Eir Not Fair

Ultimanemo

The FTTH line stops 130 metres away from my house, Eir wouldn't connect me because I am outside the commercially viable area, They wouldn't agree that I pay for the cost of connection, parts and labour, but they can give me a broadband with speed of up to 3 mbps, I had that service before and the maximum speed is 1.7 mbps.
The biggest thing I can't understand is they will charge me 55 Euro a month for 12 months and then 70 Euro a month afterwards, same money they charge someone 500 times my speed, it is like a car dealer who sells bicycles and Rolls Royce at the same price.

I had contract with them, I left it more than 12 months ago and joined sky, for 55 Euro, you get TV broadband and landline for the first 12 months, then they go higher.
Now I am on mobile broadband, not great but much better than 1.7 mbps

I think all people who are "left behind" like myself should cancel their contract with Eir, and get mobile broadband if they have cover, if you need a landline you can get VOIP, I have one and it works fine and it is very affordable.

ED E

Speed != Cost. Basically they arent connected. Think of broadband as waste removal not cars. If the truck has to pick up your bin you pay, even if its empty as the truck visiting your house is the cost.


You're in the national broadband plan now. The Govt will subsidize connecting you between 2019-22 ish. In the meantime look at wireless providers.

Ultimanemo

ED E wrote: »

Think of broadband as waste removal

That is true


Both are rubbish

Ultimanemo

Explain this to me then:

Extreme broadband, Unlimited Mobile & UK calls
eir Fibre Extreme unlimited up to 150Mb
Online price €35 per month for 6 months*

---

Extreme broadband, Unlimited Mobile & UK calls
eir Fibre Extreme unlimited up to 300Mb
Online price€43 per month for 6 months*

---

Extreme broadband, Unlimited Mobile & UK calls
eir Fibre Extreme unlimited up to 1,000Mb
Online price €55 per month for 6 months*
.
https://www.eir.ie/broadband/1000mb-fibre/

ED E

It explains itself.

If 55 = 1000 then 18Mb per Euro.
So the 15Mb package should cost €8.33 per month...but it doesnt.

The cost is having the link, not how fast it is. You can look at it as €30/mo standing charge and €5/mo for your 150Mb.

Ultimanemo

I bought outdoor antenna for mobile broadband. it doubled my speed, it is available in ebay and amazon, the only catch is the cables are 5 metres, but if you buy longer cables the signal degrades as length increases.

It's name is

3G/4G LTE Outdoor Antenna for D-Link DWR / DWR-118 / DWR-921 DWR-952 / DWR-953

Ultimanemo

ED E wrote: »

It explains itself.

If 55 = 1000 then 18Mb per Euro.
So the 15Mb package should cost €8.33 per month...but it doesnt.

The cost is having the link, not how fast it is. You can look at it as €30/mo standing charge and €5/mo for your 150Mb.

OOOKKKK

Ultimanemo

MMaannn

Last week I was trying my luck, so I ordered fast broadband in eir website, the following day I received an email saying that the engineer will come to install standalone landline on 16/10/2017. down in the email it says if you ordered fibre it will be installed later.
I didn't make any sense to me as the link I clicked was for FTTH. so I contacted their customer support in eir community and 1901, in fairness to them they are good.

The funny thing is: I got this reply from one of their agents "I've checked the broadband availability for you. I can see that maximum speed of 2Mb is available. Currently, it is unavailable. I apologise for the inconvenience caused."

If there is no broadband in that line, why did they issue an account number and contract giving the fact that I applied for broadband and they can't give me broadband.

It is like:

You go online and you order pizza, they don't have pizza so the send you dog food.

Either they don't know what they are selling or they are trying to get money from people by inappropriate means.

One is worst than the other

ED E

Counter intuitively for an ISP never order anything via their site, always call. The site just generates emails for their sales people to lose.

Ultimanemo

ED E wrote: »

Counter intuitively for an ISP never order anything via their site, always call. The site just generates emails for their sales people to lose.

