Comreg/Eircom's mass disconnection of Smart customers negligent?

Sam Johnston

Inconvenience aside, has nobody considered the safety implications of Eircom's mass disconnection of Smart Telecom customers?

Telstra (Australia's equivalent of Eircom) was recently the subject of a coroner's investigation into whether its tardiness in repairing a phone service was in any way responsible for the death of a 10 year old boy (who suffered a fatal asthma attack while their phone service was down) and more recently relating to a house fire while storms in another state caused capacity problems for the national '000' emergency number. Granted Telstra was cleared in both cases but they were both failures to act rather than the direct result of some action (as in this case).

In Comreg's Update - Notice for all Smart Telecom customers they state (for those with Smart broadband):

ComReg's latest information is that services including calls to emergency services (999/112) cannot be guaranteed

Does this mean that Eircom may suspend services knowing that they are potentially endangering lives, or that their mass disconnections may impair Smart Telecom's ability to provide this essential service? Either way a good deal more can and should be done to prevent this situation ever recurring because it would be a tragedy for someone to lose their life over EUR1.7m in arrears (the corporate equivalent of a cup of coffee).

I deliberately mention Comreg in this post as they are ultimately responsible for the state of the telecommunications market in Ireland and not only have they failed to prevent this debacle, but they are doing little to ensure competition prevails. Not only are they encouraging Smart customers to consider alternative providers (including eircom who are curiously the only provider in italics on their List of Home Phone Service Providers) with statements like 'when the interim arrangements have been implemented, customers will be able to select any telephone provider of their choice', but they are are holding Smart responsible for the heavy handed behaviour of the incumbent provider (emphasis mine):

Today ComReg held intensive discussions with eircom in an effort to assist customers whose fixed-line services have been affected as a result of difficulties at Smart Telecom.

Furthermore, in their ComReg announces interim solution to assist Smart Telecom customers press release they 'would like to acknowledge eircom’s co-operation for putting in place these interim measures which will give a service to the affected customers.'. Is that really necessary given eircom ultimately created the mess?

It took me the best part of 2 years to get Smart Telecom (thank at least in part to Eircom's LLU shenanigans and Comreg's failure to resolve it) and now that I'm finally enjoying reliable, affordable service the last thing I want is to have to reward them by moving back to Eircom or a reseller. Here's hoping the Smart Telecom issues are resolved sooner rather than later and that the relevant people take steps to ensure something like this doesn't happen again. Surely this is a vote grabbing opportunity for someone...

sceptre

Sam Johnston wrote:

Surely this is a vote grabbing opportunity for someone...

I'm afraid that doesn't make it a Politics topic. Moving to Consumer Issues.

That Australian story is interesting as my Brothers phone has been out of action for over a week now due to a tree falling on the line.
He removed the tree but theres no sign of Eircom despite them being rung 5 times:rolleyes:

As for the smart switch off, thats being discussed over on the Broadband forum and Ireland offline and it seems to me that it was a blatant thing for a competitor to do.
Eircom should never have had or shouldnt have the ownership of the line network in my opinion.
If that was independent, they wouldnt have had the power to stifel competition by their feet dragging in facilitating what competitors want to do with lines.

Sam Johnston

One of the two services was disconnected late today and given there are now eircom messages it would appear that the line has been physically moved back to the eircom network at the exchange - a move that will no doubt take much longer (likely an order of magnitude) to reverse should all be sorted with Smart. I also note that when you call 1901 for eircom (I don't believe Smart have a 19xx number so it looks like we can only talk to eircom and they can only offer to connect us back to their network) you get a message that goes something like 'thank you for calling eircom. if you are a smart telecom customer and you wish to [be connected?] to eircom please go to eircom.ie or freecall 1800 xxxxxxx'.

Given we were using LLU (ie we were connected directly to Smart's equipment and paying eircom via Smart to lease the copper back to the exchange) it would have been easier/cheaper for eircom to leave our connection intact, even if suspending telephony services further upstream.

So it seems that eircom have taken advantage of Comreg's failure to protect competition in the telecommunications industry and will be rewarded not only directly by transfers back to them or a reseller but also indirectly by a nation of once-bitten-twice-shy early adopters. I'd personally like to see them forced to reverse any such transfers and new rules introduced to prevent recurrence (such as 30 days notice of wholesale disconnection delivered to Comreg). I'm not going to hold my breath though...

Red Alert

Smart telecom can't pay the bill. They and others are using Eircom's equipment. Like it or lump it, you can't have an a la carte privatisation where Eircom is expected to kowtow to other operators. If Smart can't pay they get disconnected, simple as that. If I couldn't pay my own Eircom bill they'd be entitled to disconnect me. Get over it.

