Move back to eircom before you regret it

probe

In this morning's Times, they report that Minister Dempsey is proposing to introduce a statutory requirement on eircom to give at least 24 hours notice of any future terminations of wholesale customers.

It takes at least a month to move carriers in dozy Ireland (the island of dirty tricks in the telecommunications industry generally) - particularly in cases of unbundling or business customers. The statutory notice requirement should be a period of at least 4 to 6 weeks, and in the absence of same any company would be grossly negligent to use a service provider other than eircom, unless they are in an industry that doesn’t really need a phone service.

Perhaps this is what Minister Dempsey and the Government want?

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dub45

Yes indeed I could not believe it when I read that a period of 24 hours had been mentioned.

And in just in case anyone doubted the passivity of Comreg who are after all supposed to be ''in charge'':rolleyes:

From the Comreg site:

Broadband is provided by Smart Telecom

ComReg has been advised that customers who have lost service will need to sign a new contract with an operator to restore service.

Good to know that Comreg is looking after the interests of those affected and generously passing on messages from Eircom.:mad:

JNive

lol, when smart say they will honour existing contracts and comreg say you need to sign a new one lol.

anyways, eircom just dont want there to be any automatic way they need to conenct them, and they want to make sure that those that got disconnected ahve to go through the entire unbundling process all over again, ensuring maximum return for eircom im sure.

probe

JNive wrote:

lol, when smart say they will honour existing contracts and comreg say you need to sign a new one lol.

In the same article, the Times reports on this new company “BidCo” which is acquiring Smart’s assets and liabilities (probe’s interpretation of typical vague oirish journo speak). In return for which they report that Smart will get 10% of “BidCo”.

So presumably BidCo (or whatever they rename the company to) will be providing broadband to Smart’s customers in future, and perhaps Smart’s sloppy legal people didn’t provide for the automatic assignment of rights under the existing agreement in their standard customer service agreement wording, forcing Smart customers to sign a fresh agreement with BidCo under new set-up.

Again based on my interpretation on the vague reporting in the Times, shareholders in Smart will end up with a holding of 10% of the share capital of BidCo, and Smart will remain permanently “de-listed” on the London Stock exchange (AIM).

It seems to me that the majority of the shareholders of Smart would be better off voting against the takeover as described in the Times at the EGM, and allow a liquidator to be appointed to the company – rather than accepting the BidCo deal. The benefits of this would be

(a) The liquidator could sell off the assets of Smart on the open market for the best price (rather than an “in-house” sale to an existing Smart shareholder).

(b) The liquidator could investigate the way the company was run and the impact on the company’s business of poor regulation and eircom behaviour. At least this might produce information and perhaps litigation against eircom and / or the regulator which would benefit the telecommunications industry in Ireland in the medium/long term.

It seems to me that Smart shareholders will gain nothing out of the sale to BidCo, under the proposed deal, and their best chance of doing something for the country and perhaps getting some money in compensation from litigation settlements may lie in the legal route using a liquidator.

The bottom line for customers of Smart and any other OLO is move your business to eircom as soon as you can because Minister Dempsey is on course to give eircom a statutory right to cut any wholesale supplier off in 24 or 48 or so hours if they owe a cent. Which no doubt they will do under their new ownership to enforce their market dominance and shut down “competition” (read re-sellers eating into their margin by a few %).

Time to buy a private jet or a high speed motor boat, and install your own private satellite telecommunications infrastructure if you live or run a business in Ireland and can afford same!

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watty

I think the shareholders would get zero if a liquidator was appointed. Also the failure would be complete. With the current proposal the shareholders get something and the 14,000 customers get continued BB. A total failure is worse for everyone.

JNive

it would also be better for quality of service most likely and company image since it would avoid the headlines of 'Smart gone into liquidation / gone bust' to just 'Smart Telecom bought out, or sold' and prevents possibly an international consortium once again ( sounds similar to eircom lol ) from taking over another good irish company lol

Our man in Havana

I take it that eircom can take you back immediately whereas going elsewhere will involve a considerable wait?