I don't know much about technology, but their machine or whatever they have there knew I couldn't get FTTH, so it didn't sell me FTTH, but it didn't know that if it sells me a landline I couldn't get broadband in it, so it sold me a landline anyway.
It is not artificially intelligent enough

Whatever happened it is their machine it is their responsibility.

It is like the American Saying:

When you go to Midas, you get a muffler

They don't sell you what you need, they sell you what they have

Pangea

My order is 150 with free local and UK. Its 77 per month, it says 75 on that link, does that link include the €2 direct debit discount in its prices?

Ultimanemo

Pangea wrote: »

My order is 150 with free local and UK. Its 77 per month, it says 75 on that link, does that link include the €2 direct debit discount in its prices?

I don't know

Ultimanemo

I cancelled the contract over the phone.
But if it is OK to sign a contract online, it should be OK to cancel the same contract online.
The regulations are heavily geared towards companies and against the poor customer.

Marlow

Ultimanemo wrote: »

I cancelled the contract over the phone.
But if it is OK to sign a contract online, it should be OK to cancel the same contract online.
The regulations are heavily geared towards companies and against the poor customer.

It depends on the provider. Most providers will let you cancel over email, fax or letter.

They won't let you cancel over the phone, as somebody else could ring and cancel ... it's not easy to confirm. I know of cases, where in a family dispute, the brother would ring up and try to cancel the other brothers connection to piss him off. That's one of the scenarios providers want to safeguard themselves against. If they have something in writing, they at least have something to back the cancellation up with.

Signing the contract over the phone is no problem though, because it can be tied in with a payment, so that they have payment details. An initial payment can be seen as acceptance of the contract.

/M

Ultimanemo

Marlow wrote: »

It depends on the provider. Most providers will let you cancel over email, fax or letter.

They won't let you cancel over the phone, as somebody else could ring and cancel ... it's not easy to confirm. I know of cases, where in a family dispute, the brother would ring up and try to cancel the other brothers connection to piss him off. That's one of the scenarios providers want to safeguard themselves against. If they have something in writing, they at least have something to back the cancellation up with.

Signing the contract over the phone is no problem though, because it can be tied in with a payment, so that they have payment details. An initial payment can be seen as acceptance of the contract.

/M

When you order online they give you account number, you should be able to create account using your account number and email. then you should be able to cancel the account by logging in.
They don't want to do that because they want to make it difficult for people to cancel.

That is all

Marlow

Ultimanemo wrote: »

When you order online they give you account number, you should be able to create account using your account number and email. then you should be able to cancel the account by logging in.
They don't want to do that because they want to make it difficult for people to cancel.

That is all

Not necessarily. Anybody in your household could get hold of your account number. Even people that find your bills in the trash.

It's a safe guard for most businesses to require cancellation in writing. From a legal point of perspective. The business has to have proof, that the service was cancelled by the account holder. At least as good as they can.

Just ringing up and cancelling or simply stopping to pay (cancel the direct debit etc.) is not sufficient. And doing it via the online portal not really either. A lot of people don't safeguard their passwords or give them to third party. So with a piece of paper with sufficient information, at least the provider has proof on what basis the service was cancelled.

/M

Ultimanemo

Marlow wrote: »

Not necessarily. Anybody in your household could get hold of your account number. Even people that find your bills in the trash.

It's a safe guard for most businesses to require cancellation in writing. From a legal point of perspective. The business has to have proof, that the service was cancelled by the account holder. At least as good as they can.

Just ringing up and cancelling or simply stopping to pay (cancel the direct debit etc.) is not sufficient. And doing it via the online portal not really either. A lot of people don't safeguard their passwords or give them to third party. So with a piece of paper with sufficient information, at least the provider has proof on what basis the service was cancelled.

/M

If we go that route, someone could steal your details and get an Internet account in your name and use it for terrorism or paedophilia, and that will secure you place in jail, so you can argue that no one should have an Internet account unless they attend themselves with an ID and utility bills to prove their name and address

Marlow

Ultimanemo wrote: »

If we go that route, someone could steal your details and get an Internet account in your name and use it for terrorism or paedophilia, and that will secure you place in jail, so you can argue that no one should have an Internet account unless they attend themselves with an ID and utility bills to prove their name and address

I'm just trying to give some insight "why". What can be done, is done or will maliciously done is a different story.

