Price of broadband 'highest in Europe'

CorkMan

A new study has revealed today that broadband packages in Ireland are the most expensive in Europe.

The survey by the European Broadband Tariffs Database shows that the average monthly broadband fee for a 2Mb-8Mb speed band here is over €70 — more than twice the EU average of €34.10.

The high cost is said to be attributed to the cost of bandwidth.

http://www.eveningecho.ie/news/ireland/price-of-broadband-highest-in-europe-494098.html

Can't say i'm surprised. Even in this recession Rip off Ireland is still beating well. They should cut the prices by 25% IMO.

Freddie59

CorkMan wrote: »

http://www.eveningecho.ie/news/ireland/price-of-broadband-highest-in-europe-494098.html

Can't say i'm surprised. Even in this recession Rip off Ireland is still beating well. They should cut the prices by 25% IMO.

These journos never cease to amaze me. What the hell is a 'speed band'?

A quick whip round:

UPC 10 Megs: €25 p/m (STANDING CHARGE IF TAKEN ON ITS OWN).

Eircom (up to) 8 Megs: €56 (INCLUDES CALL PACK)

Vodafone (up to) 8 Megs: €38 (INCLUDES OFF PEAK CALL PACK) (Although one part of the site says it's €38, but a separate list on the site says €40).

I presume there are also line rental charges for the two DSL broadband services.

So where did this "survey" get its information? If you go by the same "survey" then UPC is BELOW the average, with Voda only slightly above. A one-liner in the Echo, and suddenly we have the 'highest broadband charges' in Europe??

NIMAN

I wonder if the whoel Project Kelvin thing that's coming into Derry will do anything to bring faster, cheaper broadband to all of Ireland over the coming years? Eamon Ryan hinted at it:
http://www.northwestnow.eu/index.jsp?p=100&n=106&a=88


For those that don't know, this is the fibre optic link from the US - and its coming ashore in Derry.

blaz

Sigh, transit long haul capacity never is and never was an issue. There's plenty of providers available for that.

What is problematic is the "last mile", i.e. the connectivity to your house / apartment. Most of that infrastructure is aging and the company that owns the majority of it (Eircom) is bust.

The only bright light here is UPC, they seem to be investing heavily, but you can be assured they will cover mostly densely populated (urban) areas.

prioryc

god how i wish we had fibre here ... i might actually get near the speed i pay for from our crippled "old yeller" isp ...sad state of affairs

DRice

blaz wrote: »

Sigh, transit long haul capacity never is and never was an issue. There's plenty of providers available for that.

What is problematic is the "last mile", i.e. the connectivity to your house / apartment. Most of that infrastructure is aging and the company that owns the majority of it (Eircom) is bust.

The only bright light here is UPC, they seem to be investing heavily, but you can be assured they will cover mostly densely populated (urban) areas.

this is a HUGE issue. the government needs to incentivise UPC to connect the entire country, current situation is not acceptable

blaz

DRice wrote: »

this is a HUGE issue. the government needs to incentivise UPC to connect the entire country, current situation is not acceptable

This is not an issue specific to Ireland. It is extremely expensive to get broadband out into the sticks. People expect to live a country life with urban amenities. Of course it is doable, but at extremely high price. I am not sure that spending tax payers money is the right solution. Other then that, how do you create incentives for broadband suppliers to wire up the countryside?

ninjasurfer1

DRice wrote: »

this is a HUGE issue. the government needs to incentivise UPC to connect the entire country, current situation is not acceptable

Surely the govt can't incentivise one company over another. They'd be sued by the other operators if they were seen to do that specifically for upc.

DingDong

ninjasurfer1 wrote: »

Surely the govt can't incentivise one company over another. They'd be sued by the other operators if they were seen to do that specifically for upc.

Ever heard of the National Broadband Scheme? The government gave three €79.8m to build a midband network.

Link

lambchops

DingDong wrote: »

Ever heard of the National Broadband Scheme? The government gave three €79.8m to build a midband network.

Link

3 broadband submitted a tender along with other providers and were awarded the contract. Essentially 3 were chosen by the government to provide a service to people on the governments behalf. Thats a completley different scenario to giving just one company an incentive to expand their network to include rural areas. That's a state sponsored monopoly! Incentives would have to be offered across the board to all isp's to increase their rural presence.

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

blaz

Condi wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Sounds like a good idea. You should go into politics :-)

Freddie59

Hasn't anyone got an opinion on the OP - about the pricing?

