Meteor brand to disappear in September.

Just going to be called 'Eir'.

http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/meteor-falls-as-eir-ditches-mobile-brand-35957852.html

ED E

They've only existed as a name for a long time. Makes sense.

tv3tg4

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2017/0724/892574-meteor-rebranding-as-eir-after-12-years/


We were always told that these were 2 separate companies

Will this allow Meteor customers exit contracts?
Allow people to obtain unlocking codes?

gordongekko

Thanks op just bought 10

PAKNET

No.
No.

No different to the Three takeover of O2.

Luckycharms_74

Where is the bargain :P

RobbingBandit

More importantly will all meteor offers end and will we be stuck with the eir ones, rediculously sneaky tactic used by 3 mobile buying O2 and moving/ending a lot of the preexisting offers.

TheDriver

Not at all, they're not fools. Meteor brand has performed very well so its only probably a name change. We prob wont even notice a difference

RobbingBandit

Meteor was always the mobile arm of eircom, eir once launched was a separate shared network but Meteor deals were meteor deals so who knows going forward if they can end certain ones at a future point we will have to wait and see.

jacob2

if the meteor brand is so good why are re branding if not broke why fix it?

grogi

tv3tg4 wrote: »

Will this allow Meteor customers exit contracts?
Allow people to obtain unlocking codes?

No. Branding or even mergers/splits don't allow for the contracts to be broken.

grogi

TheDriver wrote: »

Not at all, they're not fools. Meteor brand has performed very well so its only probably a name change. We prob wont even notice a difference

But that's the whole point - if the brand is recognized and well associated, it is insanity to change it.

What actually would make sense is to rebrand everything TO Meteor, not the other way round. But I ain't have MIB...

greendom

jacob2 wrote: »

if the meteor brand is so good why are re branding if not broke why fix it?

Economies of scale, more efficient advertising spend.

grogi

greendom wrote: »

Economies of scale, more efficient advertising spend.

Who owns the rights to Eir and Meteor trademark? Because typically that is the main clue why rebranding is happening...

Kristopherus

greendom wrote: »

Economies of scale, more efficient advertising spend.

Agreed. Eir's own network uses Meteor's infrastructure.

pawrick

I've been bouncing from meteor to eir for a few years to avail of switching deals, looks like an end to that.

Davy

Bargain Alerts thread merged to existing thread in Mobile forum

bk

I suspect Eir are trying to do this, to reduce what looks like the amount of competition in the market and drive up prices.

Meteor was always positioned as the cheaper, value for money product. Way more focused on pay as you go then contracts. While Eir was positioned more as a more upmarket, included with your Eir wired broadband as part of your contract type of company.

While they will obviously continue to have pay as you go with Eir. They will likely try and push people more and more towards bundled contracts and overall higher prices.

Also allows them to reduce their advertising bill. Just have to promote Eir brand, rather then both Eir and Meteor brand and also probably reduces the number of stores where they currently have two.

It is getting harder to get mobile without bundled TV and broadband too. Eir, Vodafone, Virgin. I suspect it is only a matter of time before Sky join too (maybe buy ID).

We really need to see Tesco, Lyca, 48months join 4G in order to keep the competition healthy.

jacob2

there no much pay as u go price plans on eir web site will it change wen its all one wen on meteor u can put a fiver on meteor and get two weeks calls meteor to meteor calls plus keep your fiver great deal no others networks is as good as that i hope they keep the same price plans as meteor?

PAKNET

bk wrote: »

I suspect Eir are trying to do this, to reduce what looks like the amount of competition in the market and drive up prices.

Meteor was always positioned as the cheaper, value for money product. Way more focused on pay as you go then contracts. While Eir was positioned more as a more upmarket, included with your Eir wired broadband as part of your contract type of company.

While they will obviously continue to have pay as you go with Eir. They will likely try and push people more and more towards bundled contracts and overall higher prices.

Also allows them to reduce their advertising bill. Just have to promote Eir brand, rather then both Eir and Meteor brand and also probably reduces the number of stores where they currently have two.

It is getting harder to get mobile without bundled TV and broadband too. Eir, Vodafone, Virgin. I suspect it is only a matter of time before Sky join too (maybe buy ID).

We really need to see Tesco, Lyca, 48months join 4G in order to keep the competition healthy.

There's a question as what healthy competition is - when iD mobile come in offering a very competitive, potentially market shaking priceplan, only to bow out after two years with only a significant loss to show for it.

