Smart Telecom Price Increase

zeusnero

Not sure if this has been posted before but...

just received a letter from Smart Telecom detailing "improvements in their service" which in effect is a nice way of saying - we're increasing the cost of the package to €40 a month. (combined with a basic speed increase from 3-4 MB)

I personally don't mind too much and I'll be staying with Smart anyway as their offering is still the best on the market - what do other Smart telecom customers think?

dub45

zeusnero wrote:

Not sure if this has been posted before but...

just received a letter from Smart Telecom detailing "improvements in their service" which in effect is a nice way of saying - we're increasing the cost of the package to €40 a month. (combined with a basic speed increase from 3-4 MB)

I personally don't mind too much and I'll be staying with Smart anyway as their offering is still the best on the market - what do other Smart telecom customers think?

The price increase seems reasonably to me for the product offered - in addition there will be free calls for the first three months of 2007.

Smart will have to become financially viable if they are to survive and it is in everyone's interest that they do so even non Smart customers. We need as much quality competition in the bb market as possible. Who would have thought for instance that NTL would deteriorate so rapidly? (Hopefully it is temporary pending the new owners getting their act together)

From a purely practical point of view I am not sure that its such a good idea to increase the basic product to 4Mb as a lot of lines out there are not up to that speed and it will therefore create ongoing problems but on the other hand all credit so Smart for being the pioneers of such speeds at such a reasonable price.

Smarts support forum also deserves a word of praise (in fact many words of praise!) as together with UTV I think they are the only ones where it is possible to communicate directly with a teccy or two or even three as in Smart's case,

watty

dub45 wrote:

The price increase seems reasonably to me for the product offered - in addition there will be free calls for the first three months of 2007.

Smart will have to become financially viable if they are to survive and it is in everyone's interest that they do so even non Smart customers.

Indeed it does no-one any good if Smart continue to sell as loss leader damaging themselves AND the companies that charge an economic price.

Over 1/3rd of that money goes to eircom for line rental. Then they have their overheads, charges from eircom for every phone call carried outside their network.

Charges for backhaul.

Capital expentiture.

It's hard to see how they make money even at 40 Euro p.m. given backhaul costs, telcom PSTN charges and line rental costs in this country.

Blueface doesn't make any money either.

Sponge Bob

watty wrote:

Indeed it does no-one any good if Smart continue to sell as loss leader damaging themselves AND the companies that charge an economic price.

even €45 a month would be reasonable in my opinion.

Do remember that Smart offer GENUINE 3mbit ( or 4mbit) downloads net of overhead. eircom packages are inclusive of overhead. A 3mbit eircom package is 2.7mbits of bandwidth you can use along with 300k of encapulation overhead they count into their package despite it being unusable by the customer.

Any like for like comparison must allow for the fact that Smart will always be over 10% faster .

LLU in Ireland must reflect the enourmous cost of the line rented from eircom, unlike other countries with proper regulators. A Smart package will contain over €20 worth of eircom rental once VAT is included before they add their services.

Nice to see them connecting new customers again as well. Good Luck Smart (or whatever ye call yeerselves nowadays) .

Oracle

I received the letter today (with the bill) yes it's still a good deal. It's a pity they didn't leave us with the 6Mb we have now! So it feels like a downgrade on the 1st. January. Also free off-peak local and national calls all the time would be nice, like UTV, not just until the end of March 07.
I wonder, with all the negative publicity they've had, who's going to sign up to Smart now, for phone or broadband? I know I wouldn't. Therefore I'm concerned about the future viability of this company.

Bluefoam

Does the price include line rental?

pizzahead77

Yes it includes line rental.

Also there's no contention or cap :cool:

Blaster99

Oracle wrote:

I received the letter today (with the bill) yes it's still a good deal. It's a pity they didn't leave us with the 6Mb we have now! So it feels like a downgrade on the 1st. January. Also free off-peak local and national calls all the time would be nice, like UTV, not just until the end of March 07.
I wonder, with all the negative publicity they've had, who's going to sign up to Smart now, for phone or broadband? I know I wouldn't. Therefore I'm concerned about the future viability of this company.

If they were available to me, I would sign up in a heartbeat.

Ardent

Got the letter today too. Don't mind the extra fiver at all to be honest - when it looked like Smart were about to go to the wall, I looked at alternative broadband solutions and there is nothing that comes even close in this country to Smart's service.

Long live competition.

RangeR

Blaster99 wrote:

If they were available to me, I would sign up in a heartbeat.

Same here. When Eircom did what they did to Smart, I canceled my phone line. But when/if Smart come to my area, I will get the line re-connected.

byte

I got the letter with my bill today too. I notice they're cutting back on the bill too, with a black and white bill instead of the usual colour one!

Anyway, I was expecting a rise, and had thought it would be a bit higher. It's still great value for me, as DSL is the only reason I've a line connected.

While they say the download speed is upped to 4Mbit, no mention of any changes to the upload speed. I'd like 512mbit upload, like it is at the moment, before they cut it back again at the end of December.

kaizersoze

It's not too often you hear a price increase being welcomed but it's better than them going to the wall I suppose. It's a pity they will never come my way.

delos

byte wrote:

I notice they're cutting back on the bill too, with a black and white bill instead of the usual colour one!

I can't understand why the don't just offer paperless billing like O2 do. That might save a bob or two...

Big Chief

I am very tempted to go to smart.. for the sole reason that in my old apartment i was one of the first customers connected to smart BB and in a LLU exchange after signing up months in advance.

I had a grand tally of 1 problem with the BB in over 2 years, of which when i phoned in they were very nice to me on the phone and had my problem fixed within 1 hour of the service going out.

There customer service was in general very good, very courteous and with no problems I am very tempted to bin my NTL "6 Meg" package and just head back to smart due to this.

thefinalstage

I'd sign up for them but my exchange isn't even on the list for un-bundling! I'm in clondalkin on the palmerstown exchange...

byte

delos wrote:

I can't understand why the don't just offer paperless billing like O2 do. That might save a bob or two...

Yeah, true. It would save a few quid alright, I'd imagine.

Urban Weigl

Printing and sending out paper bills costs at least €2.50 a pop I imagine. There's postage, paper, logistics, etc to worry about (and pay for!).

Sponge Bob

peperless billing is yer only man for any ISP (a la BT)

dub45

Sponge Bob wrote:

peperless billing is yer only man for any ISP (a la BT)

Havent BT even been known to do billless billing?

watty

No, that was the no bills at all scheme and then 3 years in one day

Cabaal

I';d much prefer see a price increase then them going under, they should really start looking into paperless billing though

Blackdragon

Cabaal wrote:

I';d much prefer see a price increase then them going under, they should really start looking into paperless billing though

I agree - Im more than happy to hand over an extra 5euro - A 4mb connection and an outstanding service for Euro40 - Cant go wrong with that.

Also agree they should start up paperless billing - every little helps:)

Liam Byrne

I'll actually be saving money for the first 3 months - I had the "pay €10 and get all local & national calls free" option!

delos

Liam Byrne wrote:

I'll actually be saving money for the first 3 months - I had the "pay €10 and get all local & national calls free" option!

Didn't the €10 also cover you for peak time calls?

Liam Byrne

Yup, it did - as I said, "all" calls were free - but isn't that what's on offer for the 3 months ?

delos

Liam Byrne wrote:

Yup, it did - as I said, "all" calls were free - but isn't that what's on offer for the 3 months ?

I'm pretty sure that the 3 months covers off-peak and weekend calls only.