BBand in France €15 per month for 20mB Speed ... Im Speechless!

aidanodr

Hi Guys,

As a result of an Article in Mondays Irish Times by Conor Pope:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/pricewatch/2006/1016/1160606654464.html

titled: Breaking the connection - What's the story with telecoms competition
[ This relating to Smart and Eircom etc ]

Mondays LAST WORD on Today FM featured Ireland Offline representatives and Conor Pope in a discussion about Broadband and Comms in Ireland. Listen here, its at the start after the news:

http://www.radioireland.ie/lastword/16102006-16.wmv

The real eye openers are the number of Exchanges out of the total number NOT enabled for BBand. But the biggy for me is that Northern Ireland is on 8Mb, UK up to 20mB, AND AND AND for 20mB in France its €15 per month in comparison to around €39 for 2mb here. AND according to the interview our infrastructure as it is WILL NOT support these speeds.

SPEECHLESS ... break the silence, comments please!
Aidan

wba88

RIP-OFF IRELAND! uk is so cheap and thats only a few miles over the sea or northern ireland up d road. its shocking!

chilli_pepper

yes a complete disgrace , It amazes me how the govt allow "Errorcom" to get away with their dodgy business practices...even when unbundling comes in fully eircom will still be able to set the price high to keep them as the main players..

Dellas

Hmmm dont get me angry :mad: My sisters in London and my Dad's in France and they laugh at me here!!!! My Dad keeps complaining because all the rest of the family are on at least 8MB and have all their calls on Skype. Im still waiting for BB , it really is frustrating.

Foxwood

aidanodr wrote:

in France its €15 per month in comparison to around €39 for 2mb here.

If you're going to do comparisons, you should do apples to apples comparisons.

Most people in France can't get 20mb for €15. Just as most people in Ireland can't get 6Mb for €35 (or 8mb for €34), but the products do exist. Hell, eircom even did a trial of fibre in the last couple of years.

aidanodr

Foxwood wrote:

If you're going to do comparisons, you should do apples to apples comparisons.

Most people in France can't get 20mb for €15. Just as most people in Ireland can't get 6Mb for €35 (or 8mb for €34), but the products do exist. Hell, eircom even did a trial of fibre in the last couple of years.

Hi Foxwood,

Dont shoot the messenger - I was just quoting direct from the radio interview at the above link. But your comment is appreciated

Cheers
Aidan

techie

Came across a business in city today that are currently paying €6k per annum for a 64k leased line (YES - 64k) to Eircon, why would Eircon change if they are taking in this kind of revenue, and funny that the business in question have an Eircom account manager that never mentioned broadband to them even though they can get it !!! Funny that...........

Sponge Bob

Foxwood wrote:

Most people in France can't get 20mb for €15. Just as most people in Ireland can't get 6Mb for €35 (or 8mb for €34), but the products do exist. Hell, eircom even did a trial of fibre in the last couple of years.

BUT France telecom (its not the one who supplies the 20Mbits for €15 product) had 96% population coverage for its ADSL last year and will have 100% of its exchanges enabled this year and uses ADSL2 which is a better technology in rural areas with long lines..

Eircom around here has enabled 40% of its exchanges so far, refuses to do the rest unless paid upfront (and even then it will take 2 years minimum) and had population coverage of at around 70% this summer and still uses old ADSL 1

Then again France is a technologically advanced country with a proper regulator so its not surprising is it ???

Foxwood

Sponge Bob wrote:

Then again France is a technologically advanced country with a proper regulator so its not surprising is it ???

Nothing about France every surprises me.

Pick your own emoticon there - just about any of them can be applied to this comment!

:rolleyes: :mad: :eek: :cool:

dub45

techie wrote:

Came across a business in city today that are currently paying €6k per annum for a 64k leased line (YES - 64k) to Eircon, why would Eircon change if they are taking in this kind of revenue, and funny that the business in question have an Eircom account manager that never mentioned broadband to them even though they can get it !!! Funny that...........

I have to say it is very hard in this day and age to have sympathy for a business that is so incompetent that they dont consider it essential to keep an eye on whats available out there.

And as for Eircom not telling them about options do your local supermarket tell you that some of their merchandise is available cheaper elsewhere?

Foxwood

dub45 wrote:

I have to say it is very hard in this day and age to have sympathy for a business that is so incompetent that they dont consider it essential to keep an eye on whats available out there.

And as for Eircom not telling them about options do your local supermarket tell you that some of their merchandise is available cheaper elsewhere?

