FTTH available, FTTC not?

HappyAsLarE

Hi,

I recently moved into a new build in county kildare.

Vodafone are telling me that they can only offer fibre to the home, and not the old style fibre to cabinet.

This means I am forced into a higher price offering, outside of my affordability.

Is it allowed from a regulatory perspective that "upgrades" force consumers to take the more expensive option?

What would you guys recommend?

Marlow

That will be more common.

OpenEir are not building any more copper plant to new houses.

So if the copper infrastructure was not in place in the first place, all you will get is FTTH.

As legality goes: openeir have the universal service obligation for phone services. How they supply it (wireless, copper, fibre) is not defined. So you do not have a right to a copper line. You have the right to a phone service. And that does not even cover broadband.

/M

tuxy

Edit: Nevermind, Marlow explained it better

HappyAsLarE

Marlow wrote: »

That will be more common.

OpenEir are not building any more copper plant to new houses.

So if the copper infrastructure was not in place in the first place, all you will get is FTTH.

As legality goes: openeir have the universal service obligation for phone services. How they supply it (wireless, copper, fibre) is not defined. So you do not have a right to a copper line. You have the right to a phone service. And that does not even cover broadband.

/M

Thank you.

I just opened up the Eir branded panel at the side of my house only to find no cables coming in from the duct! There are two CAT5es into the house alright.

The fibre comes in in a separate panel, unbranded. My guess is because Siro are allowed use that also?

tsue921i8wljb3

HappyAsLarE wrote: »

Thank you.

I just opened up the Eir branded panel at the side of my house only to find no cables coming in from the duct! There are two CAT5es into the house alright.

The fibre comes in in a separate panel, unbranded. My guess is because Siro are allowed use that also?

So it's SIRO Vodafone are offering you is it? That's likely because they make more money on SIRO than on FTTC through open eir. If you want FTTC why don't you try some of these other ISPs:

https://fibrerollout.ie/rollout-map/where-to-buy/

tuxy

Is digiweb really €35 a month 1000Mbps? I know the contract length is very long(2 years) but that's amazing value about the same price or even lower than crappy FTTC.

Marlow

tuxy wrote: »

Is digiweb really €35 a month 1000Mbps? I know the contract length is very long(2 years) but that's amazing value about the same price or even lower than crappy FTTC.

No.

59.95 for SIRO 1000 Mbit/s (excluding discounts): https://digiweb.ie/siro-powered-broadband/

74.95 for OpenEIR 1000 Mbit/s: https://digiweb.ie/ultrafast-ftth-broadband/

39.95 for FTTC/VDSL: https://digiweb.ie/superfast-broadband/

They don't make it too easy to find the actual pricing on their website.

/M

tsue921i8wljb3

tuxy wrote: »

Is digiweb really €35 a month 1000Mbps? I know the contract length is very long(2 years) but that's amazing value about the same price or even lower than crappy FTTC.

This one?

https://digiweb.ie/siro-powered-broadband/siro-exclusive-offer/

Check the old T&Cs at the bottom. (€64.95 after 12 months). Shady as ****.

Seem to be gone since October 31st anyway.

tuxy

That's disappointing, I've seen them use some misleading advertising in the past too.

So this is incorrect or has hidden terms?

https://digiweb.ie/siro-powered-broadband/siro-exclusive-offer/

I see it now:
*price after 12 months €64.95. 24 month contract & further terms apply. Offer ends 31st October 2019.

Yes shady as **** :mad:

Marlow

Serenity Shaggy Lace wrote: »

Seem to be gone since October 31st anyway.

That was the SIRO promotion. It ends for all SIRO partners by 31.12.2019 anyhow.

Most have stopped supplying it.

/M

tsue921i8wljb3

Their latest one is €10 per month for 1Gb/s (for 3 months) then €54.95 for 9 then €59.95!

https://digiweb.ie/siro-powered-broadband/

tuxy

So what options does the OP have if FTTH is out of budget, 4G mobile?

tsue921i8wljb3

tuxy wrote: »

So what options does the OP have if FTTH is out of budget, 4G mobile?

Get FTTC from another ISP. I believe Vodafone only refused him because they were trying to flog the more profitable product for them. It would be worth at least trying some of the others anyway.

Johnboy1951

Marlow wrote: »

No.

59.95 for SIRO 1000 Mbit/s (excluding discounts): https://digiweb.ie/siro-powered-broadband/

74.95 for OpenEIR 1000 Mbit/s: https://digiweb.ie/ultrafast-ftth-broadband/

39.95 for FTTC/VDSL: https://digiweb.ie/superfast-broadband/

They don't make it too easy to find the actual pricing on their website.

