?

Smart bought and maintained loss leading services, spent vast sums of money on advertising, paid to bring their main supplier to court (Like it or not this is never likely to endear them to you), and simply tried to do too much technically in too short a span of time. There's sod all money in *residential* services at the best of times and you need a massive customer base, a poor service (where poor = heavily contended and/or badly supported) or a niche market to make any money at all (provided you're not the incumbent of course).

In this small margin business Smart decided to make it even more difficult for themselves by charging a price which was in IMHO unsustainable.

On top of their transit costs they had a lot of other overheads - Bandwidth costs money, leased fibre costs money, staff cost money, line rental costs money, unbundling exchanges costs money, network equipment costs money, cpe costs money - having worked on the margins in ISP's I can tell you you're going to find it very difficult to break even on 35 Euro. Before someone mentions ISP's in other countries, to give you an example of the UK industry - the services in the UK which seem to offer a lot for your money tend to either A) Provide a poor service with poor support Are the incumbent C) Have vast amounts of customers D) Are funded by companies with very deep pockets.

It's sad to say but it becoming increasingly difficult for small ISP's to really make an impact in the industry and I believe it will only become more difficult over the next 10 years. Of course with more effective regulation we could help to level the playing field but even still I believe the small guys days are numbered. IMHO Smart simply tried to do too much too quickly on margins that weren't sustainable. They also vastly under-estimated the problems they would encounter with the regulator, their business case should have been prepared to deal with a worse case scenario.

Tom Young

jward wrote:

I'll reiterate but the key questions for me are:

1) Why did eircom not allow you to keep your number when switching to Smart
2) Why did ComReg not force them to comply

1) eircom had nothing to do with it failing. Industry developed Geo Number Portability in 2000 and did not consider implications for cross fertilisation of the Access Reference Offering for LLU (Broadband). Smart decided to utilise this access and strategy and knew exaclty what they were getting into.

Allocating another number meant services were turned up more quickly. Network portability testing was only completed by Smart in recent times.

2) Its hard to make someone to comply with something, when in fact they are fully in compliance. The Access meetings in industry were convened to solve defunct and inoperable portability for LLU/WLR and DSL and progress was made to this end.

/break.

machalla: Number portability does exist, the EU Commission reports on two flavours.

Network to network voice portability, live and well and operating here since 1999 and 2000 for Non Geo Numbers e.g., 1800 and Geo Numbers since 2000.

GNP LLU Portability (For unbundled local loop lines) very different. Not available widely mainly due to complexity and problems with incumbent systems. Some countries resolved, others realised that ULL would die off, unlike Smart.

Take care in your statement.

Tom Young

brim4brim wrote:

Eh you can blame the government or comreg depending on whose responsible for allowing customers of Smart that have done nothing wrong to be cut off from a phone service. There should be regulations in place to protect consumers in this case.

The dispute is between Smart and Eircom not Smart customers and both Smart and Eircom acted irresponsibly IMO. There were obviously no guidelines by the regulator for this situation so they did whatever they felt like.

So you support my position on reckless trading by Smart?

Honestly, do you think there would be any competition if a regulator had that type of control?? I think not.:rolleyes:

johncorleone

Tom Young wrote:

You can't lay blame at either the government or ComReg's door. Both acted impartially and fairly.

I don't think that anyone (other than comreg) can really believe that comreg have done a effective job in bringing competition to the ISP industry in Ireland. They haven't, unfortunately for the consumer they've failed miserably.

Tom Young

The ISP industry is not regulated. Have you missed something? or is that terminology I am struggling with.

I'll read that as 'communications industry' as I guess that's what you might have meant.

If you ran a business I trust you'd run it properly?

You'd carry out due diligence on offerings, markets, competition, and you hire the best you could afford?

The regulator is just not to blame here. You have to quit blaming them.