DSL is not a "drop in" replacement for a leased line (even at 500 euro a month).

cwynnes

Does anyone know the average price for BB in france?

techie

Foxwood wrote:

DSL is not a "drop in" replacement for a leased line (even at 500 euro a month).

Yes but the business in question could seriously benefit from broadband between sites using a VPN tunnel with much faster speeds.

techie

Similar article about broadband ripoff here!!

http://www.finegael.ie/fine-gael-news.cfm/NewsID/29358/action/detail/year/2006/month/10/level/page/aid/186/

Foxwood

techie wrote:

Yes but the business in question could seriously benefit from broadband between sites using a VPN tunnel with much faster speeds.

128k upload speeds minus contention and encryption doesn't make for much faster speeds.

There are applications for which an "it's not broken, don't fix" it solution, even at 500 a month, is the right solution. There are applications for which a 2 40 euro DSL connections and a VPN are absolutey the right solution.

One size does not fit all.

techie

I have told the customer that BT offer a SDSL 2mb product for €275 per month which I will put a VPN solution over and that will vastly improve things for them.

Snaga

techie wrote:

I have told the customer that BT offer a SDSL 2mb product for €275 per month which I will put a VPN solution over and that will vastly improve things for them.

Until you get a fault on the phone line and realise you have no service level agreement for the eircom copper...

Leased lines have their place, very very reliable and hefty SLA's in place. Your not just paying for your bandwidth.

techie

The customer is aware of this but at the current speed it would be faster sending data via carrier pidgeon!!!

aidanodr

Lads,

I should say that the info about the times article and the Today FM interview came from two seperate messages at the Ireland Offline Board here at Boards. But I decided to join them together as they relate and also to highlight how we seem to be screwed now and way into the future with the alleged current state of the infrastructure.

Re the leased line - 64k, best argument is to look in France or Europe at their prices and compare. But 64k, secure and no contention, even with SLA - 6000 Euro per annum sounds alot and over the odds, I shudder to think the price of a 256k Leased line. AND if we are being done on the 2mb vs 20mb prices, I cant imagine the leased lines being too competitive either.

I have to say it is very hard in this day and age to have sympathy for a business that is so incompetent that they dont consider it essential to keep an eye on whats available out there.

Fine, but first its that businesses tech department OR Tech advisors should be shot for not making the business aware of other options like what Techie mentions. Second - on a day to day basis - I work with businesses and computers and internet. The lack of knowledge re such issues is huge. Remember business owners may not be as tech savvy as you are, nor do they have to be or nor should they have to be. Lots of people out there glaze over when they hear tech - they just cannot grasp it. The sin is when they get completely ridden over the odds and abused because of there lack of such knowledge. And I know I hear ye saying - welcome to the open market .... mmmm all very nice isnt it!

Cheers
Aidan

Dellas

The most expensive package is with France Telecom but the package also includes the French verson of Sky TV .

Eur 34.99 per month for 18MB broadband and 800K upload. Also includes parental control package and all the other stuff like 5 email addresses, free modem with a 2 year gurantee. Email filter and free phone calls and line rental. So its an amazing price compared to here. Thats what my dad's on .

I wouldnt mind paying double that if I could get that kind of service here!!!

France is more technically advanced than here in some ways but they are always on strike and often bring the country to a stand still closing airports,train stations often with no notice. At least here they rarely do that.

aidanodr

Guys,

On the leased line thing please read?

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/specials/wan/0,39021191,39116597,00.htm

Maybe the leased line thing should be opened up as a new thread - seems to also have caught the imagination

Any more of our 2mbps bog band vs europes 20mbps shiney speedy motor

Cheers
Aidan

Sponge Bob

Foxwood wrote:

DSL is not a "drop in" replacement for a leased line (even at 500 euro a month).

At that price you could get a bitstream dsl 2048/256 and a metro 3072/256 as well and pay about €100 a month the pair and be able to suffer an outage.

Repeat at both ends of the 64k line and you pay €200 a month for minimum 256k . 400% more bandwith for 40% of the price .

watty

The only dubious advantages of leased line is that you might get it where there is not DSL and it may give an uncontended connection to Internet. Also a leased line need not be anything to do with Internet.

You could have 2 way sat, metro and DSL all into a Cisco switch for automatic redundancy / more bandwidth.

It depends on what you are trying to achieve if Leased line vs DSL.