The reason for the procedure for most businesses in Ireland is based on the state of irish laws. If you don't like it, get the laws changed. Some take it lax, some don't. And I've seen sh!t happening.

/M

Johnboy1951

Marlow wrote: »

Not necessarily. Anybody in your household could get hold of your account number. Even people that find your bills in the trash.

It's a safe guard for most businesses to require cancellation in writing. From a legal point of perspective. The business has to have proof, that the service was cancelled by the account holder. At least as good as they can.

Just ringing up and cancelling or simply stopping to pay (cancel the direct debit etc.) is not sufficient. And doing it via the online portal not really either. A lot of people don't safeguard their passwords or give them to third party. So with a piece of paper with sufficient information, at least the provider has proof on what basis the service was cancelled.

/M

I see no reason why a cancellation cannot be taken on line, by email or by phone, just as an order for the same service is taken.

Generally a 30 day notice is required which is plenty time for a confirmation of cancellation to be sent to the customer, and if it was a malicious cancellation lots of time to revert that cancellation.

If, as you indicate, this is a legal requirement, then it does need to be changed.

Can you indicate which law applies to this type of cancellation of service?

Ultimanemo

Marlow wrote: »

businesses in Ireland is based on the state of irish laws

God has ten Commandments Others can be changed

Ultimanemo

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I see no reason why a cancellation cannot be taken on line, by email or by phone, just as an order for the same service is taken.

Generally a 30 day notice is required which is plenty time for a confirmation of cancellation to be sent to the customer, and if it was a malicious cancellation lots of time to revert that cancellation.

If, as you indicate, this is a legal requirement, then it does need to be changed.

Can you indicate which law applies to this type of cancellation of service?

When it comes to traps, easy to get in, difficult to get out

Ultimanemo

ED E wrote: »

Speed != Cost. Basically they arent connected. Think of broadband as waste removal not cars. If the truck has to pick up your bin you pay, even if its empty as the truck visiting your house is the cost.


You're in the national broadband plan now. The Govt will subsidize connecting you between 2019-22 ish. In the meantime look at wireless providers.

Barna Waste recently put barcodes on my dustbins, they said they will change the price so their fee will be calculated by the weight of the dust bin

ED E

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Barna Waste recently put barcodes on my dustbins, they said they will change the price so their fee will be calculated by the weight of the dust bin

You're still gonna have a standing charge, you can be sure of that.

guil

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Barna Waste recently put barcodes on my dustbins, they said they will change the price so their fee will be calculated by the weight of the dust bin

They have put an rfid chip in the bin and that links the bin to your account.

turbbo

ED E wrote: »

Speed != Cost. Basically they arent connected. Think of broadband as waste removal not cars. If the truck has to pick up your bin you pay, even if its empty as the truck visiting your house is the cost.

Lol "!=" not everybody on boards is familiar with the boolean logic.
Explain why Eir-con charge more for the faster packages so?

Arse and talking out of it!

Ultimanemo

ED E wrote: »

You're still gonna have a standing charge, you can be sure of that.

Hopefully that charge won't be so much

TomOnBoard

turbbo wrote: »

Lol "!=" not everybody on boards is familiar with the boolean logic.
Explain why Eir-con charge more for the faster packages so?

Arse and talking out of it!

Harsh comment and unhelpful!

Ed E is quite correct in that more and more of service provision has higher fixed charge that is incurred whether you use the service or not, with lower variable charge for each unit used. Look at Electricity with high standing charges and PSO levies whether you use 10 units of electricity in a billing period or 1000.

In the Broadband field, the cost of providing you with a line/link in the first place has to be recouped before a single MB of data is up/down-loaded on that link. The cost of faster packages from any of the providers is NOT proportional to the speed of the line- for example, a 1000mbit link will not cost you 10 times more than a 100 mbit link.