JNive

thats LLU for ya.

Also just re-read the comreg thing. Looks liek its referring only to those that are disconencting, and is saying that eircom are NOT going to reconnect them, meaning that those people have to sign-up to somebody all over again.

Now of course if the line is disconnected, you have to connect to eircom, get line activate, bla bla, and then go through LLU all over again lol

probe

watty wrote:

With the current proposal the shareholders get something and the 14,000 customers get continued BB.

Really? An unmarketable, derisory 10% shareholding in an unlisted company. Where would one sell these shares? Who would want to buy them? They are worth zilch.

At least with the appointment of a liquidator the law would be allowed to take its course, and someone with temporary deepish pockets (the liquidator from the asset sale) would for once have the legal leverage to make eircom and comreg accountable in court. Teach the ba****** a lesson, and make em pay!

Short-term tough on Smart broadband customers - but I'm sure eircom would accommodate them as quickly as they can with eircom broadband. Slower. More expensive. But that's the price you pay for putting up with poor regulation - and given that the vast majority of the population of smart users and others are totally ambivalent and take no action to change things, they deserve to be offline for a while. It is for the general good and progress of the country after all. Have we not had too many decades of things being swept under the carpet? You have to break eggs to make an omelette….

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probe

JNive wrote:

thats LLU for ya.

Also just re-read the comreg thing. Looks liek its referring only to those that are disconencting, and is saying that eircom are NOT going to reconnect them, meaning that those people have to sign-up to somebody all over again.

Now of course if the line is disconnected, you have to connect to eircom, get line activate, bla bla, and then go through LLU all over again lol

Or rather thats DMCNR/comreg regulation of LLU for ya.

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probe

Bond-007 wrote:

I take it that eircom can take you back immediately whereas going elsewhere will involve a considerable wait?

Yes! The only choice is eircom. Smart customers be good and sign up for eircom immediately. Otherwise you may spend a month or more in limbo without anything - phone, broadband, nothing.

Comreg wants you to do this.
Minister Dempsey wants you to do this.
Probe wants you to do this because probe is disappointed that eircom has only managed to hold on to 95% of the DSL market.

Let's give em 100%, now!

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probe

JNive wrote:

it would also be better for quality of service most likely and company image since it would avoid the headlines of 'Smart gone into liquidation / gone bust' to just 'Smart Telecom bought out, or sold' and prevents possibly an international consortium once again ( sounds similar to eircom lol ) from taking over another good irish company lol

'Smart gone into liquidation / gone bust'

A great headline!
Almost as good as

"The Aer Ryan monopoly plan to cease operations at Cork and Shannon Airports permanently from tomorrow, unless these airports agree to pay them a €20 bounty per passenger landed for the next 100 years"

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JNive

yeah, ryanair taking over aer lingus make look god in short term, but the fact is, it would mean no competition and also for airports, no choice of who lands and brings passengers.

Urban Weigl

There's already competition on European routes, and Ryanair buying out Aer Lingus could mean more competition on transatlantic routes, where prices are, frankly, a throwback to what they used to be like in Europe many years ago.

Hence, it would likely not make a difference on European routes, but would likely mean more competition (and lower prices) on transatlantic routes. Overall, the consumer will win.

But back to the topic at hand, 30 days is what it is in the US. This could not have happened there. It should be 30 days here as well. Minimum.

