New Packages, Exactly When?

mickger

Has anyone got confirmation from IOL/Eircom/UTV when they will be releasing details of the new packages? Is it tomorrow?

Gonzo

I heard that esat may announce something on wednesday but theres been no rumours for eircom or utv yet but one would assume that if esat/iol are upgrading then eircom and utv would also follow.

dlofnep

I read somewhere that it would be announced on the 11th - That would be this friday.. Not 100% sure. That was for Esat, I'm assuming like previously stated that Eircom & UTV will following.

dlofnep

Yeah.. Esat's trial offer ends on the 11th and Eircom's offer ends on the 31st. It's fair to say that these are the dates that each respective company will announce their new products (which we are assuming is a 1024/256 product).

UTV's trial offer ends the 8th of March (tomorrow), so they also could be announcing a new product tomorrow. I can't be 100% about this but it's a reasonable guess.

thebigdude

Be patient... very, VERY patient when it comes to broadband announcements in this country.

And most important of all, prepare youself for disappointment. Note that Esat and UTV still HAVE NOT unbundled lines to an extent to allow a different service from eircon at the moment... and you can be damned sure that eircon, with a CEO who thinks "people are more than happy with 512kbps", won't challenge Smart's offer... quite the opposite, they will retaliate with the only weapon they have in their arsenal, one that they have used time and time again... that weapon is... PRICE HIKES . It sounds ridiculous but people apparently seem willing to go with inferior products that cost more for some reason... someone should do a study to see why exactly...

Anyway, i doubt anyone will make any announcements in the next 2 weeks, so don't bother checking every 5 mins.

Just my own 2 cents...

Infini

But wouldn't price hikes backfire on them? Besides if Smart start posing a serious threat to them then they might finally start offering a decent package.

dlofnep

thebigdude wrote:

Be patient... very, VERY patient when it comes to broadband announcements in this country.

And most important of all, prepare youself for disappointment. Note that Esat and UTV still HAVE NOT unbundled lines to an extent to allow a different service from eircon at the moment... and you can be damned sure that eircon, with a CEO who thinks "people are more than happy with 512kbps", won't challenge Smart's offer... quite the opposite, they will retaliate with the only weapon they have in their arsenal, one that they have used time and time again... that weapon is... PRICE HIKES . It sounds ridiculous but people apparently seem willing to go with inferior products that cost more for some reason... someone should do a study to see why exactly...

Anyway, i doubt anyone will make any announcements in the next 2 weeks, so don't bother checking every 5 mins.

Just my own 2 cents...

Esat have already said that they are announcing a new product on the 11th. I've a very strong feeling that the tri-guys will all have announced their release of a 1024/256 product by the end of this month..

dlofnep

Infini wrote:

But wouldn't price hikes backfire on them? Besides if Smart start posing a serious threat to them then they might finally start offering a decent package.

They aren't going to add any price hikes.. They will be lowering prices and increasing bandwidth or keeping the same prices and increasing bandwidth.. Anything else doesn't look reasonable.

Gonzo

there wont be price hikes, more than likely they will keep the prices the same and increase the caps and perhaps the speed, ive a feeling that eircom will go for an upgrade to 16gig and iol/utv to go for 30gig. If theres gonna be a speed increase, it may only effect those on the more expensive packages like homeplus, we'll see what happens.

dlofnep

Gonzo wrote:

there wont be price hikes, more than likely they will keep the prices the same and increase the caps and perhaps the speed, ive a feeling that eircom will go for an upgrade to 16gig and iol/utv to go for 30gig. If theres gonna be a speed increase, it may only effect those on the more expensive packages like homeplus, we'll see what happens.

Yup, that sounds like the most realistic offer.

WizZard

Let's hope that's the offer.
It's not what we want, but what we've come to expect...

Chalk

uggghh thats not good for me

if esat go to 30 and eircom only do 16 id be gutted.
/me wonders how long he has left in his trial

PowerHouseDan

Will the likes of Wireless Broadband ie Irishbroadband, have offers too to keep up with the other telecommunication companys

thebigdude

dlofnep wrote:

Yup, that sounds like the most realistic offer.

You would think....

But then, one should ask, why should people be contempt with 1024/256 with caps for 50 euro/month when they could get 2048/128 for 11 euro/month with no caps? I know Smart isn't available everywhere yet, but it still applies here as Esat and UTV have been offering a package which is superior to eircon + is cheaper, yet people are still subscribing to eircon.

It's the mentality of these people that are pushing this country back when it comes to broadband. Maybe there's some truth about what eircon are saying... no one else outside these boards seems to care whether there's a faster+cheaper product out there... that's why the market is non-competitive...

If Garfield from Smart is reading this, here's a tip: The only way for Smart to really get those 100,000 connections is to offer a PRUDUCT to take advantage of the 2mbps connection. How about launching TV over DSL sometime this year? How about Video-on-Demand movies and sports? That would get people's attention....and eircon and the others will have to follow suit to compete.