Ultimanemo

TomOnBoard wrote: »

Harsh comment and unhelpful!

Ed E is quite correct in that more and more of service provision has higher fixed charge that is incurred whether you use the service or not, with lower variable charge for each unit used. Look at Electricity with high standing charges and PSO levies whether you use 10 units of electricity in a billing period or 1000.

In the Broadband field, the cost of providing you with a line/link in the first place has to be recouped before a single MB of data is up/down-loaded on that link. The cost of faster packages from any of the providers is NOT proportional to the speed of the line- for example, a 1000mbit link will not cost you 10 times more than a 100 mbit link.

The following is copy paste from eir website


Broadband & Landline

€35 per month for 6 months
eir Fibre Unlimited up to 100MB
Unlimited calls to Irish & UK landlines & mobiles
FREE eir sport pack
Includes €5 online discount +
€50 Cashback
Price Breakdown
Promotional price
€35 for 6 months
After 6 months €40
Contract length 12 months
.
https://www.eir.ie/bundles/
.
While eir was about to charge me €50 per month for standalone landline, if you add broadband to it "max speed of 1.7 Mbps" it will be about €70 per month.

Ultimanemo

ED E wrote: »

You're in the national broadband plan now. The Govt will subsidize connecting you between 2019-22 ish.

That is 5 years from now.
If that ever happened, I don't want it, They can hang their clothes on their wires

Ultimanemo

ED E wrote: »

You're still gonna have a standing charge, you can be sure of that.

True
I received a letter from Barna Waste stating that what I am paying now is going to be the standing charge, after 450kg/year they will start charging per weight, I think it is 22 cent / kg. That is not great but at least there is some fairness in that. More service you get more money you pay. unlike eir you pay big money for small "weight" and small money for big "weight", It shouldn't affect me anyway, as I compost whatever compostable and recycle whatever recyclable.

Ultimanemo

TomOnBoard wrote: »

Harsh comment and unhelpful!

Ed E is quite correct in that more and more of service provision has higher fixed charge that is incurred whether you use the service or not, with lower variable charge for each unit used. Look at Electricity with high standing charges and PSO levies whether you use 10 units of electricity in a billing period or 1000.

In the Broadband field, the cost of providing you with a line/link in the first place has to be recouped before a single MB of data is up/down-loaded on that link. The cost of faster packages from any of the providers is NOT proportional to the speed of the line- for example, a 1000mbit link will not cost you 10 times more than a 100 mbit link.

Why
Was that engraved on the tablet God gave to Moses or what

TomOnBoard

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Why
Was that engraved on the tablet God gave to Moses or what

I'm sorry, but I can't even begin to see what your Biblical references have to do with the points that were being made...

Ultimanemo

TomOnBoard wrote: »

I'm sorry, but I can't even begin to see what your Biblical references have to do with the points that were being made...

What I mean is their pricing structure is wrong and they don't want to change it and if you ask them why they don't want to change it they say because this is the way we do business, as if their pricing structure is part of the ten commandments,

They wanted to charge me €55 / month for 12 months then €70/month for up to 2 mbps speed

The link below they charge €35 / month for 6 months then €40 / month for 12 months for up to 100 mbps

That is 50 times my speed.

https://www.eir.ie/bundles/

TomOnBoard

Ultimanemo wrote: »

What I mean is their pricing structure is wrong and they don't want to change it and if you ask them why they don't want to change it they say because this is the way we do business, as if their pricing structure is part of the ten commandments,

They wanted to charge me €55 / month for 12 months then €70/month for up to 2 mbps speed

The link below they charge €35 / month for 6 months then €40 / month for 12 months for up to 100 mbps

That is 50 times my speed.

https://www.eir.ie/bundles/

For better or worse, that's how it works here in Ireland. For your particular situation, it may well be difficult to accept, but for many others the exact same model is great, as they get higher bandwidth at little additional cost.

The recovery of costs by getting revenues through fixed charges where possible is a profitable business model. So I would say it is actually written in someone's ten commandments, the 1st being "maximise profits for shareholders at all times, regardless of the effect on individual customers".