/M

What is the general view of the cause of the major difference in prices between Openeir and Siro?
For instance I was paying the same amount for 150Mb/s Openeir as I would for 1,000Mb/s Siro if it were available to me.

In addition there is a large divergence in connection price, and then switching cost.

Is there a good explanation for these differences?


Before the Siro roll out it was suggested by some that because of the necessity to use Electric poles and the health & safety measures that implied (particularly around qualified personnel) the Siro roll out would result is much higher prices.

Now it seems that the Siro product is much cheaper (not including special offers).

Marlow

SIROs wholesale pricing ... until the start of this year was based on OpenEIRs wholesale pricing .... prior to September 2016. That plus the fact, that they even discounted installations.

At the start of the year, SIRO increased the wholesale pricing marginally for 150 Mbit/s connections and lowered pricing for all other profiles.

OpenEIR increased the pricing for all of their FTTH products massively this year. Supposedly lowering the traffic charges due to a new algorithm to account them. But you don't have those traffic charges with SIRO in the first place (unless you use eNet or BT for the aggregated product).

So SIRO basically costs a lot less to the provider. So the provider can sell the packages more competitive. Providers that offer OpenEIR based packages make little to no margins. They often need to upsell with extras to make that up.

/M

Johnboy1951

That raises the very same question that I asked, except now forget about the resellers and the consumer price ...... there is a large difference in wholesale price ....

What is the general view of the cause of the major difference in prices between Openeir and Siro?

Marlow

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

That raises the very same question that I asked, except now forget about the resellers and the consumer price ...... there is a large difference in wholesale price ....

Wholsale pricing, traffic charges, infrastructure cost, etc.

Overall, depending on how smart a provider builds their infrastructure, an equivalent connection on SIRO could cost them half or less of what it costs on OpenEIR.

The reason for that is:
- that SIRO prices their network access competitively.
- OpenEIR wholesale pricing is is regulated through Comreg and is determined by the cost of running and maintaining the network.

/M

Johnboy1951

Marlow wrote: »

Wholsale pricing, traffic charges, infrastructure cost, etc.

Overall, depending on how smart a provider builds their infrastructure, an equivalent connection on SIRO could cost them half or less of what it costs on OpenEIR.

The reason for that is:
- that SIRO prices their network access competitively.
- OpenEIR wholesale pricing is is regulated through Comreg and is determined by the cost of running and maintaining the network.

/M

By that you are saying that either Siro is selling at below or close to cost, and Openeir are making a (considerable?) profit ......
or ....
the regulator is causing the Openeir price to be non-competitive.

It is difficult to decipher which of those three you mean.

Marlow

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

By that you are saying that either Siro is selling at below or close to cost, and Openeir are making a (considerable?) profit ......
or ....
the regulator is causing the Openeir price to be non-competitive.

It is difficult to decipher which of those three you mean.

- SIRO is pricing competitive to gain market share. I have no insight, if they're pricing at a loss, but they are very efficient, so I doubt it.
- OpenEIR is ran so inefficient, that the cost of running their network is causing them pricing themselves out of the market. And the regulated pricing is based on said cost to run and maintain the network.

Simples.

Hint: how many visits does it take to get an OpenEIR installation completed. And how often are there problems ? Then ask the same question for SIRO. And that's only one aspect of it.

/M

tsue921i8wljb3

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

By that you are saying that either Siro is selling at below or close to cost, and Openeir are making a (considerable?) profit ......
or ....
the regulator is causing the Openeir price to be non-competitive.

It is difficult to decipher which of those three you mean.

The companies are not really comparable. eir are an incumbent with the regulatory overheads that comes with that. Just look at any of the Comreg documents to see how much time and money that alone must take. They also have or had too many staff as can be seen by the recent redundancy scheme.

SIRO, on the other hand has no such regulatory obligations. It has been set up as a lean wholesale organisation with one particular purpose, to build a FTTH network in urban areas.

Johnboy1951

I thought Openeir was to be a separate entity, so should not be weighed down with overstaffing or other legacy costs.

I suppose Openeir could have been 'given' some to raise the wholesale price while a monopoly was effectively present, and that is coming back to bite now with Siro competing.

dam099

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I thought Openeir was to be a separate entity, so should not be weighed down with overstaffing or other legacy costs.

I suppose Openeir could have been 'given' some to raise the wholesale price while a monopoly was effectively present, and that is coming back to bite now with Siro competing.