Come on, we all know the only reason we need more bandwidth is to download videos... please don't say games as 512kbps is enough to download the odd game now and then...

Creamy Goodness

dan i wouldn't think IBB will lower their prices, the reason being they'll say well you're getting a 1024/1024 line so that's worth the 48 euros, so the believe.

anyways back on topic, i believe until eircom make an annoucement the others will keep their mouths closed.

dlofnep

thebigdude wrote:

You would think....

But then, one should ask, why should people be contempt with 1024/256 with caps for 50 euro/month when they could get 2048/128 for 11 euro/month with no caps? I know Smart isn't available everywhere yet, but it still applies here as Esat and UTV have been offering a package which is superior to eircon + is cheaper, yet people are still subscribing to eircon.

It's the mentality of these people that are pushing this country back when it comes to broadband. Maybe there's some truth about what eircon are saying... no one else outside these boards seems to care whether there's a faster+cheaper product out there... that's why the market is non-competitive...

People will be contempt because the majority of the public doesn't know any better. Smart's product is 35 euro a month. The free line rental has nothing to do with the actual price of the broadband product - It is just an incentive (a great one at that). An incentive like free trials.. Smart's just happens to be better.

However.. Smart isn't readily available and won't have the coverage of Eircom which is Eircom will continue to run their monopoly. Esat & UTV fall because of their poor marketing campaigns.. That is why Eircom set's the standards.. Not because they are reselling bitstream products to esat & utv.. If current clients of Eircom could see that Esat & UTV were respectively more bang for the buck products then Eircom would actually put together better services in order to compete.. They rarely have to compete however because of the mainstream market they run.

I'm all about Smart.. My order is processed. The sooner I get rid of Eircom altogether the better. It's a horrible company with horrible customer service.

halenger

thebigdude wrote:

I know Smart isn't available everywhere yet

Of course you meant to say it isn't available anywhere yet - with business rumours/chatter saying it's months away, not the week or two they've been spewing.

I thought the IOL announcement was due Wednesday? That's what I've thought people said elsewhere.

I guess we'll see. *sighs* I should be more prepared to be disappointed I do suppose.

SkepticOne

dlofnep wrote:

The free line rental has nothing to do with the actual price of the broadband product - It is just an incentive (a great one at that). An incentive like free trials.. Smart's just happens to be better.

What they are offering is combined line rental and broadband for 35 euros on a permanent basis for those who sign up early. The combined line rental + broadband with UTV is 54 euros. It would seem to be significantly better than any of the nearest offers.

Anyway on the subject on the new offers. I think Esat may bring out a better product from its LLU enabled exchanges. This may beat Smarts in terms of speed. If they do, then the product, like Smart's wont be available to all DSL since Esat are only in 25 exchanges.

If they were going to do it via Eircom's bitstream there should have been some notice on Eircom's wholesale website by now. Previously, when changes in the bitstream service have occurred, Eircom have taken the opportunity of announcing retail services straight away. Only later do the resellers put together their packages.

dlofnep

Esat plan on doing this?

CyberGhost

Chalk wrote:

uggghh thats not good for me

if esat go to 30 and eircom only do 16 id be gutted.

16gb will be very dissapointing, I'd prefer the same speeds but bigger caps

and like everyone said, prepare to be dissapointed

Gonzo

SkepticOne wrote:

What they are offering is combined line rental and broadband for 35 euros on a permanent basis for those who sign up early. The combined line rental + broadband with UTV is 54 euros. It would seem to be significantly better than any of the nearest offers.

Anyway on the subject on the new offers. I think Esat may bring out a better product from its LLU enabled exchanges. This may beat Smarts in terms of speed. If they do, then the product, like Smart's wont be available to all DSL since Esat are only in 25 exchanges.

If they were going to do it via Eircom's bitstream there should have been some notice on Eircom's wholesale website by now. Previously, when changes in the bitstream service have occurred, Eircom have taken the opportunity of announcing retail services straight away. Only later do the resellers put together their packages.

if that turns out to be the case then this will be truly gutting, only a handfull of esatbt business customers would benefit from an upgrade and the majority of people on eircom/iol/utv be left with no upgrade in sight at all, it is a bit worrying that there has been no announcement from eircom at all unless all 3 companys plan to do it tomorrow

vishal

what exchanges have been unbundled by esat?

Gonzo

its fairly limited to 40 exchanges nationwide, most of them in dublin and cork and some towns onit are Tullamore, Athlone, Galway, Navan, Drogheda, Greystones, Gorey, Wexford, Waterford and Limerick.

Stalfos

Could eircom/esat/utv make people pay more for their broadband if they choose?

I heard the last upgrade eircom did, people were up on a higher price.

PiE

Not without signing/agreeing to a new contract.

The last upgrade, every ISP dropped their prices but offered a "better" service for the old prices, if people wanted to choose the cheaper, "lesser" service they had to request it. Otherwise they were left on the more expensive options.

Giblet

I think they might introduce a new residential product, but at a higher price bracket. 65 a month or something equally as silly.