Altreab

probe wrote:

'Smart gone into liquidation / gone bust'

A great headline!
Almost as good as

"The Aer Ryan monopoly plan to cease operations at Cork and Shannon Airports permanently from tomorrow, unless these airports agree to pay them a €20 bounty per passenger landed for the next 100 years"

.probe

Interesting how many commentators are worried about a Ryanair company which owns 51% of Aer Lingus will have too much power as they will control around 70% of air traffic to the UK from Ireland .....but not a squeak about Eircom controlling 100% of the Phone Network. Also Ryanair and AerLingus have a reputation of for renewing their fleets and extending there business. Eircon on the other hand just asset strip and run their business into the ground!!

zynaps

probe wrote:

But that's the price you pay for putting up with poor regulation - and given that the vast majority of the population of smart users and others are totally ambivalent and take no action to change things, they deserve to be offline for a while.

Err, what's this about? Are you saying that Smart customers are more passive and sheepish than everyone else, or are you referring to Irish consumers in general (if so, I'd agree with that and consider the issue often).
I don't see why Smart customers should be considered any more complacent than other consumers - I'm a Smart (or whatever the hell it is now) customer and I don't feel particularly ambivalent - indeed, I did complain personally to Comreg the last time I got messed around by eircom a few years ago, which got it sorted out quickly actually... although ultimately it meant that UTV lost out on a customer anyway as IBB poached me between UTV trying to get me signed up and eircom un"reserving" the line after a 2 month delay.

probe

Altreab wrote:

Interesting how many commentators are worried about a Ryanair company which owns 51% of Aer Lingus will have too much power as they will control around 70% of air traffic to the UK from Ireland .....but not a squeak about Eircom controlling 100% of the Phone Network. Also Ryanair and AerLingus have a reputation of for renewing their fleets and extending there business. Eircon on the other hand just asset strip and run their business into the ground!!

The Ryanair lot are monopolists at heart – they generally fly to airports that they can dominate as the sole or main user. While probe is not exactly pro-union, Ryanair (divide and conquer) dominate their workforce by keeping unions out. They probably see limitations to their future growth across Europe due to increasing oil prices, environmental concerns about expanding volumes of cheap air travel, and the huge ongoing investment in new high speed rail lines – which makes it difficult for airlines to compete on door to door journey times on anything under the 1,000 km mark.

O’Leary is probably looking enviously at Rex Coomb & Co with their 95% DSL market share and saying to himself I’ll have a bit of that nice monopoly stuff please for my business. So he grabs 20% odd of Aer Lingus in his shopping trolley. If nothing else, it guarantees that no competitor will get their hands on Aer Lingus to threaten his Irish base. Not dissimilar to eircom’s apparent shut down attempts of Smart’s business – which seems to me to have had the four pronged objective of (a) stopping Smart’s unbundling foray, (b) frightening other carriers away from extensive unbundling programmes a la smart, (c) frightening customers from signing up with anyone other than eircom and (d) collecting cash.

If eircom was to "modernize its fleet" it would mean going IP everything - just like the loop unbundlers are doing in other countries. There would also be huge write-offs of their antiquated network hardware which would probably affect Rex's Christmas bonus. Can't have that!


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probe

Urban Weigl wrote:

There's already competition on European routes, and Ryanair buying out Aer Lingus could mean more competition on transatlantic routes, where prices are, frankly, a throwback to what they used to be like in Europe many years ago.

Hence, it would likely not make a difference on European routes, but would likely mean more competition (and lower prices) on transatlantic routes. Overall, the consumer will win.

But back to the topic at hand, 30 days is what it is in the US. This could not have happened there. It should be 30 days here as well. Minimum.

While 30 minutes on the Ryanair shuttle from Dublin to Cork may be tolerable (compared with the alternative of 3 to 5 hours on decrepit, dangerous roads or decrepit, dangerous railway tracks), there is no way I for one would stomach O’Leary’s operation on an intercontinental journey. If you are flexible and prepared to shop around, one can fly quite cheaply on intercontinental routes on Swiss and Air France/KLM, and be treated in a civilised manner (a totally alien concept in the Ryanair operation).

Someone told me that in one of the Sunday newspapers, ComReg asked their friends in eircom if they would please delay cutting off Smart customers for another 24 hours, so that ComReg would have time to insert advertisements in the national newspapers to warn people! Talk about CYA, reactive, clueless……. Total waste of money.