When Three, perhaps regarded as the most competitive of the three main networks here, have accumulated hundreds of millions of Euro in losses, and only started turning an operating profit when they took on O2's high-yield customer base.

When the rest of the MVNO's (Tesco, Virgin, Lyca) are plagued with technical , administrative and operational issues and can't provide an identical, like-for-like alternative, for the prices they charge.


With the merger of the Eir and Meteor brands there's little change on the billpay side.

The billpay/SIM only plans between Eir and Meteor are identical and have been for over a year - expect no change there.

Pay As You Go is where the changes will ring in and I can see this is going to be an ongoing downward trend as the networks try and phase out prepay.

Being brutally honest, the networks don't want prepay customers - Vodafone have pretty blatantly stated this in their quarterly investor updates - as prepay customers tend to be very low spend, low margin customers, who are very expensive to win and even more difficult to retain.

So prepay will be left to the MVNO's to pick up, but based on the experiences of the various MVNO's, it's very much a "get what you pay for" affair.

In a world of eroding wholesale margin (capped roaming charges, capped interconnect charges), mobile operators want high yield customers locked into contracts with a fixed minimum monthly spend - Vodafone, again, report the number of customers as a percentage who are locked into a contract with them as one of their key metrics .

They don't want customers who might only pay a sporadic few Euro per month and can just walk away at a moment's notice.

bk

PAKNET wrote: »

There's a question as what healthy competition is - when iD mobile come in offering a very competitive, potentially market shaking priceplan, only to bow out after two years with only a significant loss to show for it.

I have to disagree with you on this. I thought that ID were terrible value for money from the start. Outside of special offers, their plans were really no cheaper then the big networks, while having all the disadvantage of being a MVNO.

There were much more expensive then Lyca and Tesco Mobile from the start and even more expensive then Meteor. There really was nothing exciting at all about ID's plans and frankly I thought that they were far too confusing.

You will actually find posts from me two years ago saying exactly this and that I thought they would fail in the market. Look like I was right.

I agree with the rest of what you are saying. Of course the big companies want to try and force up prices and try and force people in contracts and bundles with TV and broadband to try and reduce competition.

But despite all attempts to do this so far. Revenue per customer continues to drop year to year and the needle has barely moved on getting people onto contracts.

It would seem that the consumer isn't interested in what they are pushing.

I'd say this is a great opportunity for the MVNO's to increase their market share from unhappy people due to these changes.

BTW I'm with Lyca myself and very happy with it, other then their EU roaming thing. Works fine and amazing value or just €7.50.

jrmb

tv3tg4 wrote: »

Allow people to obtain unlocking codes?

Meteor phones are sold unlocked. That's a nice gesture that I hope won't be reversed - when travelling abroad, you can buy the best value local SIM for data without any fuss.

_Kaiser_

Is prepay that much of a segment of the market here? I've never had a prepay phone (got my first handset in 1998) and always considered it more for kids or people who couldn't commit to a regular bill. It doesn't even make sense anymore as some of the SIM only plans are far better value for the same cash.

Although that said, as TV networks like Sky are seeing, more and more people have no interest in long, restrictive, and expensive contracts for a medium they no longer see as the default method of watching TV. Similarly, how many people send SMS messages anymore since things like Viber, Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger came along? Add in new offerings in VOIP and will it be long before traditional calls are similarly a legacy feature?

CeilingFly

RobbingBandit wrote: »

More importantly will all meteor offers end and will we be stuck with the eir ones, rediculously sneaky tactic used by 3 mobile buying O2 and moving/ending a lot of the preexisting offers.

But 02 put zero investment in its network for the final 2 years of ownership and simply applied sticky tape on the issues that became very frequent as the handover time came.

Not to mention their non existent 4g network and appalling 3g level.

Where the rose tinted glasses come for 02, I'll never know - i had no end of service issues and was so happy when it moved to three.

TheDriver

A lot of prepay is low spend but equally a lot of prepay is same monthly spend. As people have grown up, they stick with prepay and treat it like a bill. Meteor would have a fair amount of these customers who joined them as the cheap kids network 10 years ago.

TheDriver

https://www.meteor.ie/eir/

ED E

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

Is prepay that much of a segment of the market here? I've never had a prepay phone (got my first handset in 1998) and always considered it more for kids or people who couldn't commit to a regular bill. It doesn't even make sense anymore as some of the SIM only plans are far better value for the same cash.

