Eircom for sale

Nothingbetter2d

Eircom is 3.75bil in debt but now its up for sale.

i doubt anyone in their right mind will wanna buy it. Eircom has never been profitable in it's entire existance.

but maybe other broadband companies could finally buy chunks of its antiquated infrastructure without buying its debt.

http://www.herald.ie/news/debthit-eircom-goes-up-for-sale-3006015.html

Discuss

blaz

Eircom would immediately become a profitable company if they fired all the incompetent unionized staff that does nothing. As long as that does not happen, Eircom is doomed.

Nothingbetter2d

blaz wrote: »

Eircom would immediately become a profitable company if they fired all the incompetent unionized staff that does nothing. As long as that does not happen, Eircom is doomed.

i think its far too late for that now.

UPC & magnet fibre have cornered the high speed net.

The Volt

Privatizing it fully in the first place was a shocking decision. The British state retained a substantial stake in BT, including the lines and look at up North, 99% broadband enabled.

kirving

blaz wrote: »

Eircom would immediately become a profitable company if they fired all the incompetent unionized staff that does nothing. As long as that does not happen, Eircom is doomed.

How does a company become profitable overnight if you change the staff. Doesn't work like that. Being sold and asset-stripped multiple times is what caused the debt problems, and now they have no money to invest.

jay93

Voltwad wrote: »

Privatizing it fully in the first place was a shocking decision. The British state retained a substantial stake in BT, including the lines and look at up North, 99% broadband enabled.

Totally agree privatizing Eircom was the worst move in the first place.
BT have enabled 99% of the North as you said whereas Eircom still have loads of exchanges without basic ADSL in Ireland,

It looks like Eircom are dead in the water at this point!

Onikage

How would letting all the staff go make the company more profitable? You need to pay redundancy, hire new staff to do the jobs the old staff used to do etc.

Privatisation, well, let's just collectively take it as a lesson in why we don't sell off long-term strategic assets to make a few quick bucks.

Eircom still have some money left to invest, albeit not much. Not impossible to pull off a comeback, just extremely unlikely.

glic83

Voltwad wrote: »

Privatizing it fully in the first place was a shocking decision. The British state retained a substantial stake in BT, including the lines and look at up North, 99% broadband enabled.

Think Northern Ireland were the 1st in europe to have 99% broadband enabled

funnyname

If and when Eircom collapses BT will come in and buy up what remains and then maybe we will get a decent BB infrastructure throughout Ireland.

kirving

You have to rmember that Ireland has roughy a quarter the population dessity of the UK, meaing that it is far easier to recoup money spent on infrastructure.

How much does it cost, per metre to run fibre optic to(near) a farmers house, who lives too far from an exchange for a copper line to work? If the population density was higher, it might be viable, but it most cases it it ridiculously expensive.

I don't wan't my subscription to increase because someone who decided they wan't clean air and less traffic wants broadband. There are sacrifices both ways. If I chose to live somewhere where broadband wasn't available for economic reasons, I'd recognise why, and pay for whatever solution I needed to get it.

Anyway, the banks will come in and sell of what sections they can to the highest bidder in order to make some money back. Selling off national infrastructure in the first place was insane. Same goes for ESB, Bord Gaid RTE NL in the future etc.

PogMoThoin

Kevin Irving wrote: »

You have to rmember that Ireland has roughy a quarter the population dessity of the UK, meaing that it is far easier to recoup money spent on infrastructure.

How much does it cost, per metre to run fibre optic to(near) a farmers house, who lives too far from an exchange for a copper line to work? If the population density was higher, it might be viable, but it most cases it it ridiculously expensive.

I don't wan't my subscription to increase because someone who decided they wan't clean air and less traffic wants broadband. There are sacrifices both ways. If I chose to live somewhere where broadband wasn't available for economic reasons, I'd recognise why, and pay for whatever solution I needed to get it.

Anyway, the banks will come in and sell of what sections they can to the highest bidder in order to make some money back. Selling off national infrastructure in the first place was insane. Same goes for ESB, Bord Gaid RTE NL in the future etc.

Sorry, but it's easy known you're from Dublin.