ANXIOUS

I couldnt agree with red alert more, just because they are opeing the sector for more people to come in, thatdoesnt mean that eircom should be out of pockett for this to happen. Face it smart were never going to last, they tried to do to many things to fast, they have been in trouble from the word go.

The first post here was stupided, trying to compare this to the austrailian case, firstly we arent in the outback like those people, and secondly would it be eircoms fault if you couldnt ring 999 because they disconnected you because you didnt pay your bill. No

Where does it say in the statement that its not certain youll not be able to ring 999 i cant see it

miju

Sam Johnston wrote:

(such as 30 days notice of wholesale disconnection delivered to Comreg). I'm not going to hold my breath though...

few things here:

1: eircom gave multiple notices to comreg for at least the last month
2: smart customers where only stopped making outgoing calls , they could still recieve calls and could still make 999 calls
3: smart owe eircom millions and the reason for switching smart off so to speak was so that eircom could make a claim on the bond that smart telecom lodged
4: it was obvious from day 1 smart weren't going to last

Xterminator

Smart customers could not receive incoming calls.
(from personal expericnce.)

Get the facts right.

X

MOH

miju wrote:

few things here:

1: eircom gave multiple notices to comreg for at least the last month
2: smart customers where only stopped making outgoing calls , they could still recieve calls and could still make 999 calls
3: smart owe eircom millions and the reason for switching smart off so to speak was so that eircom could make a claim on the bond that smart telecom lodged
4: it was obvious from day 1 smart weren't going to last

1. Eircom gave multiple notices to Smart. It's not clear exactly what notice was given to ComReg
2. I'm a Smart customer. I can't receive calls, so don't tell me that I can. I can make outgoing calls, to mobiles, don't know about landlines, and for obvious reasons I don't actually know whether I could call 999 in an emergency.
3. The amount Smart owe Eircom may have been overstated, and in any case the exact amount owed is a matter of dispute between Smart and eircom.
4. Yes, it was blindingly obvious they'd go bust. That's why so many people signed up (or tried do before being giving up in the face of Eircom's obstructing tactics). That's why investors have poured money in to keep them afloat. Congratulations on your hindsight. A lot of people said that about Meteor when they started in the mobile business, they brought a lot of innovations to the market and helped bring prices down a bit before being bought out by Eircom. Now faced with the threat of Smart finally getting its 3G license which could actually spell trouble for Meteor, Eircom respond by trying to throttle Smart.

MrPudding

MOH wrote:

2. I'm a Smart customer. I can't receive calls, so don't tell me that I can. I can make outgoing calls, to mobiles, don't know about landlines, and for obvious reasons I don't actually know whether I could call 999 in an emergency.

I would have thought that call 999 in order to establish that you actually can is a perfectly valid and reasonable action. You don't need to talk to anyone. Dial the number and see if it rings or if you get the €ircon message and then hang up immediately.

I don't think you could get into trouble for doing this given the confusion surrounding this issue. You have a responsibility to protect your family. part of this is knowing you can contact the emergency services if required.

MrP

MOH

MrPudding wrote:

I would have thought that call 999 in order to establish that you actually can is a perfectly valid and reasonable action. You don't need to talk to anyone. Dial the number and see if it rings or if you get the €ircon message and then hang up immediately.

I don't think you could get into trouble for doing this given the confusion surrounding this issue. You have a responsibility to protect your family. part of this is knowing you can contact the emergency services if required.

MrP

But if half the Smart customers do that they'd flood the lines.

Ah well, I suppose I could try it, and if I get through I can ask for the fire brigade and set my house on fire before they arrive...

BrianD

AFAIK you can make 999/112 calls as the line is active even though it's 'incoming calls' only. Also I think most telecoms contracts have some proviso that you can't rely on their network in life or death situations. They make no warranties in this respect. Cynically, I would say that the other number you can dial is the Eircom sales line.

Also Eircom cut off Smart not Comreg/Eircom as the OP suggests in their posts. Though I'm sure that ComReg were informed and in the picture. They would not have been in a position to advise consumers before the plug was pulled. This is not Eircom's fault - its Smarts fault for not paying the bill.

Also if you think that the full unbundling of the LLU is the solution to the problem it ain't. Everyone knows - especially the telecoms companies - what will happen. Best described as cherry picking.

faceman

BrianD wrote:

Also Eircom cut off Smart not Comreg/Eircom as the OP suggests in their posts. Though I'm sure that ComReg were informed and in the picture. They would not have been in a position to advise consumers before the plug was pulled. This is not Eircom's fault - its Smarts fault for not paying the bill.

