cartel = Irish mobile phone networks

The Parish Priest.

So 3 announce that their price plans are been reduced from 30 to 28 days and now meteor do the same. Why do comreg tolerate for the cartel thats being going on for years against the scum main networks ?

MBSnr

The Parish Priest. wrote: »

So 3 announce that their price plans are been reduced from 30 to 28 days and now meteor do the same. Why do comreg tolerate for the cartel thats being going on for years against the scum main networks ?

Yeap. Limited competition and a smaller market leads to the consumer being ripped off... Couple that to the fact the these phone operators aren't quite as separate from their UK parent company as they say 'they are' (Three/TM) and the UK senior management probably still see Ireland as a ripe old cash cow for the milking...

Also it's kinda ironic that the UK networks have committed to allowing their bundles to be completely used in the EU (and some additional countries), have been transparent about it all and they're leaving in 2019... Didn't hear any dirty tricks from any of them trying to circumvent the EU roaming changes as Three Ireland and Meteor are....

ED E

The increases are thanks to the EU roaming rules. Thank Brussels.

CeilingFly

ED E wrote: »

The increases are thanks to the EU roaming rules. Thank Brussels.

So you prefer large bills after using your phone for a few minutes whenever you are out of the country?

Maybe you are very young and have not experienced using a phone abroad a few years ago - but a €100-€200 bill for small usage would be almost normal.

Thanks to EU regulations, these excessive charges have been confined to history.

As for general competition here - three operators for a population of 4.8m is not bad. Due to the investment needed, communications is one area where additional competition would probably increase prices. I currently pay €30 a month for all calls, all texts and all data.

A few years ago when there were 4 operators, my bills were close to €100 a month.

ED E

Thats a total false economy.

How many days a year do you spend abroad? 14? 20? 30? Personally I'd be around 35-40 but thats probobaly high (OH is foreign).

Now we have great value at home (really, we do, look at threes AYCE data). When abroad, local SIM, even better value.

Soon, we're getting worse value here, and useless limits abroad. If Im away for 2wks 1GB isnt enough, still gonna buy a local SIM.


Sacrificing 330 days of value for 30 days of a small saving is retarded.

Really Interested

ED E wrote: »

Thats a total false economy.

How many days a year do you spend abroad? 14? 20? 30? Personally I'd be around 35-40 but thats probobaly high (OH is foreign).

Now we have great value at home (really, we do, look at threes AYCE data). When abroad, local SIM, even better value.

Soon, we're getting worse value here, and useless limits abroad. If Im away for 2wks 1GB isnt enough, still gonna buy a local SIM.


Sacrificing 330 days of value for 30 days of a small saving is retarded.

What, take for example 3 €20 prepay plan that used to cost 243 a year based on 30 day topup, now 260 based on 28 day, it has been that price for year no increase. If as you claim the increase is to allow a person to use their plan in EU that well wort the extra €1 a day it works out for 14 days in Spain.

ED E

260 and lose the AYCE as that will now be in breach of Regulation (give it two months for the EU/COMREG to shut down their current plan).

Really Interested

ED E wrote: »

260 and lose the AYCE as that will now be in breach of Regulation (give it two months for the EU/COMREG to shut down their current plan).

Explain!

prmcnamara

ED E wrote: »

The increases are thanks to the EU roaming rules. Thank Brussels.

Why are you blaming the EU? Blame the companies that raised their prices, not the EU.

ED E

They raised their prices in response to the EU regulations. They didnt all magically try to shed customers to the MVNOs.


@Really Interested What Three have proposed (2GB roaming, 2TB at home) is illegal. It wont hold up. So either Three lose a fortune on roaming fees that they have to pay, or they nuke the home deal down to 15 or 30GB at most.

TheDriver

ED E wrote: »

@Really Interested What Three have proposed (2GB roaming, 2TB at home) is illegal. It wont hold up. So either Three lose a fortune on roaming fees that they have to pay, or they nuke the home deal down to 15 or 30GB at most.