Every single citizen in this Country deserves the right to proper broadband, especially this farmer who lives in a remote area. Blame the current and successive past Governments for not putting a long term strategy in place, fudging the statistics to make us look good and letting the markets fend for themselves. This has created the huge digital divide in place today, cities move to 100mbit, rural dwellers struggle to get a few mbit from mobile services (not broadband) or given the last gasp satellite effort.

Forget about the past, forget about Eircom even, they're broke and not in a position to upgrade their network. Anyway, copper can't deliver what the future needs so their network is nearly obsolete. We need to build a new fibre network, one owned by the people, that all providers can deliver on, including Eircom. The ESB already have a fantastic network, one that delivers to every house in the country, why not give the job to them. We need a long term plan, longer than the 4 years our politicians are in power (which is all they seem to care about). We need a vision and some joined up thinking for once.

It's been estimated less than €5 Billion would bring fibre to most homes in the country, with the very remote getting proper fixed wireless. How much are those banks costing again?

rommy

As far as i recall the bank bail out cost a 100 Billion......

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

bk

PogMoThoin wrote: »

It's been estimated less than €5 Billion would bring fibre to most homes in the country, with the very remote getting proper fixed wireless. How much are those banks costing again?

Actually the cost would be more like €2 Billion, based on a cost twice as high as the cost to rollout fibre in most other European countries.

rob808

what telecom company in there right mind would buy Eircom with there debt of 3.5billion euro.I think creditors better of letting it get liquidate and try get back most money they can by selling of the network .I can't see any telecom company turning Eircom back to profitability without investment in the network which can't be done with it bad debt of 3.5billion euro.

jspuds

If only we could get Google to buy Eircom and give us all fibre to the home.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Kansas-City-Google-Fiber-1-Gbps-fiber-optics-gigabit,news-37691.html

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

PogMoThoin

Condi wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Eh, no, more asset stripping
http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0918/eircom-business.html

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

-=al=-

Condi wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Sweet jesus, bloody 3g! gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar :mad:

Living just out by Lucan in Dublin and can't even get a fixed line/wireless service... max is 1mb on a copper line, oh lawd

They f'd it up when they had some funds and privatised the bloomin' thing :pac:

D'Peoples Voice

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Sorry, but it's easy known you're from Dublin.

Every single citizen in this Country deserves the right to proper broadband at the economic cost price of providing broadband to them, especially this farmer who lives in a remote area.

Fixed that for ya!

PogMoThoin

D'Peoples Voice wrote: »

Fixed that for ya!

Sorry, but the truth is it's cheaper to do it right, the National Broadband Scheme gifted €250 million to Three to build the countries fourth independent mobile network, a network they were going to build anyway (and had to build as they lied to Comreg about the coverage they actually had without using the Vodafone network). This didn't bring a single person broadband, three sold thousands of phones though. Neither did they put any stipulation in the schemedonation that they must allow other parties access to the masts they erected in future. The fixed wireless providers were asked for their coverage maps before the scheme started and they somehow forgot to use the data. Three ended up covering many areas that already had proper fixed wireless and WiMax coverage. There'll be a tribunal about this yet, corruption at it's finest.

-=al=-

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Sorry, but the truth is it's cheaper to do it right, the National Broadband Scheme gifted €250 million to Three to build the countries fourth independent mobile network, a network they were going to build anyway (and had to build as they lied to Comreg about the coverage they actually had without using the Vodafone network). This didn't bring a single person broadband, three sold thousands of phones though. Neither did they put any stipulation in the schemedonation that they must allow other parties access to the masts they erected in future. The fixed wireless providers were asked for their coverage maps before the scheme started and they somehow forgot to use the data. Three ended up covering many areas that already had proper fixed wireless and WiMax coverage. There'll be a tribunal about this yet, corruption at it's finest.

I got knocked off of a perfectly fine fixed wireless service I had been using for years for a wimax/3g subsitute... The catch was the company offered no viable alternative... So I pretty much was told bye bye, no more internet for you after years or being a perfectly good customer... ridiculous

This kinda incompetent stuff really pisses me off... They're a shambles

D'Peoples Voice

for the love of god, lets hope this is not true!
Not another tribunal into a telecommunications company....