I know of few if any businesses where that 1st commandment does not serve as the core principle of their operations.

ED E

As has been explained, its not what you get, its what it costs them.


An Apple might cost €4 on a tropical island in the pacific. Does that seem ludicrous to you? Yes, but its reflects the cost to provide. On the same island a full fish is €0.20.

Ultimanemo

ED E wrote: »

As has been explained, its not what you get, its what it costs them.


An Apple might cost €4 on a tropical island in the pacific. Does that seem ludicrous to you? Yes, but its reflects the cost to provide. On the same island a full fish is €0.20.

Why does it cost them more to give you 2 mpbs than 100 mbps. the wire is there for God knows and the exchange is there, and with lower speed you will use less data.

ED E

Lets say its a 100Mb VDSL connection in Dublin 6 vs a 2Mb connection in Powerscourt (Wicklow).

Same energy costs
Data costs are for retail operators, not the W/S price
Similar CPE costs (ok, they spend an extra €3 for the 100Mb modem)

Hugely different service costs. D6 will have one callout every 5 yrs-ish on average. Wicklow will have multiple per annum.


Right now callout charges are flat everywhere, but in reality a rural FST does one job maybe every 2hrs while an urban one can do two per hour if he's bothered, 6 if he's a sh1t sitting in the pub.



Add to that mix that the fast connections are competing with Virgin, slow ones have you captive.

Ultimanemo

But many guys who get fast speeds are few miles away from me

ED E wrote: »

Add to that mix that the fast connections are competing with Virgin, slow ones have you captive.

Nope
Sky will give you same speed much cheaper

I am on 4G now and it is much better.

Ultimanemo

I am Ok with 4G, but what eir doing is not fair

The high horse brigade

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Sky will give you same speed much cheaper

Yes they sell it as a loss and subsidise it bundling it with their very profitable TV package. Vodafone did the same for years, resold Eircom DSL bitstream at a fiver loss a month meanwhile adding flyers to the bill to tempt customers move mobile phone to them.

Marlow

The biggest cost to provide the broadband is staff .. salaries .. vans ... fuel.

That is what defines your base level price for the broadband.

Then you talk about people near you having 100 Mbit/s. These people more than likely live in a bigger cluster of houses. So it's feasable to bring fiber up there and distribute it between the houses (VDSL).

Once your house however is past the 2km mark of feasability (of cable run) and there isn't enough houses in the area or they are too far apart, then it becomes unviable to build another fiber cabinet in your area.

Due to the amount of maintenance your line requires over any given year, just to provide you with any odd service (basic service cost), the cost of providing you this is higher.

This has nothing to do with being fair or not. It's simple calculations of economics providing any service at all.

Fixed wireless providers have similar problems. The way their network is build is a bigger core network with micro-pops hanging of that. But the amount of sites and gear they need to archive that coverage means, that their base cost for providing the service in the first place is high.

So as an example: 30 EUR for 2 Mbit/s, 40 EUR for 20 Mbit/s, 50 EUR for 50 Mbit/s, 60 EUR for 100 Mbit/s.

30 EUR would be just about breaking even. Once you add from there, more bandwidth comes with very little increases.

And in your case with Eir, that the line is there isn't the factor. The line and the gear has to be maintained. And because of the line distance, older gear may have to be used, which is harder and more costly to come by. So in some cases less speed can end up at a higher price tag than more speed in more viable areas.

/M

TomOnBoard

Marlow wrote: »

Once your house however is past the 2km mark of feasability (of cable run) and there isn't enough houses in the area or they are too far apart, then it becomes unviable to build another fiber cabinet in your area.

There is also an element of strategic rollout of Fibre by Eir in the recent past that took 300,000 out of the original 750,000 households in the NBP. This means that you could well find that your next door neighbour is getting FTTH/FTTC as their house is closer to the cabinet than you are and Eir decided to stop rolling FTTH/FTTC beyond that point. Much of this was done (cynically some would say) to lower the potential economic benefit to other potential suppliers within the NBP, although there is no suggestion that it was illegal or anything like that. It simply means that Eir were able to shut out other operators from rolling out Broadband services to households under the NBP, thereby forcing those potential suppliers out of the NBP running.