Come back Etain!

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probe

zynaps wrote:

Err, what's this about? Are you saying that Smart customers are more passive and sheepish than everyone else, or are you referring to Irish consumers in general (if so, I'd agree with that and consider the issue often).

The latter - Irish consumers in general.

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Liam Byrne

probe, please tell me that you're either joking or that you're being paid by eircom ?

The bottom line for customers of Smart and any other OLO is move your business to eircom as soon as you can

So, despite eircom's bully tactics, despicable treatment of end-users (remember, even the emergency numbers were disabled), overpriced and inferior product with limited availability, we should all give in to their tactics and do exactly what they want - i.e. give them back our business ?

There were plenty of reasons why we switched before this (including (over)pricing, availability, contention ratio, poor customer support and their attitude towards the good of the country when it came to local loop unbundling and number portability); while there may be some others in charge now, thanks to the stupidity and lack of vision by the Government, every single one of us paid for the infrastructure that's there with our taxes!

Now that they've added bullying, misleading advertising, illegal approaches to Smart subscribers and two fingers to both end-users and ComReg, I would close down my business and do without broadband or phone before I'd switch back to them!

The ONLY way to defeat eircom is NOT to give in, and to lobby the relevant Government ministers persistently to get eircom to finally implement LLU and number portability; switching back to them would be giving them a victory and give the impression that they are untouchable and can do what they like!

Sponge Bob

he is joking, go to leinster house committee room 4 at 4pm tomorrow and boo and hiss Comreg every time they lie, as they always do when faced with the Committee.

zynaps

Sponge Bob wrote:

go to leinster house committee room 4 at 4pm tomorrow and boo and hiss Comreg every time they lie, as they always do when faced with the Committee.

I'm up for it if you are.

Foxwood

zynaps wrote:

I'm up for it if you are.

If you want to get into Leinster House, you should call your local TD first, and ask him to put your name down at the gate.

They wouldn't want just any old taxpayer walking in off the street, as if they owned the place, or something.

probe

Liam Byrne wrote:

probe, please tell me that you're either joking or that you're being paid by eircom ?

As I see it people have three choices in the DSLzone:

1) Go with an unbundler, as is provided for by EU telecommunications law and you risk being cut off when eircom chooses to make an example of your service provider, a la Smart. The government is moving to enshrine eircom’s right to cut-off anyone who uses their valuable, well maintained, up to date, plant on a wholesale basis within 24h or so, at the drop of a hat if they don’t pay up the extortionate amounts eircom demand of them on the nail. [Eircom’s unbundled loop (which is just a bit of copper running from A to costs as much every month as a regular retail line (which involves the copper pair and its share of the telephone switching system) in many / most other countries in the EU]. A total rip-off, approved by ComReg and payment for which will be due on the nail under a new law, if your supplier doesn’t comply you will get shut-down overnight with the blessing of An Oireachtas and probably your clueless moron of a TD who signed off on it too.

2) Go with an “authorized eircom bitstream reseller” (virtually everyone else doing DSL except e.g. magnet) and you’re paying someone to help maintain the façade (read fraud) of competition, while remaining stuck with slow, expensive, heavily contented “broadband” with all sorts of limitations. You also risk being cut-off within 24 hours or so under the new proposed government statute which is obviously designed to reinforce eircom’s monopoly, (even though you personally may have paid your bills on the nail etc). These re-sellers are part of the problem rather than part of the solution because they are giving legitimacy to eircom's modus operandi.

If you are running a business, options 1 and 2 would be downright negligent to all concerned/ affected by your business operation – customers, fellow-employees, suppliers, shareholders, etc – particularly when this new 24h cut-off law comes into operation.

