Eircom vs The Consumers Association on RTE Radio 1

De Rebel

Subtitled, McRedmond seeks to work his way into the knickers of Mná na hÉireann

David McRedmond of Eircom and Dermot Jewel of the Consumers Association appeared "head to head" on Ruth Buchanan’s new "NetNanny" show on this weeks RTE Radio 1 (Tuesday 11th Jan) at 7.00pm. The full show is available here and the relevant bit starts at 15.40. (take a chill pill before you go there people - the show is NOT intended for the uber-cognoscenti who inhabit boards.ie )

The "head to head" was refereed by the one and only Alex French who did his best but was an order of magnitude or two out of his league. In fairness his summing up was excellent: [paraphrase] Well David from eircom said that people who get broadband think its fantastic and it makes a big difference to the way they use the internet [/paraphrase] and [paraphrase] Dermot from the Consumers Association said that (1) there are still too many people in Ireland who cannot get broadband (2) the price is too high compared to other countries (3) people should shop around rather than simply going to eircom [/paraphrase]

Consumers Association (and the rest of us)…………. "dix point"
David McRedmond (And eircom)………………. "nul point"

Mc Redmond was his usual polished self – talking about “coverage” rather than availability and so on. However he did make a few significant slips, saying, and I quote

broadband is high speed connection to the internet 50 times faster than dial-up internet which is what most people will have used before

our customers who have taken up broadband say it is great value, they perceive the value that it gives them

we have set very demanding targets for broadband take-up in Ireland

already 80% of the country, or by the end of March, 80% of the country will be covered

that word again…..

within those areas 8 or 9 out of 10 people will be able to get broadband

The Forfás report was out of date and we all know that

Dermot Jewel’s comments were a little more measured, and a lot more factual

There seems to be a suggestion that the Irish consumer is getting the best value in the EU, they are not, not by a long shot. The fact that there is a 2 month, it was 3 month but now it is 2 month offer of a free trial is just to try to entice them into a service that is failing quite a lot of people. That’s the reality of it.

I’m not talking down broadband, I’m talking about eircom and lack of ability to deliver a quality service for an affordable rate

And then of course there was McRedmond, the thinking woman’s Maurice Pratt, striving to make his way into the hearts of Mná na hÉireann

what we see with people who have broadband is the PC moves from a back room or a bedroom down into the kitchen where people can leave it on all day and check whether they have got e-mails without having to dial in each time

[Hint1]A full transcript would be great, so it would[/Hint1]
[Hint2]A rip of the relevent section would be great, so it would[/Hint2]

cgarvey

De Rebel wrote:

[Hint2]A rip of the relevent section would be great, so it would[/Hint2]

I've put a 16k (1.2MB ish) and an 8k (600K ish) rip on the IoffL website