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

bigpaddy2004

One of the biggest reasons Broadband is so expensive in this country is not because of the upstream carriers, but LAND believe it or not.
Upstream is quiet inexpensive, but sites and land to lay the infrastructure on is very expensive.
As soon as a land owner hears a broadband provider is interested in a plot they may have instantly they start to see Dollar or in this case euro signs.
Neutral tower co's charge big to co-locate on a tower as they land its sitting on is big rental too.
You might think this only applies to wireless isp's but the rest like Eircom/upc/etc use towers as much as we do.

For us anyway, land is our biggest bill

kaahooters

edit.

bigpaddy2004

kaahooters wrote: »

tha is true, land is expensive, but, as upc dig up the road (publicly owned land) your argument is flawed. likewise with eircoms poles, there usually at the side of the road,(still public land) or in ditches (public land)

look at eirtricty diging up rush to see how this works, there diggin up the main roads cos there cheaper to replace then buying land.

public land is far cheeper to get then to buy lad off farmers, eircoms dead and tryin to get customers buy increasing prices when the oppsit would work far better.

also, by towers it sounds like your on about wireless midband more then broad band.

Kahooters I dont know why you keep deleting your posts.

Eircom pay a license fee to all the county councils to string their poles, cabinets, ducting, etc along the roads.

Eircom also use towers, which up to 2007 was their own until they sold them off for microwave ptp links to feed data and voice to exchanges.

Towers are not only used for midband.

Freddie59

Condi wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

UPC 10 Megs €25 per month. Where does €80 per month come into this?

lmimmfn

my cheap as chips 4Mb is only 56euro a month, WTF is with the article

btw, im taking the piss,the only problem here is line rental is so stupid because we have a nice monopoly.

Anyways, the country is ******, we can all wake up in 10 years time out of our recession slumber and when people in other contries are on an average of 100Mb/sec, we can hold up our heads up high and hopefully proclaim a 8Mb/sec average, with pride and we can stick it in the face of those tech savvy countries who percieve broadband to be important for some reason or other.

Its obvious theres no need whatsoever in this country for anything above 2Mb, so why bother complaining? in fact 3G "broadband" is apparently the solution to bring us into the 21st centuary and beyond.

AlmightyCushion

I'm not sure how accurate that report is. Eircom which is one of the more expensive big providers are cheaper than this. You can get 24Mb for €70 a month and 8Mb for €50. The other big providers like smart, vodafone, upc etc are more than likely cheaper again.

watty

Some eircom prices are introductory or bundle based, changing after 6 months or whatever.

I'm curious too as to how they calculated the prices. For sure we are not competitive on Speed or Price.

watty

Freddie59 wrote: »

UPC 10 Megs €25 per month. Where does €80 per month come into this?

Perhaps they take a weighted average of all the country. Less than 50% can get UPC. Does the €25 include the approx €8 for not having TV?
Some places only get very expensive Wireless, no DSL either.

Only guessing.

Freddie59

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I'm not sure how accurate that report is. Eircom which is one of the more expensive big providers are cheaper than this. You can get 24Mb for €70 a month and 8Mb for €50. The other big providers like smart, vodafone, upc etc are more than likely cheaper again.

But it appears that the 'report' was targetted on 2 - 8 Mbps? Or an I wrong?

AlmightyCushion

watty wrote: »

Some eircom prices are introductory or bundle based, changing after 6 months or whatever.

I'm curious too as to how they calculated the prices. For sure we are not competitive on Speed or Price.

I took that into account. The prices I got were for the broadband, line rental & calls package all in one excluding the introductory offer.

Freddie59 wrote: »

But it appears that the 'report' was targetted on 2 - 8 Mbps? Or an I wrong?

That's correct, but the eircom 8Mb is only €50 and they would supply a lot of the country yet this report says the average price is €70. Vodafone are €40 for their 8Mb package (that price includes line rental), smart's slowest package seems to be 10Mb which is also €40 (I assume it includes line rental but I can't be sure), don't know what UPC charge and I couldn't be arsed looking it up because I know it'll be similar if not cheaper.

I have no doubt we'd be more expensive than the european average but I can't see how it's as bad as the report states.

pickarooney

Do you have to have a land line on top of the monthly charge in Ireland? Or can you get a broadband + ADSL phone line with free calls worldwide + HD television package for €30?

The latter would be standard in France, for example.