Was that fair? From a national competition perspective, probably not. From the perspective of achieving successful NBP rollout, certainly not. However, it was entirely in line with law and regulation, so it was probably a very good commercial decision by Eir.

And that brings us back to the 1st Commandment that underpins Eir's (and most/all other providers) business model.

Marlow

TomOnBoard wrote: »

Was that fair? From a national competition perspective, probably not. From the perspective of achieving successful NBP rollout, certainly not. However, it was entirely in line with law and regulation, so it was probably a very good commercial decision by Eir.

And that brings us back to the 1st Commandment that underpins Eir's (and most/all other providers) business model.

Of course it isn't fair. It it may look like lunacy from a commercial perspective. But it isn't from a long term perspective.

The NBP is a 25 year guaranteed contract. OpenEIR would be stupid, if they let anyone barge in on their monopoly and snatch a 25 year contract from them that would mean, that they actually have to finance a lot of their roll-out themselves.

But yes: every provider has to be profitable at the end of the day. There is no way around that. Once they aren't profitable, they go bust. And then you have nothing.

How you archieve that is another story and varies very much from provider to provider. Fair means: that everyone gets paid their wages and cost is covered. And if that means, that somebody in the arse-end of nowhere has to pay more for his service, then that's what has to be done ..

When I hear the odd argument: "But why can I not have the same speed as people in the city ??", I tend to ask: "Do you pay the same rent or did you pay the same price for your house as somebody in the city ??".

Savings on one end are cancelled out by cost on the other end. Your house may have been cheaper to buy, but it's more costly and difficult to get services out to said house.

So yes .... it's fair.

/M

Johnboy1951

Marlow wrote: »

Of course it isn't fair. It it may look like lunacy from a commercial perspective. But it isn't from a long term perspective.

The NBP is a 25 year guaranteed contract. OpenEIR would be stupid, if they let anyone barge in on their monopoly and snatch a 25 year contract from them that would mean, that they actually have to finance a lot of their roll-out themselves.

But yes: every provider has to be profitable at the end of the day. There is no way around that. Once they aren't profitable, they go bust. And then you have nothing.

Yes there has to be commercial reality.

How you archieve that is another story and varies very much from provider to provider. Fair means: that everyone gets paid their wages and cost is covered. And if that means, that somebody in the arse-end of nowhere has to pay more for his service, then that's what has to be done ..

When I hear the odd argument: "But why can I not have the same speed as people in the city ??", I tend to ask: "Do you pay the same rent or did you pay the same price for your house as somebody in the city ??".

Savings on one end are cancelled out by cost on the other end. Your house may have been cheaper to buy, but it's more costly and difficult to get services out to said house.

So yes .... it's fair.

/M

Here we go with the same old BS arguments.
I thought that had been stopped a long time ago.
The price of houses has sweet damn all to do with it!

On that basis, people in Waterford, Limerick and Galway cities should also be paying more for their broadband than those in Dublin!

Maybe that could be turned around ......... those who buy houses in Dublin should pay more for broadband ....... after all if they can afford to buy a house in Dublin they can surely pay a bit more for their broadband!

Yeah! Right!

Marlow

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Here we go with the same old BS arguments.
I thought that had been stopped a long time ago.
The price of houses has sweet damn all to do with it!

On that basis, people in Waterford, Limerick and Galway cities should also be paying more for their broadband than those in Dublin!

Maybe that could be turned around ......... those who buy houses in Dublin should pay more for broadband ....... after all if they can afford to buy a house in Dublin they can surely pay a bit more for their broadband!

Yeah! Right!

No. You are taking it personally.

This is sometimes the only way to explain commercial reality to people. It's not supposed to be taken literally.