Check out the code of practice in the telecoms sector. (its a regulated industry) Eircom had to inform comreg in advance of any disconnection. Comreg could have intervened me thinks.

At the end of the day Smart hadnt paid their bills and Eircom are a private company not a charity.

What did Smart do to warn their customers of the impending disconnection? Nothing.

Sam Johnston

The service that was disconnected was an unbundled local loop; that is, eircom had hard wired our socket directly to Smart Telecom's equipment. It was a pair of copper that was being rented and required virtually no maintenance, not calls (which do have a real tangible cost). Regardless, the latter could have been disconnected further upstream and easily reversed *without* having to send someone to the exchange to physically disconnect the line (which is clearly more expensive than leaving the circuit in place while the dispute was resolved).

eircom's action was drastic, predatory and dangerous and their contemt for the Irish customers (who ultimately paid for the network they now have a monopoly over) should be condemned, not rewarded. Furthermore, ComReg is ultimately responsible for the health of the industry and should have acted to prevent harm to consumers, even if only by mandating early warning of such mass disconnections.

Smart Telecom have done Ireland a big favour by investing in competitive infrastructure and those who care about broadband adoption and all the good things that come with it should be supportive of them.

There's a good WikiPedia article on Smart Telecom for those who are interested in the history (including recent events).

Sam Johnston

ANXIOUS wrote:

The first post here was stupided, trying to compare this to the austrailian case, firstly we arent in the outback like those people, and secondly would it be eircoms fault if you couldnt ring 999 because they disconnected you because you didnt pay your bill. No

stupided? The difference is that if you don't pay your eircom bill you can anticipate being disconnected; when it's your provider you should be able to rely on some support from the regulator to ensure that there is continuity of essential services.

ANXIOUS wrote:

Where does it say in the statement that its not certain youll not be able to ring 999 i cant see it

ComReg have updated the update; the quote was taken from that page verbatim. There is also the issue of what steps were taken to ensure that no emergency services calls were interrupted while mass disconnecting tens of thousands of customers. I don't see how this is possible to guarantee when you're unnecessarily physically re-terminating copper pairs at the exchange.

Red Alert

Look, it's a private phone market (which I don't think is technologically efficient, but hey we voted FF in so that is what we got). If Smart cannot pay for what eircom (who our family is a customer of and used to be shareholders of) provide them with, then why should Eircom do it? People wanted a private phone system, they made their bed, now time to lie in it.

Sonnenblumen

Seems to me Smart customers believe they want welfare telephone services, ie, free telephony. Simple logic here if your service provider does not pay for serevices rendered, expect services to be withdrawn. € 4 mio debt is a huge amount of calls.

Seems Smart customers have now a brief chance to make another choice, hopefully they'll be a bit smarter next time.

miju

Sonnenblumen wrote:

Seems to me Smart customers believe they want welfare telephone services, ie, free telephony. Simple logic here if your service provider does not pay for serevices rendered, expect services to be withdrawn. € 4 mio debt is a huge amount of calls.

Seems Smart customers have now a brief chance to make another choice, hopefully they'll be a bit smarter next time.

thats it bang on the money , people really cant give out about eircom in this as they did nothing wrong

Sonnenblumen wrote:

Seems Smart customers have now a brief chance to make another choice, hopefully they'll be a bit smarter next time.

the old saying of "buy cheap , pay twice" rings true again

Sully

Hrmm. Interesting topic. I can partly agree with Red Alert - what do you guys expect? Seriously? Smart never paid their bills to Eircom - im sure they got plenty of warnings - so they got caught of which affected everyone using Smart (I assume it was everyone, not just a selection?).

Sure, Eircom could have given warnings to Smart customers themselves but it isnt exactly their job to do that? Smart should. Yes, access to 999 / 112 calls should be given. Just cant see what else you want Eircom to do? Its hardly their fault Smart didnt pay their bills, and thats what you get for not paying them..

Kinda supprised me how Smart were able to afford it all anyway, offering pretty much all customers "free line renetal for life". Plus they had (is it still ongoing?) that court battle with Eircom over them not releasing lines etc.

mbur

Sully04 wrote:

Sure, Eircom could have given warnings to Smart customers themselves but it isnt exactly their job to do that? Smart should. Yes, access to 999 / 112 calls should be given. Just cant see what else you want Eircom to do? Its hardly their fault Smart didnt pay their bills, and thats what you get for not paying them..

What we expect is due process, not an ambush! Comreg were notified (the debate rages on exactly when), did nothing so what was the point.

Eircom are gouging this country and comreg are doing their best to cover it up by cherry picking EU/OECD results.