Leased lines traditionally in Ireland make even Eircom's extorionate LLU rental or retail line rental or even 2 way sat look absurdly cheap.

thefinalstage

France is more technically advanced than here in some ways but they are always on strike and often bring the country to a stand still closing airports,train stations often with no notice. At least here they rarely do that.

That is the exact reason they are so technologically advanced. While we sit back and take whatever we are given the French protest for the best.

bk

Snaga wrote:

Until you get a fault on the phone line and realise you have no service level agreement for the eircom copper...

Leased lines have their place, very very reliable and hefty SLA's in place. Your not just paying for your bandwidth.

1) You can get SLA's for business SDSL products from a few companies.

Remember a leased line is as likely to go down as a phone line, all an SLA does is guarantee how quickly it will be fixed.

2) You could always also get a wireless broadband (or even wireless leased line) as a backup to the DSL, giving you higher speeds, greater redundancy and all it a cost less then Eircom.

As an example from Magnet Business:
ADSL2+ 4m/512k, no contention, €75 pm
Wireless 1m/512k, 8:1 contention (fine as a backup), €129 pm

3) If you most have a leased line, there are other companies other then Eircom, that do leased lines with SLA's, far under cutting Eircom.

revileandy

Just back from Paris, while taking the metro I noticed an interesting ad...

ADSL2+ Broadband (Not sure what speed)
Cheap Calls Package
HD Tv Subscription (200 Channels)

€29.99 per month

Makes you wonder........

qwertplaywert

omg,some of you are complaining about 'only' having 1/2 mb bb,i cant get any type of bb!!!!!!

uncle_sam_ie

qwertplaywert wrote:

omg,some of you are complaining about 'only' having 1/2 mb bb,i cant get any type of bb!!!!!!

I can't get BB either, but if the chosen one's are bitching hopefully this will put more pressure on the minister and comreg. Which will hopefully put an end to the digital divide in Ireland. Hopefully!

Dellas

Me too although im hoping that I will have it soon . Id be glad with any type of BB to be honest. Ive been waiting years for it .

qwertplaywert

well i shall be heading to collage in under 3 years,and im in a rural area,so im not hopeful OF EVER having broadband at home

Tiesto

im living in Germany at the moment and it costs 30 euro a month for a 16 meg connection.. no limits...The upload speed im not exactly sure what is but i upload at around 200Kb/sec on bittorrent...
The best part about it is i get the first 6 months for free... and the hardware was free also.... Although i have to pay line rental on top of that so after the first 6 months its gonna cost me 47 a month....

qwertplaywert

lol the one that im looking at is 47 for 2 MBS.........
but its a standalone company[no phone offers]so no line rental

spuddy

revileandy wrote:

Just back from Paris, while taking the metro I noticed an interesting ad...

ADSL2+ Broadband (Not sure what speed)
Cheap Calls Package
HD Tv Subscription (200 Channels)

€29.99 per month

Makes you wonder........

Probably 20-24 Mb net.
Most of the big providers do that in France.
I use Free.fr in France
It really is very good

20-28Mb download
1Mb upload
No DL limits
Static IP
VoIP calls free to all of Europe + US, Canada, Australia...
VoIP phone number
Video over IP -> about 200 channels (thou theres a lot of rubbish too)
TV box supports HD (not all channels in HD yet)
Integrated hard drive for recording tv
Watch TV on your PC using VLC media player
Upload your DivX files to watch via the Freebox
List goes on and on really....

spuddy

BBC Money programme did a feature on BB in the UK.
Takes a comparison with France

You can take a look here (20:14 onwards has the Freebox)
Freebox on the Money Programme

Dellas

qwertplaywert wrote:

lol the one that im looking at is 47 for 2 MBS.........
but its a standalone company[no phone offers]so no line rental

You looking at the NET1 package??? You could also then get a ATA wireless router and pay Blueface.ie for all your calls day or night for Eur 99 per year . Its a good package.

qwertplaywert

is that all types o calls?

meepins

thelastangryman wrote:

That is the exact reason they are so technologically advanced. While we sit back and take whatever we are given the French protest for the best.

Absolutely agree. This hole of a country is corrupt to the bones.You can bet if we did something similar this could be resolved extremely easily. It would simply be case of people doing their jobs..