When you buy a house in the city,
- you have access to more frequent busses/trains/trams, because the volume to operate these is present
- you have access to gas directly brought into your house, because the houses are build dense to each other and it makes sense to do this
- you have access to shops, that are 24x7 open, all day long. Because they have a much larger turn-around and hence can afford to keep staff there 24x7

This is because of volume. And it also applies to broadband. In a dense community, a road-side cabinet is filled up quite quickly. So it makes sense to run the fiber further down the road and populate the next one. Shorter distances on the last mile means faster broadband. Shorter distance to the core means the same.

As you gradually move out into less populated areas, the infrastructure thins out. You now don't have for example oodles of fiber (like the T50 fiber around the M50) to backfeed your infrastructure. So there is less competition and your backhaul gets more costly. Also, the further the distance between the houses, the more cabling has to put in place and maintained as you move further out the country.

At the time you're in rural Ireland, that's a scarce commodity. The majority of mast-sites don't even have fiber. So now you're not even restricted on the amount of fiber, that are available, but also on the amount of bandwidth you have to site. It has to come in on microwave.

OpenEIR faces the same problems. Now, they have a massive network, sites, ducts etc., that they can build on. But do you know, how many rural exchanges still are on microwave opposed to copper and fiber for their backhaul ? Quite a few.

So yes, the further out you go, the more costly it is to provides services. The less margin is their for the providers.

It's not only infrastructure. It's also staff. Eircoms NOC for the broadband part of it consists of maybe 6 people. At least that was the case just a few years ago. Thats possible with their cabled infrastructure. There is actually not that much gear to maintain.

When they started rolling out FTTC, they entered a nightmare, that is normal for most fixed wireless operators: managed 100s of micro-pops. Opposed to a few central sites. In a city, that's ok, as the distance between them isn't too far between them.

But if something goes wrong in the countryside, you'll be on the road for hours fixing it. And you may look at a completely different scenario of access. That cost has to be calculated in.

Also here:
- Busses run maybe one or two times a day, because of the scarce population.
- Gas is brought to you in bottles or your on site tank is filled regularly (extra cost for the truck, the guy driving it and the time it takes)
- And your local shop may close at 8pm.

It's all down to volume and density. Hence why OpenEIRs 300k roll-out is lunacy. It's a massive investment. The reason they've done it is clear: make sure nobody else bothers their arse tendering, so that they're guaranteed to get the 25 year contract.

They've taken a big hit by doing it. And I guarantee you they will try to recoup that through the NBP.

/M

Ultimanemo

Hopefully NBP will never happen, and eir can hang their clothes on the wires they are putting up now

Marlow

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Hopefully NBP will never happen, and eir can hang their clothes on the wires they are putting up now

e-net is also still running for the NBP. Unfortunately, they're not an inch better than Eir in their workings.

/M

TomOnBoard

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Hopefully NBP will never happen, and eir can hang their clothes on the wires they are putting up now

If NBP doesn't happen what's going to be done to give all those in the remaining 450,000 households a chance of a usable broadband service? You may be one of the lucky ones who has a usable alternative to a land-based service in that you are getting good 4G, but I suspect the vast bulk of the remaining 450,000 are not within a 4G signal area.

The high horse brigade

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Hopefully NBP will never happen, and eir can hang their clothes on the wires they are putting up now

I'm alright Jack!!

Marlow

TomOnBoard wrote: »

If NBP doesn't happen what's going to be done to give all those in the remaining 450,000 households a chance of a usable broadband service? You may be one of the lucky ones who has a usable alternative to a land-based service in that you are getting good 4G, but I suspect the vast bulk of the remaining 450,000 are not within a 4G signal area.

This is exactly the thing. The NBP is there to accomodate the fact, that it's expensive to non-profitable to cover these areas. So it has to happen.

The only thing is, that OpenEir have taken a proactive attempt to ensure, that they're the only viable contender. Shrude, but calculating.

On the other hand, it also has a potential downside to them. IF ComReg should be turned around and regulation happens, they will need to adhere to this. Not much of a risk right now though.

/M

Ultimanemo

The high horse brigade wrote: »

I'm alright Jack!!

It is more like Samson in the temple