Smart got all the air time they needed at ComReg, at every level. I know this to be true. The regulator did all in their powers to support them, effectively this matter tarnishes parties now in all peoples/Regulator's and investors eyes. Its frankly not good.

JohnC.

Tom Young wrote:

Smart got all the air time they needed at ComReg, at every level. I know this to be true. The regulator did all in their powers to support them

Letting eircom walk all over them at every opportunity helps them in what way?

machalla

Tom Young wrote:

machalla: Number portability does exist, the EU Commission reports on two flavours.

Network to network voice portability, live and well and operating here since 1999 and 2000 for Non Geo Numbers e.g., 1800 and Geo Numbers since 2000.

GNP LLU Portability (For unbundled local loop lines) very different. Not available widely mainly due to complexity and problems with incumbent systems. Some countries resolved, others realised that ULL would die off, unlike Smart.

Take care in your statement.

"I wanted to just check, we are the only country in the EU that cannot port landline numbers from the one company to another (ie.Eircon landline numbers couldn't transfer to smart)?"

It was a query not a statement, hence the question mark. If I knew for definite I wouldn't be asking. Probably should have phrased the query "are we".

So what countries (within the EU) are comparable to here then. By which I mean which ones also prevent transfer of numbers in the same way Eircon prevented Smart customers transferring numbers?

thebman

Tom Young wrote:

So you support my position on reckless trading by Smart?

Honestly, do you think there would be any competition if a regulator had that type of control?? I think not.:rolleyes:

Smart were reckless in that they never told their customers they were about to lose access. Smart should have been obliged to do so if they were about to loose all services to their customers.

But we don't know how much warning Eircom gave them. Eircom should have informed Smart who should have informed their customers. Do we know Eircom did that or are we just assuming they did? Eircom could have said they didn't pay up so they should be expecting to be cut off for all we know.

What kind of control? All I want is for customers not to end up being cut off from a phone service when they did nothing wrong. Thats not asking for much IMO :rolleyes: .

I would have been happy enough if Eircom had rang every smart customer and said we are cutting the service because they've not paid the bills, would like to rejoin Eircom but they didn't.

johncorleone

Tom Young wrote:

The ISP industry is not regulated. Have you missed something? or is that terminology I am struggling with.

I'll read that as 'communications industry' as I guess that's what you might have meant.

I'm going to end this debate here, I haven't got the time or energy to argue with you over semantics. I bid you good day sir.

Tom Young

machalla wrote:

"I wanted to just check, we are the only country in the EU that cannot port landline numbers from the one company to another (ie.Eircon landline numbers couldn't transfer to smart)?"

It was a query not a statement, hence the question mark. If I knew for definite I wouldn't be asking. Probably should have phrased the query "are we".

So what countries (within the EU) are comparable to here then. By which I mean which ones also prevent transfer of numbers in the same way Eircon prevented Smart customers transferring numbers?

Portability exists and functions, ergo no problem.

GNP LLU Portability, exists, it takes time, ergo a diet version.

Apologies I had a problem with your syntax and didn't see the "?"

Tom.

Tom Young

johncorleone wrote:

I'm going to end this debate here, I haven't got the time or energy to argue with you over semantics. I bid you good day sir.

I think you left out 'knowledge' as well, just after the 'time or energy' section.

Good day to you too.

Mad Finn

Tom Young wrote:

Portability exists and functions, ergo no problem.

GNP LLU Portability, exists, it takes time, ergo a diet version.

So why did we have to change our number then?

Or are you just making a semantic argument?

RangeR

Tom Young wrote:

I think you left out 'knowledge' as well, just after the 'time or energy' section.

Good day to you too.

Seriously dude, where do you get off with that attitude. I can only believe that Eircom Fanboys can reason that Eircom has done nothing wrong.

Nobody is disputing the fact that Smart were reckless with their finances but this mess wouldn't have arose if Eircom had played fair. They intentionally blocked Smart at every turn since day 1 or close to it.