3) Boycott the “fig leaf” of competition re-selling merchants. Go with eircom. Your best choice! - particularly if you are switching from Smart (because otherwise life will be made slow and difficult for you during the switching process). It will cost you more every month. And then do everything you can within the law to force the powers that be to install a legislative and regulatory framework that will force a competitive LLU/GLUMP regime that will be inexpensive for the consumer, profitable for the supplier and will bring down eircom’s market share to acceptable levels and force them to wake up and stop delivering a sub-standard service package. The current arrangements are a fraud on the consumer. Go join SpongeBob and zynaps and hiss at the bastards if you have a minute to spare at their next session (if you missed today).
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055000101&page=2

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Liam Byrne

You forgot the 4th choice - lobby your local sitting TD, reminding them that the election is only a few months away at most.......

I *think* I know where you're coming from, but I know for a fact that eircom will never again get a penny from me - even if your option 3 only took a month or so, it'd kill me to pay them even for that length after last week's "look what we can do" bully-boy anti-comsumer tactics.

dub45

Dont forget that even if you are with Eircom (the supposedly safe as houses option) you risk not being able to contact the customers of another company in the event of a repeat of the recent debacle.

probe

Liam Byrne wrote:

You forgot the 4th choice - lobby your local sitting TD, reminding them that the election is only a few months away at most.......

Surely this is one of the very many things suggested by implication within option 3? "And then do everything you can within the law to force the powers that be to install a legislative and regulatory framework that will force a competitive LLU/GLUMP regime that...."

I could go on listing these options all day (eg) ... if you are a parking warden and see an eircom van illegally parked for as much as one second, put ten tickets on the window and make an urgent call for a tow-truck. Everybody has some little thing they can do to make life difficult for eircom unless and until they start to behave.

ComReg doesn't care about the consumer. The only thing that will get any action out of them is the telecoms industry screaming and shouting "all our customers are leaving us and going back to eircom". This is the most powerful and safest card the customer has. After moving, don't forget to tell the company you left with a cc to ComReg, explaining why you moved back to the monopolist.

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Liam Byrne

Technically, it's the same, but from my reading, option 3 gives eircom a victory and causes all of the competition to shut down, with disruption to all the customers who didn't want to switch back; my version doesn't involve paying eircom a brass cent in the meantime, and keeps excellent, value-for-money operators like Smart in operation.

zynaps

probe wrote:

Everybody has some little thing they can do to make life difficult for eircom unless and until they start to behave.

Surely sourcing any kind of halfway affordable internet service from another company with a different provision medium (ie: Irishbroadband etc, or even Vodafone's semi-flat-rate 3G) rather than going back to eircom.

probe wrote:

ComReg doesn't care about the consumer. The only thing that will get any action out of them is the telecoms industry screaming and shouting "all our customers are leaving us and going back to eircom". This is the most powerful and safest card the customer has. After moving, don't forget to tell the company you left with a cc to ComReg, explaining why you moved back to the monopolist.

That's a great point though. Will the companies make those complaints though? When eircom were playing me about and failing to un"reserve" the slot in the exchange they had apparently set up almost 2 months earlier in the 15 minute interval between my ma saying "ok" to eircom sales who had called her to sell DSL and me calling them back saying "cancel that, no thanks", uTV were trying to complete my order for bitstream DSL.
Almost two weeks after I had become aware of the problems and phoning different numbers at eircom to try to sort it out as soon as possible (they even refused to take a complaint, saying it was UTV's responsibility to take it from me and make it to eircom wholesale), I eventually called Comreg myself and the problem was fixed two days after that. Unfortunately for UTV, Irish Broadband had contacted me months after I had spoken to them first, to tell me a new station was up and they could sign me up for free due to the delay.

I find it hard to believe that UTV was putting any pressure on Comreg if it was eventually myself calling Comreg to complain that motivated eircom. Maybe they did it after they realised it had cost them a customer...

So... are companies actually pressuring Comreg into becoming at all useful?