And as for miju's contention

people really cant give out about eircom in this as they did nothing wrong

Eircom took unilateral action because they thought they could get away with it and because they want to destroy Smart. It's pretty transparent really. When someone owes you money there are legal and illegal means of recovering the debt. The legality of Eircoms action last week is yet to be established. Personally I would put them on the dark side of shady and I would not trust comreg to come to anything like the correct conclusion.

Blub2k4

Of course to all the Eircom fanboys (shills?) we all know that lower prices free line rental and higher download limits are a bad thing.

Go Eircom.

/sarcasm

Sully

Blub2k4 wrote:

Of course to all the Eircom fanboys (shills?) we all know that lower prices free line rental and higher download limits are a bad thing.

Go Eircom.

/sarcasm

Im not an Eircom fanboy, and I dislike Eircom a lot. Just dont see how what they did was wrong...

Sully

I dunno, maybe there were alternative ways to solve the problem but still -- Smart were wrong and should have paid the bills to prevent this?

Sonnenblumen

mbur wrote:

What we expect is due process, not an ambush! Comreg were notified (the debate rages on exactly when), did nothing so what was the point.

Eircom are gouging this country and comreg are doing their best to cover it up by cherry picking EU/OECD results.

And as for miju's contention

Eircom took unilateral action because they thought they could get away with it and because they want to destroy Smart. It's pretty transparent really. When someone owes you money there are legal and illegal means of recovering the debt. The legality of Eircoms action last week is yet to be established. Personally I would put them on the dark side of shady and I would not trust comreg to come to anything like the correct conclusion.

Good example of Plonker economics. Where do you get your logic from? You seriously believe Eircom should pursue Smart through legal channels for non payment of outstanding bills (€ 4 mio) and simultaneously provide a service to Smart customers so that they can ring their mommies? Meanwhile everyone anticipates this company may go into liquidation unless Mr Murtagh buys it out and takes forward huge losses to offset against other gains.

The one thing that seems patently clear about Smart customers is that none of them can see plain business dynamics and appear to be in some kind of Telephony state owned time warp.

mbur

Sonnenblumen wrote:

Good example of Plonker economics. Where do you get your logic from? You seriously believe Eircom should pursue Smart through legal channels for non payment of outstanding bills (€ 4 mio) and simultaneously provide a service to Smart customers so that they can ring their mommies? Meanwhile everyone anticipates this company may go into liquidation unless Mr Murtagh buys it out and takes forward huge losses to offset against other gains.

The one thing that seems patently clear about Smart customers is that none of them can see plain business dynamics and appear to be in some kind of Telephony state owned time warp.

The logic is very simple ---- no law and order => anarchy

Not being an anachist myself I'll go for law and order every time.

miju

mbur wrote:

Eircom took unilateral action because they thought they could get away with it and because they want to destroy Smart. It's pretty transparent really.

jaysis man , eircom didn't have to destroy smart , smart were VERY OBVIOUSLY well capabable of doing that all by themselves.

mbur wrote:

When someone owes you money there are legal and illegal means of recovering the debt.

indeed and usually one of the first steps is the revocation of services

Blub2k4 wrote:

Of course to all the Eircom fanboys (shills?) we all know that lower prices free line rental and higher download limits are a bad thing.

well im not an eircom fan or shill my phoneline / broadband is NOT with eircom , like i said before eircom didn't cause this situation Smart did

the reason people were disconnected is simply because eircom wanted to recieve the security bond that smart had lodged when they first began to operate due to NON PAYMENT OF THEIR BILLS

Sonnenblumen

mbur wrote:

The logic is very simple ---- no law and order => anarchy

Not being an anachist myself I'll go for law and order every time.

WRONG!!! No Payment => NO Service.

mbur

Sonnenblumen wrote:

WRONG!!! No Payment => NO Service.

If only it were that simple

Imagine we are in the air travel business.

Smart airlines fleet of modern aircraft are all in midflight and full of passengers when eircom air decide to take their punative action. Now because of eircoms monopoly position it happens that all pilots on all airlines are employed by eircom air. At the secretly arranged time all the pilots on these smart flights are instructed to drain the fuel tanks and to parachute out of the aircraft. Eircom air have already done a deal with the government run support services (radio and radar) to ignore any Smart air flights distress calls.

By some miracle and heroic action by Smart employed cabin crew all flights manage to do belly landings into the sea. There is no loss of life. This is amazing considering that there are now 45,000 ex-passengers bobbing up and down in the sea. Now the recently privatised rescue services swing into action. The swimming passengers are told they can only be rescued if they sign up (now) to 12 month contracts for 'aviation services'. The ex-passengers find it hard to understand this megaphone message over the roar of the chopper blades.