Just one example is that Eircom, on numerous occaisions, refused to transfer customers to Smart because they claimed there were errors in the customer details. This was pure crap. It was a stalling tactic. When Smart re-applied to Eircom WITH THE EXACT SAME DETAILS [sometimes for a third time], Eircom then transferred.

I accept your argument that LLU portability was hampered because the phone number was the "key" to identify a line. This should have NEVER been the case. Bit OT but no good developer would define a database structure in that way. Forward thinking conspiracy theory???? Maybe

Anyway, It's not all smelling of roses, as you think it is. Eircom have dirty hands and I don't know how anyone could think otherwise.

Even IF Eircom were in the clean, they have shown complete disregard for tens of thousands of people in Ireland by cutting them off without notice. Even emergancy calls.... That tells me that Eircom don't care about their current or future customers.

Foxwood

IrishTLR wrote:

I accept your argument that LLU portability was hampered because the phone number was the "key" to identify a line.

Surely if the number was an identifier for the line, it would mean that transfering the number with the line woud be the default procedure, and it woud be harder to assign a new number to that line, rather than keeping the original number attached to othe line.

johncorleone

Tom Young wrote:

I think you left out 'knowledge' as well, just after the 'time or energy' section.

Good day to you too.

As someone who had worked in the ISP industry for the past 8 years in both the UK and Ireland I'll leave you to work out who is short on knowledge here.

RangeR

Foxwood wrote:

Surely if the number was an identifier for the line, it would mean that transfering the number with the line woud be the default procedure, and it woud be harder to assign a new number to that line, rather than keeping the original number attached to othe line.

Fair point. If that;s the case, then I really don't know what the problem is with number portability on LLU. Maybe I'm missing something. How difficult would it be, unless the ONLY reason is to hold up the competition.

I class competition as LLU, not the likes of UTV, BT, Perlico etc. They are still have to give too much money to Eircom. Can't wait until I rip out my phone line.

Sponge Bob

It took me 6 months to port my number to blueface from when I started the process. It works fantastically efficiently in Ireland from what i can see ....fair play to everybody involved especially eircom. Sure they pulled out all th stops for me.

watty

Tom Young wrote:

Portability exists and functions, ergo no problem.

GNP LLU Portability, exists, it takes time, ergo a diet version.

Apologies I had a problem with your syntax and didn't see the "?"

Tom.

No kind of sensible portability exists. I'm on my 4th 061 number at the SAME address.

No kind of affordable LLU process exists either.

That is why BT is not investing here and only Magnet/Smart attempting LLU as they have no buisness really at all without it. I know several companies that would enter the LLU market if it *REALLY* worked. Porting an Eircom number is a sick joke.

The only number portability that works in a timely sensible fashion appears to be Mobile numbers, and we waited a long time for that to be resolved.

watty

BT would like to do LLU etc but won't till the method changes. They can't make money out of the present mad system.

viking

Foxwood wrote:

Surely if the number was an identifier for the line, it would mean that transfering the number with the line woud be the default procedure, and it woud be harder to assign a new number to that line, rather than keeping the original number attached to othe line.

"A completely outage free LLU order including voice services (as well as broadband) may not actually be possible without changing the number. Eircom's internal systems use the actual telephone number as the “unique identifier” in their database. Each record in the database stores all the associated services (voicemail, diverts, etc) in relation to that particular telephone number. If that telephone number is unbundled and a GNP order is then placed by the other operator to move the number onto their network, eircom's internal systems identify that number as having moved off eircom's network and therefore all services associated with it are cancelled including LLU. This results in the customers telephone line being completely cut off when the number is ported!"

Taken from IrelandOffline Wiki (which seems offline atm)

The above is the crux of the issue with the legacy systems in eircom that were never designed with LLU / GLUMP in mind. Eircom estimate that it will cost c. €17 million to change the system

Valentia

Tom Young wrote:

1) eircom had nothing to do with it failing.