Whenever I was with three or their mvno, I could never use much data with them as speeds were slow and signal would be intermittent. The ayce isn't very appealing when it doesn't work well, which is probably the case for many people who don't live in urban centres (and even when I am in cities, the speed was still crap)

ED E

TheDriver wrote: »

Whenever I was with three or their mvno, I could never use much data with them as speeds were slow and signal would be intermittent. The ayce isn't very appealing when it doesn't work well, which is probably the case for many people who don't live in urban centres (and even when I am in cities, the speed was still crap)

Depends where you are. I reliably hit over 70Mb if Im up late and can easily chew 40GB/mo (thats with a 240Mb link at home).

The AYCE + Tethering not impeded means its open to being abused so in areas full of young price conscious families you'll see it destroyed, but older areas with more affluent/older user the grunt is taken by fixed line and it flies.

PAKNET

prmcnamara wrote: »

Why are you blaming the EU? Blame the companies that raised their prices, not the EU.

Two factors in mobile phone priceplan generation as part of the overall network business strategy is:
- The Irish network will earn a certain amount of revenue by providing wholesale service to subscribers of third party networks who are roaming while in Ireland
- The Irish network will earn a certain amount of margin by charging subscribers for roaming services above and beyond their base price plan

The EU have now ruled that:
- The Irish network can only charge a (relatively) small wholesale price for the third party network subscribers to roam on their network (compared to what they could charge previously)
- The Irish network must now include a certain portion of the base price plan whilst roaming at no additional cost

With the net result:
- Irish networks will see a significant drop in wholesale roaming rates (a direct loss of income)
- Irish networks will see what was before a revenue path now turned into a net cost (an increase in costs)


The bits in italic are the critical aspects driving the changes in priceplan terms.

The networks have previously priced domestic plans as not including any roaming elements but are now being told they must include a certain element of the domestic plan into a subscriber's roaming element as well.

ED E

Its worth noting here that Vodafone, as they operate in most of Europe, are responding differently to the changes as they can treat everything as a home network.

Quackster

ED E wrote: »

They raised their prices in response to the EU regulations. They didnt all magically try to shed customers to the MVNOs.


@Really Interested What Three have proposed (2GB roaming, 2TB at home) is illegal. It wont hold up. So either Three lose a fortune on roaming fees that they have to pay, or they nuke the home deal down to 15 or 30GB at most.

Why exactly would they have to do this when the regulation's fair usage clause on data covers them? That is if they'd just bother to respect it rather than carry on with their current nonsensical BS.

As for rising prices, that's a fundamental part of a properly-functioning economy. It would happen with or without the impending changes.

ED E

Quackster wrote: »

Why exactly would they have to do this when the regulation's fair usage clause on data covers them? That is if they'd just bother to respect it rather than carry on with their current nonsensical BS.

As for rising prices, that's a fundamental part of a properly-functioning economy. It would happen with or without the impending changes.

Which regulation is that now?

Prices have fallen year over year for the last five years. This is very much a "spike" in the chart.

PAKNET

Quackster wrote: »

Why exactly would they have to do this when the regulation's fair usage clause on data covers them? That is if they'd just bother to respect it rather than carry on with their current nonsensical BS.

As for rising prices, that's a fundamental part of a properly-functioning economy. It would happen with or without the impending changes.

Because they will face two (negative) changes to their cash flows now:
(1)
You will have people who have roamed before at the current rates who earn the Irish networks a margin on every call minute, text or MB of data used while they were abroad. That margin is now totally gone. In fact, it's now a net loss to the network because they have to absorb any bundle-covered usage which incurs termination charges on the foreign network whilst you are abroad.

(2)
You will have people who wouldn't roam before, because they wouldn't pay the roaming rates, or were very lenient on their usage to try and minimise costs. Many will naturally now feel very much at ease freely using their phones abroad given calls and text are included and they have a fairly usable chunk of data to go with it. So networks can expect a substantial jump in roaming usage and therefore termination charges as a result.


So from a business decision, what they could offer you as plan XYZ for €ABC now, they can no longer continue to offer you from June because the potential costs they need to cover are going up.


As for prices steadily going up over the years, you mustn't be using mobiles long or you'd remember the not to distant days where you could pay as much as 63c in the minute, 15c per text and 2c per KB (yes, Kilobyte, not Megabyte!) in data - and that's while you were using your phone at home!

godtabh

When Eir and Metoer merge there will be even less competition

The Parish Priest.

godtabh wrote: »

When Eir and Metoer merge there will be even less competition

Is that happening ?