Although that said, as TV networks like Sky are seeing, more and more people have no interest in long, restrictive, and expensive contracts for a medium they no longer see as the default method of watching TV. Similarly, how many people send SMS messages anymore since things like Viber, Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger came along? Add in new offerings in VOIP and will it be long before traditional calls are similarly a legacy feature?

Depends on your use case.

I've only been with two networks, O2 and Three (moved when Telefonica was alive and kicking though). Always prepay.

As a texter with o2 the bill plans never made sense and when data became a requirement and later the core component threes AYCE plans have always come up top. Buy handsets outright, you don't buy your car from the local Topaz.



The MVNOs are, and always will be, a complete farce until they can get short code numbers working. If changing to you breaks banking you wont retain anything other than 12 year olds.

bk

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

Is prepay that much of a segment of the market here? I've never had a prepay phone (got my first handset in 1998) and always considered it more for kids or people who couldn't commit to a regular bill. It doesn't even make sense anymore as some of the SIM only plans are far better value for the same cash.

30 day, SIM only plans are really the same as prepaid.

As of 2016, prepaid made up 56% of all plans according to Comreg, so yes, prepaid is massive!

It is laughable to say that prepaid is only for children! It is a good way to ensure you don't accidentally overspend and suddenly get a massive bill for €900!

Post-pay contracts are usually terrible value for money. Much cheaper to buy your phone unlocked and use it with a cheap pre-pay or 30 day deal.

_Kaiser_

bk wrote: »

It is laughable to say that prepaid is only for children! It is a good way to ensure you don't accidentally overspend and suddenly get a massive bill for €900!

I've never had that since the day of "unlimited" everything came in - calls, texts and data (or at least 15GB+). Just get the right package for your needs. I couldn't be bothered with top-ups and credits and what not.. give me one regular monthly bill (it's the same reason I have a post-pay eFlow tag rather than prepay easytrip).

But as you say, prepay is over 50% of the market (wow!) so there's a definite demand.. makes you wonder what'll happen to them when Prepay becomes more restrictive/less available as is the network's goal.

-=al=-

I guess more and more under 18's have phones now too which would have to be pre-pay?

I was part of that Meteor movement when they first came out 15 years ago or so with the €20 a month for everything offer then moved to 3 when they offered the same but more data while still on pre pay. I just prefer it tbh.

I have a meteor broadband direct debit which is fine, but when it comes to phones, I prefer no contract sim free phones bought outright and pre-pay credit!

Now use 3 €20 pre-pay top up every month which gives you everything you need + the important bit - you get to keep your credit. I then send €10/€15 the credit at the end of the month to my microsoft/xbox account and let that build up. Over the year I usually get €100+ credit on the microsoft account that can be used on movies/games/xbox/tv etc... which is almost enough reason to stick with pre-pay alone. You basically end up spending about €5 a month on your phone bill while putting the rest of the credit to use elsewhere.

bk

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

I've never had that since the day of "unlimited" everything came in - calls, texts and data (or at least 15GB+). Just get the right package for your needs. I couldn't be bothered with top-ups and credits and what not.. give me one regular monthly bill (it's the same reason I have a post-pay eFlow tag rather than prepay easytrip).

I think you are mis-understanding. That is what most pre-pay plans are like today. You top-up by something like €15 or €20 and you get unlimited texts, calls and lots of data.

And now you can do auto-topup, so you don't even have to go to the effort of pre-paying, all automated.

For example I'm on Lyca, I topup by €15 per month and I get unlimited calls, texts and 30GB of data. I can opt for auto-topup if I like.

So really there is little differences between prepaid and the post pay 30 day contract you have.

The one difference is control. You usually run up those massive bills when roaming without really realising it. With pre-pay at worse you just blow through your credit but then it stops. With a contract, you might only realise it too late a month later when your bill arrives.

The €900 bill happened to me when I was roaming in the US with a Vodafone contract. As you can imagine a shock when I arrived home and got that bill! Fortunately Vodafone agreed to wipe it out, it was partly a mistake on their part. But needless to say I went straight onto per-pay after that and have been there ever since.

I have a major aversion to uncontrolled/variable contracts.

BTW I'm surprised you thought that pay as you go is only for kids. When I think of my family and friends, the vast majority of them are on pay as you go and that includes Doctors, Dentists, Software Engineers, etc.

Only one friend of mine has a contract and that was to get an iPhone 7 and ironically he is by far the least careful with his money of any of my friends. One or two others have work paid phones, so obviously a contract.