Quote of the week, even the decade. LOL

Is1ldur

Finding Tom Young's points very interesting. Just my 2c as a private individual. I'm not an eircom fanboy btw, I've had BB with Esat for the past 3 or 4 years.
I've had the chance to look at Smart's accounts. (They are available from the CRO and from Smart's website), and they did not make good reading. It was becoming obvious that time would run out eventually for them, however the fact that they had significant backing, in the form of Brendan Murtagh (worth over half a billion, roughly), gave me some level of comfort, as well as the fact that they appeared to be winning customers, i.e., news reports that they had won this or that contract. It has only come out over the past month or so that targets were not being met to a huge degree. It was always at the back of my mind that eventually Mr. Murtagh and the other investors would call time. It seems that this is what happened, as Smart did not miss payments to Eircom just for the fun of it, they must have missed them because the money was not there. This, I feel, is the single most important fact.
From the most recent news reports, it seems the investors are going to go back in for another round, and I hope they do, but the business they had last month (hell even last week!) is gone and will not be back. The new Smart will have to be a very different animal going forward.
Not to be a doomsayer, and I stress this is my personal opinion, you would do well to have a look at the accounts of some of the other BB providers. Some of them are in a worse position to Smart, or heading the same direction. Critical mass is needed in a market where margins are this tight, and the smaller guys seem to throw everything they can at advertising in the hope that the customers will come.

machalla

The conclusion to be drawn is that there is clearly not a level playing field in the telecoms sector in Ireland. In the UK a decent regulator has levelled the field to the extent that BT have started to win customers back due to a good product and good prices (which only happened when they were forced to compete and lost a lot of customers to strong competitiors).

They have pretty much universal BB over there, even up the North! Places in the middle of the countryside have no problem getting BB due to the effects of a decent regulatory environment.

We seem to copy the brits in an awful lot of things over here. For once I wish we would do so again.

oxegen tix

"Even IF Eircom were in the clean, they have shown complete disregard for tens of thousands of people in Ireland by cutting them off without notice. Even emergancy calls.... That tells me that Eircom don't care about their current or future customers."

In a nutshell - DO NOT go back to eircom

lucernarian

Tom Young wrote:

The ISP industry is not regulated. Have you missed something? or is that terminology I am struggling with.

I'll read that as 'communications industry' as I guess that's what you might have meant.

If you ran a business I trust you'd run it properly?

You'd carry out due diligence on offerings, markets, competition, and you hire the best you could afford?

The regulator is just not to blame here. You have to quit blaming them.

Smart got all the air time they needed at ComReg, at every level. I know this to be true. The regulator did all in their powers to support them, effectively this matter tarnishes parties now in all peoples/Regulator's and investors eyes. Its frankly not good.

You do not specify what exactly the regulator is not to blame for. ComReg are hardly responsible for a poor accountant or economist compiling a business plan's like ST.

There are questions not being asked here. I am going to ask you on your opinion of the following:

If eircom gave the company 19 warnings, for want of the technical term, was it acceptable that ST were permitted to carry on as normal by ComReg?

Should customers have been fully protected from such an event or should "caveat emptor" be the lesson learned for ST's customers?

Is it sustainable to have an industry where telephones are regulated extensively and ISPs with little more than guidelines?

If there is a "diet" GNP LLU product, as you nonchalantly describe it, why was the proceedure for this not enacted sooner than less than 2 months ago? Why were private companies left to negotiate it for themselves when there direct conflicts of interest from the beginning, 6 odd years ago?

Why has eircom's timing and the follow-up marketing stunts over the last 48 hours been disregarded to date by the regulator?

jwt

Last Word today at 5

Matt Cooper, Richard Curran (Deputy Editor of the Sunday Business Post) and I talking about about SMART.

http://audio.todayfm.com/audio/20061004170010.mp3

5 min to 20 min

Comreg refused to come on air. Wonder why.


John