We're still finishing the tribunal into Esat Digifone and the award of their licence!
[disclaimer]I'm not pre-empting the tribunal's decision by saying anything untoward happened, I'm just saying that there is a tribunal investigating into the affair [/disclaimer]

Was it not a telecommunications involved in the shady sale of the Johnston, Mooney and O'Brien site in Ballsbridge all those years ago!

KIERAN1

Kevin Irving wrote: »

How does a company become profitable overnight if you change the staff. Doesn't work like that. Being sold and asset-stripped multiple times is what caused the debt problems, and now they have no money to invest.

It does not happen like that i agree, but its fairly obvious the middle management people and upper management folks are clueless in what are the right approaches to running a successful enterprise. They'll save money (wages and bigger pensions) long term sacking some of these idiots. Of course this will not happen company-big wigs usually sack people below them for the mistakes they've made.

We've seen what kind of people ran some of our banks into the ground. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if similar like-minded individuals run Eircom.

How does a company like Eircom become unprofitable? They charge well and above for their Internet and heap tax on it and tax the bills you get from having an Eircom phone (if you have one) and charge you line retail.

KIERAN1

Condi wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Trying to attract new companies to Ireland is essential and not all companies what to locate to cities. So having an sophisticated broadband infrastructure countrywide was of utmost importance. Eircom, wasn't the company to do this and has proven to be a company of failure.We now lag behind countries much poorer then us financially, but those countries had the foresight to understand the internet can create jobs.

I be uncertain how attractive Eircom would be to potential buyers. Obviously no buyer wants to take on debt not made by them. DSL is slow and old generation internet and the potential for new customers is limited

America, mainland Europe, Asia years ago slowly but surely upgraded from DSL to cable and supply now their service both to cities and the countryside. We only supply cable here to select locations and that market pretty much is tapped into by UPC and Magnet and others already.

yermanoffthetv

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Every single citizen in this Country deserves the right to proper broadband, especially this farmer who lives in a remote area.

We need to build a new fibre network, one owned by the people, that all providers can deliver on, including Eircom. The ESB already have a fantastic network, one that delivers to every house in the country, why not give the job to them.

Mr farmer can have proper broadband he just has to give Niall Quinn a tinkle:
http://www.qsat.ie/broadband
If he wants 100mb move to a city

Yea I agree on the ESB, theres quite a good thread on here on Irelands fibre network. NRA have their own network aswell as a few others. Definate need for a overall body for comms infastructure.

Although knowing our politicians, a project to combine elements of several different organisations would require an advisory group to be set up to inform the steering group who would report to the department who need an external audit to make sure international best practice was adhered to only for the project to be later shelved due to difficult economic conditions....caused by the previous government (aaarrrgh why cant we do things quicker in Ireland!)

MrO

bk wrote: »

Actually the cost would be more like €2 Billion, based on a cost twice as high as the cost to rollout fibre in most other European countries.

just curious where you got the €2 Billion figure?

thanks

Sponge Bob

Internationally comparative rollouts indicate you could do around 90% of the Irish population with FTTX FOR 2bn and the rest with fixed wireless..the most rural 10% in effect.

Even eircoms much trumpeted 100m 2012 investment would do c. 40000 largely urban premises which = 2.5k per premises if delivered.

There are 2m premises in the state so discounting 200k of those that means EVEN eircom could do the 1.8m premises for 4.4bn.....they owe 3.6bn

-=al=-

yermanoffthetv wrote: »

Mr farmer can have proper broadband he just has to give Niall Quinn a tinkle:
http://www.qsat.ie/broadband
If he wants 100mb move to a city

Yea I agree on the ESB, theres quite a good thread on here on Irelands fibre network. NRA have their own network aswell as a few others. Definate need for a overall body for comms infastructure.

Although knowing our politicians, a project to combine elements of several different organisations would require an advisory group to be set up to inform the steering group who would report to the department who need an external audit to make sure international best practice was adhered to only for the project to be later shelved due to difficult economic conditions....caused by the previous government (aaarrrgh why cant we do things quicker in Ireland!)

lol at the 1mb download speed and 1gb of data a month for a satellite "broadband" connection

oh lawd that's almost insulting to the word broadband and the pings would be off the charts... Mr farmer shouldn't have to move to a city to get an average simple connection for such a small country its a travesty that we have these below par midband solutions of lies

funnyname

Schools not on the fibre network are bring provided 100mb connections via FWA so why not make this available to all people off the fibre network? At a reasonable cost I might add.

