Reduce The Cost of Irish Broadband, Phone & TV

alannm37

Been meaning to do this for a while now and finally got around to doing it. Please support this petition in the hopes of getting better prices for Broadband in Ireland. If there is anything someone would like to add to it, please share it here on this forum. All people who sign the petition have my thanks.

www(dot)change(dot)org/p/eir-reduce-the-cost-of-irish-broadband-phone-tv?recruiter=297593325&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink

Replace the dots with an actual "."

L1011

These sort of petitions do nothing.

Eir will not reduce prices until there is a widespread competitor that is cheaper. Simple as.

Atlantic Dawn

There was talk of a levy going on to broadband for everyone a while back so people the back arse of nowhere could get it.

sennah

L1011 wrote: »

These sort of petitions do nothing.

Eir will not reduce prices until there is a widespread competitor that is cheaper. Simple as.

This

I'm praying that SIRO get a huge chunk of the NBP. Eir are strangling the market

johnb25

sennah wrote:

I'm praying that SIRO get a huge chunk of the NBP. Eir are strangling the market

sennah wrote:

This

Not sure that will make much difference; each would have a monopoly in their own area. I hope it is done on the basis of best technical solution, regardless of the provider.

Nollog

johnb25 wrote: »

Not sure that will make much difference; each would have a monopoly in their own area. I hope it is done on the basis of best technical solution, regardless of the provider.

theyre using the exact same technology so that doesnt really matter either.

sennah

johnb25 wrote: »

Not sure that will make much difference; each would have a monopoly in their own area. I hope it is done on the basis of best technical solution, regardless of the provider.

If SIRO win an area, Eir aren't going to just disappear from that area overnight. There's nothing to say Eir won't continue their current FTTH rollout in areas that SIRO might win and likewise, nothing to say SIRO won't rollout in areas that Eir might win. We need choice and more so, we need someone other than Eir

As for the best technical solution winning, all bidders in the NBP are opting for GPON FTTH anyway so not much difference there (<< /\/ollog's in ahead of me)

ED E

/\/ollog wrote: »

theyre using the exact same technology so that doesnt really matter either.

Arguably it does to an extent, Eir have a strong core network, SIRO are't using ESB Telecomms network so they're left to lease what they can. This may mean minimum provisioning vs "free" access to whatevers needed.

bk

/\/ollog wrote: »

theyre using the exact same technology so that doesnt really matter either.

Though I would say Eir have more pre-existing fibre in the ground and seem to have a lot more people trained up in fibre installation, so I suspect they would be able to roll it out much faster then SIRO.

I don't think SIRO winning the NBP will do much for competition. They would just end up with their own monopoly in the NBP locations and would be just as likely to abuse it as Eir are. Though there is an argument that if SIRO gain more customers via NBP and experience from deploying it, it might give them more support to continue to expand in non NBP areas.

As for the OP. Prices aren't particularly high in Ireland. They are right in line with EU averages from what I see. In urban Ireland these days, we are paying EU average prices, for above average broadband speeds. Just look at the UK, we are paying less, for higher speeds. This is a massive change from 15 years ago, when we were paying some of the highest prices in Europe for some of the slowest speeds. Average prices and above average speeds is a massive improvement from that.

What continues to worry me is rural Ireland. So many people are still stuck on terrible speeds in rural Ireland. The NBP, Eir and Siro FTTH rollouts seem like they will fix the rural divide issue, I still worry that these projects will run out of steam/political interference, etc.

I think it is much more important that we continue to focus on fix rural broadband once and for all, before turning our attention back to price.

And BTW a petition will do zero to drive down price. Only real competition drives down prices. Broadband in Ireland has improved so much over the last 15 years because Liberty Global/UPC/Virgin bought the Chorus and NTL networks and then spent hundreds of millions on improving the networks, thus driving up the quality of broadband up and prices down.

The only way we will see lower prices are if a third real competitor enters the market, SIRO perhaps and drives even more competition.

Also I think we could see 4G and 5G in future continue to chip away and steal very light users on the low end.

But a petition certainly won't help anything.

murphaph

The stingy German broadband consumer is one of the main reasons German internet speeds have fallen so far behind other countries, despite Germany having very good preconditions for fast broadband (mostly urban population and the rural populace almost exclusively live in clusters...no or very very few one off houses).

We can get 12mbps in our dorm town of 12k just outside Berlin. The cabinet has finally been upgraded to VDSL but it's not orderable yet. Luckily though we're attached to a cabinet where Telekom has VDSL'ed it. The next cabinet from which the houses 3 doors down are fed was VDSL'ed by a regional broadband provider and the price: €60 for vectored VDSL (up to 100mbps). Because Telekom did our one we will be able to get vectored VDSL from a reseller for around 35.

I agree with bk wholeheartedly... don't be looking at price too much or the rapid pace of development in Irish broadband will grind to a halt. It needs to be profitable for these companies to roll out this amazing tech.

Kensington

What do you deem as reasonable pricing?

ED E

murphaph wrote: »

The stingy German broadband consumer is one of the main reasons German internet speeds have fallen so far behind other countries

Exact same effect now being seen in our mobile networks.

Scandinavians are using the exact same tech but have a hugely better end user experience because everyone isn't trying to get the cheapest possible tariff on the list. Three Ireland is cheaper than Three UK. That makes NO sense whatsoever.

bk

ED E wrote: »

Exact same effect now being seen in our mobile networks.

Scandinavians are using the exact same tech but have a hugely better end user experience because everyone isn't trying to get the cheapest possible tariff on the list. Three Ireland is cheaper than Three UK. That makes NO sense whatsoever.

I wouldn't necessarily say it is true.

Look at the US, most expensive broadband in the world, easily twice what we pay, yet they end up getting a fraction of the speeds we get. €100+ for 50Mb/s would be the norm in the US.

I agree you don't want to go too cheap either, that does lead to underinvestment, but rather the best is a medium price, with lots of competition. Probably not far off what we currently have.

BTW Three UK actually has some fantastic deals and products which simply aren't available in Ireland and shows the lack of competition and innovation in the Irish mobile market.

- Look at Three UK's 3/2/1 plan, pre-pay, gives you 3p calls, 2p texts and 1p per mb data. No minimum top-up and no need to top-up every month. Great for very light users, who just want to top up and not buy a monthly bundle. Nothing like this exists in Ireland. If you don't buy a bundle every month, you effectively pay 50c a minute for calls, 15 cent for texts and about 50 cent per MB of data in Ireland. Thus punishing very light users.

- Look at Three's data SIM's €25 gets you a SIM with 12GB of data for 12 months and even better can be used in 42 countries under Feel Like Home. Fantastic value for money. Great for roaming or just using in a 3/4G enabled tablet. Again nothing like this exists from any company in the Irish market.

When Three IE merged with o2 they argued reducing to three networks would sure up the market and improve services. We have seen in reality the complete opposite. The high quality, dependable 02 network is almost gone, replaced by the terrible, over-subscribed Three network, with Three cutting back on everything they can and creating terrible congestion.

Meanwhile competition in the market has stagnated and we see little in the way of innovation from any of the companies here. They are happy to just milk their existing market share.

Meanwhile in the UK, you have 4 networks and as a result you see far more investment in networks there and greater innovation in products.