Just as a sidenote:

In Hong Kong, as of April 2006 HKBN offers its customers internet access with speeds starting from 10 Mbps (19 USD a month) up to
1000 Mbps (1 Gbit/s) (215 USD a month) via Fiber to the Building and Fiber to the Home. However the speed to non-Hong Kong destinations is capped to 20 Mbps. HKBN also provides FTTH plans for speeds up to BB100 (100/100 Mbps) and BB25 (25/25 Mbps), for approximately around US$25 and US$22 monthly. However, only

Major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) include:

PCCW Netvigator, with a 95% coverage area and providing internet access to 1.9 million users. ADSL connections at 3 Mbps and 6-8 Mbps are priced differently. Newly constructed apartments have ADSL2 connections, which have speeds up to 18M/1M. Business plans may have plans which speeds up to 1G/1G.
HGC ADSL & VDSL broadband of speeds up to 100M/100M.
NWT ADSL & VDSL broadband of speeds up to 10M/10M.
HKBN CAT5e broadband of speeds up to 1G/1G.
One Broadband ADSL broadband of speeds up to 8M/256K.
I-cable Broadband Cable Broadband of speeds up to 8M/8M shared by one apartment.

A gigabyte connection.. incredible.How long do you think such technology would take to reach these shores ? Couple of decades if at all?

Also :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTTH

residential fibre service has been deployed in the 15th Arrondissement (borough) of Paris by Cité Fibre. Bandwidth allocated to each user is 100 Mbit/s with 30 Mbit/s reserved for internet traffic. The package includes Digital Television and VoIP Telephone services along with the above-mentioned unlimited internet starting at 49€ per month. The 15th arrondissement was probably selected for its comparatively high residential population.

The Cité Fibre website also contains an excellent comparison of residential fibre technology with existing cable and DSL/ADSL.

In June 2006, France Telecom/Orange SA launched a test program for FTTH in some arrondissements of Paris. It proposes up to 2,5 Gbit/s upstream and 1,2 Gbit/s downstream per 30 users using PON for 70€ a month.

In September 2006, Free announced a €30 a month quadruple play offer including 50 Mbit/s Internet connection, free phone calls to 28 countries and high-definition television.

thefinalstage

I'm gonna researh how much it would cost for this to be rolled out in the whole of Ireland county by county. Any ideas how I can begin?

Dellas

qwertplaywert wrote:

is that all types o calls?

All calls to landlines in UK and Ireland

meepins

thelastangryman wrote:

I'm gonna researh how much it would cost for this to be rolled out in the whole of Ireland county by county. Any ideas how I can begin?

Well I did find this article regarding improvements in technology cutting costs in half.
http://www.fibre-systems.org/articles/news/8/7/1/1

That is FTTH technology *

bk

thelastangryman wrote:

I'm gonna researh how much it would cost for this to be rolled out in the whole of Ireland county by county. Any ideas how I can begin?

It would costs billions, possibly tens of billions.

When people talk about Fibre To The Home (FTTH) it is usually to high density apartment blocks. Even in advanced countries like France and Japan, fibre is only used in high density cities like Paris and Tokyo. Outside these cities they usually use DSL, but they do a much better job with it, often using ADSL2+, VDSL, etc at the top speed available.

IDM

spuddy's already given you all the down-low on the French provider free. I'm lucky enough to be living in one of those areas of France where there is what they call "degroupage total" and hence I'm soon going to have 28/1 DSL + TV & telephone for 30 euro a month. The kicker for me was the free calls to the states, Ireland, and the UK (among others) and that I can actually make the calls with my Nokia E61 since it supports SIP.

Screw you, eircom home plus !

qwertplaywert

okay.......i dont think its fair to even consider faster broadband over here till everyone can get broadband......ie rural people such as myself

Dellas

Until the present government gets kicked out of power and Comreg are replaced with a new crowd that have balls this is not going to happen!!!

I hope that everyone on here that is 18 or over will get off their asses and vote the current government out next elections. If you dont bother to vote then you can lay in your own bed!!

bk

Dellas wrote:

Until the present government gets kicked out of power and Comreg are replaced with a new crowd that have balls this is not going to happen!!!

I hope that everyone on here that is 18 or over will get off their asses and vote the current government out next elections. If you dont bother to vote then you can lay in your own bed!!

And who is to say that the alternative parties would be any better. Have they given any indication on what they would do different? No.

Dellas

Well this government has had more than enough time to do something and they have gotten too comfortable so they need a kick up the backside anyway!!!! But maybe your right , maybe this lazyness is installed in the culture.;)

motormouthmable

just came across that German O2 is offering 16MB/674kb for 55€ incl VOIP flatrate! and you don't need to have a landline from German Telecom.

qwertplaywert

damn nazis........