PogMoThoin

funnyname wrote: »

Schools not on the fibre network are bring provided 100mb connections via FWA so why not make this available to all people off the fibre network? At a reasonable cost I might add.

Because everyone can't have a 100mbit wireless connection, there just isn't the spectrum. You can only connect to a fibre where it ends, there is no tapping in.

Also, this connection to the schools is uncontended and shouldn't be shared.

Sponge Bob

Dearie Me

http://siteassets.eircom.net/assets/static/pdf/IR/Investor%20Update%2009_02_2012.pdf

basically the Senior Lenders told Eircom not to make a due payment to the Junior Lenders and eircom agreed. This is what is called a DEFAULT!

No wonder the Meteor data breach story broke...pure distraction that.

ERC Ireland Finance received notice yesterday that ERC Ireland Holdings Limited’s senior
lenders have exercised their rights to suspend payments by ERC Ireland Holdings and its
subsidiaries of amounts that fund FRN coupon payments, including the payment scheduled
for 15 February 2012.

Solair

Voltwad wrote: »

Privatizing it fully in the first place was a shocking decision. The British state retained a substantial stake in BT, including the lines and look at up North, 99% broadband enabled.

Are you sure about that?

The UK Government privatised 50% of BT in 1984 and sold off the rest of it in 1991-1993. It was one of the first Euro PTTs to be entirely sold off.

The problem with eircom wasn't really privatisation. Rather, that it wasn't run as a telecommunications company, but instead it was bought and sold for speculative value.

Investors cashed in, took it private and extracted maximum profits out of it leaving it as a lifeless corpse.

Poorly designed regulation also allowed eircom to maintain a strangle-hold on the market during the earlier days of broadband. That coupled with what was then a weak cable operator, led to a lot of inertia and eircom didn't innovate or invest in technology at all. It just sat and sweated its assets.

When the market became more functional and when UPC entered in a big way, eircom took an absolute hammering as they were totally uncompeditive.

BT on the other hand is a PLC, it was run as a telecommunications company with investors living off the income, not the speculative value of the shares.

Eircom, as a small telco, was bounced around from private equity fund to private equity fund none of whom seemed to have had an interest in actually developing the company as a serious telco.

From a national perspective, the best we could hope for now is a speedy and orderly wind-down of the entity that is eircom and a firesale of its assets to companies who can actually develop the telecommunications network.

Bailing eircom out is just not even something the state should consider. Its only interest should be in protecting the viability of the telecommunications infrastructure of the state.

Also, a bail-out will not be allowed under EU law as it would probably be illegal state aid and market distortion. So, eircom will more than likely have to just deal with the mess it's in.

It's probably not a bad fit for the likes of BT or Orange (France Telecom), Telefonica (O2) or Deustche Telekom (T-Com).

I wouldn't be surprised if BT picked up the fixed line / network assets and some bigger player like Orange, who aren't already in the Irish market, picked up Meteor.

To be perfectly honest, it's questionable as to whether small EU telcos like Eircom can really function at all in what is increasingly a global market. They don't really have the economies of scale, global reach, etc etc. Increasingly EU telcos are merging and swallowing each other up. E.g. Vodafone, O2 (Telefonica) and even UPC are all massive international corporations.

Eircom, unlike some other small telcos like Teledanmark (TDC), Portugal Telecom (TP), Telenor (Norway), Telia-Sonera (Merged Swedish-Finnish former PTT),, never really expanded outside its home market either. It was surprising that it never even managed to get a serious foothold in the UK.

The big Euro telcos Telefonica (Espana), Orange (France), T-Com/T-Mobile (Germany) and Vodafone UK are now by far the biggest players in Europe and even globally. They even make BT look like a mino.

Eircom's an absolutely tiny operation in comparison.

arctan

Spot on !!

Eircom is also still profitable, people just dont want to buy it because of the debt burdon..

re: Eircoms size, I've heard if being compared (infrastructurally) as similar size as Birmingham, just over a wider land mass ... as you said, tiny