About 12,000 passengers who had BB class seats realise that they can swim to land and within one and one half days all are on dry land. The Smart airline rescue chopper would rescue everyone else for free but smart are instructed by eircom air and the government that they can only rescue a small minority of the customers and if they do eircom want 120 euro for every passenger rescued.

This logic.. no payment(by third party) => they try to p*ss all over you because it wasn't about the debt in the first place.


This analogy and others to be found about here

failsafe

mbur wrote:

If only it were that simple

Imagine we are in the air travel business.

Smart airlines fleet of modern aircraft are all in midflight and full of passengers when eircom air decide to take their punative action. Now because of eircoms monopoly position it happens that all pilots on all airlines are employed by eircom air. At the secretly arranged time all the pilots on these smart flights are instructed to drain the fuel tanks and to parachute out of the aircraft. Eircom air have already done a deal with the government run support services (radio and radar) to ignore any Smart air flights distress calls.

What the hell are you on about? What secret arrangements by the eircom pilots? Eircom served plenty of notice to smart. Following the lines of your metaphor, smart airlines should have never taken off in the first place, and should have given it's passengers ample notice to make alternative travel arrangements.

And as for smart air distress calls? They're a business, they couldn't pay their bills because of poor management decisions. Distress calls go out in midair emergencies, whereas this airline knew there was going to be a problem before they took off.

Also for your metaphor to be apt, the planes were owned by eircom, all crewmembers, pilots, and fuel were the responsibility of smart. Eircom said "you haven't paid us the rent you owe us for the use of our planes, so we're going to take them back if you don't pay us by next month" Smart knew this but continued to book flights and tell their customer's nothing. It wasn't eircom's duty, as they were not eircom's customer's. Then one morning everybody arrived at the airport to get on the flight they booked with smart, only to find the check in desks closed. Smart didn't even have the curtesy to make an announcement the night before, all the passangers had was an eircom representative in the departures lounge announcing "smart telecom have not paid their bills. Please check out www.expedia.co.uk for a full list of alternative travel operators"

If I couldn't get in touch with my dad because he didn't pay his phone bill, and vodafone cut him off, I'd be angry at him for not paying his bill, not at vodafone for trying not to lose money.

Sonnenblumen

failsafe wrote:

What the hell are you on about? What secret arrangements by the eircom pilots? Eircom served plenty of notice to smart. Following the lines of your metaphor, smart airlines should have never taken off in the first place, and should have given it's passengers ample notice to make alternative travel arrangements.

And as for smart air distress calls? They're a business, they couldn't pay their bills because of poor management decisions. Distress calls go out in midair emergencies, whereas this airline knew there was going to be a problem before they took off.

Also for your metaphor to be apt, the planes were owned by eircom, all crewmembers, pilots, and fuel were the responsibility of smart. Eircom said "you haven't paid us the rent you owe us for the use of our planes, so we're going to take them back if you don't pay us by next month" Smart knew this but continued to book flights and tell their customer's nothing. It wasn't eircom's duty, as they were not eircom's customer's. Then one morning everybody arrived at the airport to get on the flight they booked with smart, only to find the check in desks closed. Smart didn't even have the curtesy to make an announcement the night before, all the passangers had was an eircom representative in the departures lounge announcing "smart telecom have not paid their bills. Please check out www.expedia.co.uk for a full list of alternative travel operators"

If I couldn't get in touch with my dad because he didn't pay his phone bill, and vodafone cut him off, I'd be angry at him for not paying his bill, not at vodafone for trying not to lose money.

Well said Failsafe, not sure though if we'll get another bleeding heart moaning about consequences of Eircom exerting business savvy.
What do people want/expect in an open market?

I'd moan about Comreg, don't seem to do much but beaurocratic backlogs.

mbur

Hey Failsafe thanks for the reply. Metaphors alway have weaknesses and are always subject to interpretation. I was looking thru you reply and thinking 'oh yeah good point' and 'oh no don't agree with that'. We could go over the various details and I'm sure by about post number 3574 we could have a really good metaphor sorted that slung all the mud flying in exactly the right places. But why bother. All I was trying to do with this one was to give people a flavour of how us paying customers were treated by the various parties especially eircom. Some people think I succeeded, some don't.

If you want to present your own be my guest.

The title of this thread poses a question and it would appear that the Oireachtas have finally seen the ripples on the water and now want to be seen to be asking their own. I'm not so sure that they will be very impressed by this 'Smart didn't pay their bill' excuse that seems to be so popular around here.

If you want more info about what has been happening this is a good place to start. There is a lot there you might find interesting.