I would have thought being the network operator, OpenEir is where most the legacy costs would legitimately reside. Eir Retail should (not saying they are) be more comparable to the numerous other retailers and have less of the legacy baggage. I would agree making it appear that costs sit with the wholesaler so they can be passed on to other retailers in the wholesale price does make more sense to Eir as combined entity.

Marlow

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I thought Openeir was to be a separate entity, so should not be weighed down with overstaffing or other legacy costs.

I suppose Openeir could have been 'given' some to raise the wholesale price while a monopoly was effectively present, and that is coming back to bite now with Siro competing.

One legacy cost is their database for their circuits. OpenEir only started using Eircodes with the rollout of the 300k in 2016. So the documenation of their network is rather poor previous to that. And their two databases go back to 1956 and 1972. They have never invested in actually getting them cleaned up.

SIRO has used Eircodes and GPS from day one.

Another cost is their legacy provisioning systems. It even hampers their flexibility. As operator, you have to manually escalate an order to customer care, if you want it done faster than 4 work days ahead. So now you have the cost of an employee manually changing an order. And even that often doesn't happen.

With SIRO you get a list of available appointments. If available, even one tomorrow.

If you change a connection with OpenEir ... or technical details .. it takes 24-48 hours before it is reflected in their systems.

With SIRO it takes typically 5-15 minutes.

/M

Johnboy1951

Marlow wrote: »

One legacy cost is their database for their circuits. OpenEir only started using Eircodes with the rollout of the 300k in 2016. So the documenation of their network is rather poor previous to that. And their two databases go back to 1956 and 1972. They have never invested in actually getting them cleaned up.

SIRO has used Eircodes and GPS from day one.

Another cost is their legacy provisioning systems. It even hampers their flexibility. As operator, you have to manually escalate an order to customer care, if you want it done faster than 4 work days ahead. So now you have the cost of an employee manually changing an order. And even that often doesn't happen.

With SIRO you get a list of available appointments. If available, even one tomorrow.

If you change a connection with OpenEir ... or technical details .. it takes 24-48 hours before it is reflected in their systems.

With SIRO it takes typically 5-15 minutes.

/M

What that describes is mismanagement.

So it appears the answer to my question is that Eir has loaded Openeir with legacy costs, and the results of mismanagement, and thus their costs are higher than Siro.

That, TBH, is believable.

Marlow

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

What that describes is mismanagement.

So it appears the answer to my question is that Eir has loaded Openeir with legacy costs, and the results of mismanagement, and thus their costs are higher than Siro.

That, TBH, is believable.

OpenEir is basically Eircom as it always was. Just without the sales division.

Renaming did not change anything behind the scenes.

/M

Varik

Brother ran into same issue, he didn't want new cable installed into rented place as he didn't want the hassle. Got it off Sky in the end.

tuxy

Varik wrote: »

Brother ran into same issue, he didn't want new cable installed into rented place as he didn't want the hassle. Got it off Sky in the end.

So did Sky do something or did he just wait until there was a port available and went with Sky?

Varik

tuxy wrote: »

So did Sky do something or did he just wait until there was a port available and went with Sky?

Got it off sky straight away.

tuxy

Varik wrote: »

Got it off sky straight away.

Strange, the other ISP that said there were no ports may have been working off a database that was out of date or something like that.

Marlow

tuxy wrote: »

Strange, the other ISP that said there were no ports may have been working off a database that was out of date or something like that.

Or a port became available just in due time between orders. Can happen.

/M

Varik

Marlow wrote: »

Or a port became available just in due time between orders. Can happen.

/M

Others wouldn't offer him anything else other than FTTH, maybe it was a lack of ports but it was never mentioned. He just called sky and ask them and got it.

He called them all right after each other, so unless sky took the order without any guarantee they could fulfil it.

Marlow

Varik wrote: »

Others wouldn't offer him anything else other than FTTH, maybe it was a lack of ports but it was never mentioned. He just called sky and ask them and got it.

He called them all right after each other, so unless sky took the order without any guarantee they could fulfil it.

VDSL data is a bit iffy. It is not ordered based on Eircode, but on OpenEIRs old premise system. Some premises can be identified by Eircode. A lot not.

So it's all down to how good the providers provisioning system is to match a line to a premise.

FTTH on the other is always allocated by Eircode.

Also .. other factors play in .. as what has been said before. Vodafone is trying to move all their VDSL customers to SIRO, where they can. And I don't think they want to sell VDSL anymore, where they have SIRO.

Sky on the other hand might not care.

/M