Who regulates ISP's in Ireland?

minikin

Comreg don't do it... so who actually has statutory responsibility for regulating Broadband services in Ireland?

GerardKeating

minikin wrote: »

Comreg don't do it... so who actually has statutory responsibility for regulating Broadband services in Ireland?

Does it need to be regulated ???

minikin

Does it need to be regulated ???

Probably not, given that we get such a universally available, excellent quality service which is on a par with best international standards, from all of the ISP's... oh wait....

Cabaal

Comreg do but they have affectively no power

minikin

But this is the point of this thread... by their own definition they don't do it because they don't recognise broadband as a 'guaranteed' service despite all their bluster about recognising broadbands importance to our 'knowledge economy'. i.e. eircom is under no obligation to provide the end user with a line which is capable of sustaining a broadband connection.... all that is necessary under the terms of the Universal Service Obligation agreement is that the line should be able to sustain a 28.8kbps connection (dial up... not broadband)

So if eircom or any other isp provides a lousy service there is absolutely nothing that comreg can do about it.
If the ISP takes forever to connect you there's nothing comreg can do.
If the ISP over-sells you a product which you could never receive there's nothing comreg can do.
If the ISP screws your billing there's nothing comreg can do.

So the question again is - who is there to regulate the ISPs?

spixel

What do you expect? Broadband in Ireland is the biggest joke ive ever seen. 90percent of people get almost unusable service for the most of the day , pings over 100 to Dublin which is a short drive away from me when the rest of Europe can get pings of that to halfway across the world. It has 0 percent stability , can disconnect any time of any day. Ive been on 5 different adsl providers in about a year and a half and theyve all been a pile of bull. Ireland is years behind any other country in europe interms of broadband.

The only time ive ever had a good service was when i cancelled my irishbroadband adsl, during the rest of the month which was already paid for. Yea provide good service to people who have just cancelled nice idea, apart from that ive never had a stable connection , either downloading at about 10kb with decent ping , or normal download speeds with 300-400 unstable ping love this country

minikin

I expect a lot better is my honest answer... what I'd like to know is what can we possibly do about it? Comreg seems to be all about the ISPs putting a self regulating body in place to prevent the imposition of a real regulator.

The way I see it if the phone lines aren't up to the job then eircom should be forced to replace them, with line rental charges withheld until it happens... we seem to be paying for lines which are not fit for purpose. Last time I checked consumer law this was grounds for a refund.

97i9y3941

i sympatise with you there,is so ****ing frustrating all this broadband thing,the gov and eircom are passing the blame to each other,i dont know how hell goverment say we lead the way in i.t when we have broadband quality thats up with eastern europe ,and your right,comreg does not have much power,its been often mumbled that eircom dictates to comreg what to do,unlike the u.k,eircom owns the phonelines so you have no choice,explains reason why the UK as better broadband,bt took the wise decesion of selling the lines to the competitors meaning that even in the backward areas least you can get BB from someone

minikin

seems like eircom are literally getting money for old rope

spixel

Everyone just cancel broadband with eircom and refuse to use the service until they fix their lines/routing/interleaving

97i9y3941

you laugh actually,was with eircom since the 80s,could never get BB off them cause it woundnt be finacially viable for their shareholders,so when digiweb came around,i moved my business to them