ED E

godtabh wrote: »

When Eir and Metoer merge there will be even less competition

They already are merged, the same employees run both brands, only difference is they have their own CRMs. Any competition between them is entirely fictional.

Quackster

ED E wrote: »

Which regulation is that now?

Prices have fallen year over year for the last five years. This is very much a "spike" in the chart.

The latest iteration of the EU roaming regulations obviously. 3 only has to provide a volume of data equivalent to twice the wholesale data price cap that the cost of the prepay AYCE price plan would buy.

Which at the wholesale price cap that will apply from June is not that much more than the 2GB they plan to provide on the prepay AYCE plan anyway.

Quackster

PAKNET wrote: »

As for prices steadily going up over the years, you mustn't be using mobiles long or you'd remember the not to distant days where you could pay as much as 63c in the minute, 15c per text and 2c per KB (yes, Kilobyte, not Megabyte!) in data - and that's while you were using your phone at home!

Yeah, obviously the unit-cost of data has fallen as data usage has grown exponentially in recent years. And like any other niche service, mobile started out very expensive and fell in cost as it became more mainstream until it reached a point of universal use.

That doesn't change the fact that, everything else considered, over time, the overall cost of mobile services (like any other service) will naturally rise in line with the rest of the economy.

I'm not defending 3's recent behaviour. Quite the opposite in fact. I'm simply stating it's far too simplistic to blame the new roaming regime for increased prices. Vodafone cut its prepay 'month' from 30 days to 28 days some time ago and it was only a matter of time before the other networks followed suit.

BlinkingLights

godtabh wrote: »

When Eir and Metoer merge there will be even less competition

Meteor *IS* Eir ... the Eir Mobile brand is odd as they don't really use it very well.

What's impacted competition badly here was allowing 3 to purchase O2. That took us from 4 infrastructural networks to just 3.

tv3tg4

Three and meteor ditching older payg plans and cutting back on the time of bundles - points to a lack of competition

BlinkingLights

Vodafone doesn't even seem to bother attempting to compete on price. They're extremely expensive compared to the other two all time time.

Also all the MVNOs except Post mobile are on 3.

I wouldn't consider EirMobile an MVNO. It's just a second brand.

ED E

BlinkingLights wrote: »

Vodafone doesn't even seem to bother attempting to compete on price. They're extremely expensive compared to the other two all time time.

Since o2 stopped investing years ago its always been the case that Vodafone were the premium network with Meteor/Three duking it out for the young and the personal customers.

Large organizations go with team red, with good reason. As an enterprise customer the other two are quite lacklustre.

With three you can get 90Mb at 3AM, with Vodafone you can get that at 2PM. With shared medium systems youll always get what you pay for.

Also all the MVNOs except Post mobile are on 3.

Primarily due to Three being forced to accept them in order to takeover from Telefonica.

I wouldn't consider EirMobile an MVNO. It's just a second brand.

Technically they are as they have their own MNC, but really they're just a sub brand.

flexcon

BlinkingLights wrote: »

Vodafone doesn't even seem to bother attempting to compete on price. They're extremely expensive compared to the other two all time time.

Also all the MVNOs except Post mobile are on 3.

I wouldn't consider EirMobile an MVNO. It's just a second brand.

Vodafones business plan doesn't seem to want to compete as they are getting premium from corporate customers and premium personal customers who are paying higher but almost certainly getting faster average speeds and service. It must be paying them better with this model. Apple is another brand that does this and absolutely scoops up all the industry profits in mobile, even though their cheapest mobile is 499 euro. They don't care for that market below them.

Another interesting example is Vodafone on Vodafone X giving unlimited data at weekends. Many business customers must not be using their network at full tilt those times, so they are trying to optimize the network so that is is used as often to generate revenue as often as it can, but to keep those students etc off the network at peak business periods. It's fantastic really.

There are always customer service issues no matter what etc, and horrible stories but the consensus here is that Vodafone have the best infrastructure and have the backing of international partners to help that along.

Three on the other hand claim to have equal coverage but with only half the masts....go figure that one out.

TheDriver

I find meteor a massive step up from three and MVNOs. I was sick of no reception in rural spots, slow data speeds even in middle of cities etc. Meteor gives good coverage, good limits and a good price.