Infini

vishal wrote:

what exchanges have been unbundled by esat?

Here's a list of them...
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=142107

SkepticOne

dlofnep wrote:

Esat plan on doing this?

I don't know. I'm inclined to think that they will do something with their 40 (I incorrectly said 25 earlier) exchanges rather than bitstream since the usual pattern if for Eircom to make the big announcement on bitstream then, after a bit of muttering, the other companies follow suit.

Esat being innovative would be surprising to say the least but using their already enabled exchanges is an option open to them.

I would also expect some announcement from Eircom. They may push up the speed of the middle package (the 55 euro one) to 1 meg. On the previous two occasions that they have announced changes they made sure that they stole the limelight. They could do this without any extra cost to themselves. A 1 meg 48:1 service is exactly the same as a 512k 24:1 one in terms of operating costs and bandwidth.

All this assumes that there's some truth to the email sent to someone here that that Esat plan some announcement on the 9th. If not a lie, it could just be a mistake on the part of the sender within Esat.

diarmo

I'll be a rebel and say that if EsatBT/iol don't do something dramatic and bring us up to whats on offer in the

UK@1048/256 nevermind France@20480/1024

....bliss....I'll quit their service before their trial runs out and just live in ignorance until Smart Broadband or something resembling real broadband(higher speed/no cap) comes to town!!!

Xcellor

diarmo wrote:

I'll be a rebel and say that if EsatBT/iol don't do something dramatic and bring us up to whats on offer in the

UK@1048/256 nevermind France@20480/1024

....bliss....I'll quit their service before their trial runs out and just live in ignorance until Smart Broadband or something resembling real broadband(higher speed/no cap) comes to town!!!

Ah ... so you plan to live in ignorance for a very long time............

X

causal

He can be a "Rebel Without a Yell"


causal

CyberGhost

ok tomorrow there should be some news, iol said 9th so hopefully we'll hear something

diarmo

Or else move back to Scotland where Telewest have recently upgraded their Cable broadband to 1024/128 for 25Sterling(€35 at 1.4 conversion)...and thats their middle range product...with 2MB(35Sterling) and 4MB(50Sterling).

I realise that that there is a big difference between DSL and Cable but the largest provider of DSL in Ireland has a premium residental DSL service of 512/128 and 8GB cap which is nice and fine as long as they would allow their lines to be unbundled and allow others to offer better services but they dont and in my view that will drag Ireland a way down in the international BroadBand stakes(as if we werent already low enough)!!!

Services such as ADSL+2 and VDSL(incredible) are only just around the corner.....
Isn't it nice that Ireland has a shocking broadband service in comparison to some states of the EU which were under Soviet domination 16 years ago!!!!!

BTW
BT...EsatBT's parent company have recently doubled their service to give 2MB with 15GB cap at about €40 a month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lex_Diamonds

Easy on the exclamation marks there buddy, 2meg is considered passé by 90% of other countries. Granted, it would be nice to have it here, but some perspective would do you good.

Willymuncher

CyberGhost wrote:

ok tomorrow there should be some news, iol said 9th so hopefully we'll hear something

I sure hope so, an increase in the cap would be nice....i'm remaining doubtful about a speed increase, i hope theres a nice surprise in store tomorrow

Infini

Maybe they might actually offer a REAL broadband package for a change! :rolleyes:

diarmo

Nothing interesting will happentomorrow in my opinion.

marco murphy

No chance eircom would decide NO caps?(pretty obvious)

CyberGhost

Willymuncher wrote:

I sure hope so, an increase in the cap would be nice....i'm remaining doubtful about a speed increase, i hope theres a nice surprise in store tomorrow

I don't care about the speed to be honest, just as long as they increase the cap, well both increased would be the best but, I don't know, I stopped believing in santa long time ago

Infini wrote:

Maybe they might actually offer a REAL broadband package for a change! :rolleyes:

Awesome sig dude!

lol, I thought your nick was made up from fiename extensitons you know... *.inf and *.ini = infini, and meaning something like infinite information lol

when I looked at your sig, I realized it was from the Breath of Fire

Infini

I'd be suprised if they came out and announced speeds similar to smart but at best they'd probably offer just half of that and at worse they'd probably give a load of bull about how long it'll take. Pity NTL ain't increasing their speeds by the look of it, I really wanted that 3mb line... *sniff*.

CyberGhost wrote:

Awesome sig dude!

lol, I thought your nick was made up from fiename extensitons you know... *.inf and *.ini = infini, and meaning something like infinite information lol

when I looked at your sig, I realized it was from the Breath of Fire

Thanks.

Valentia

Where did this notion that any provider was going to offer increased bandwidth come from? Some head posted, and others believed. I hope I'm wrong, but where is the evidence?

Speculation is that silly word jumping to mind!!

CyberGhost

ok it's 9th now, and there is absolutely no mentioning of any upgrades

Gonzo

the more i think of it, its just a rumour that most people including myself believed, today could just pass as normal with no mention of upgrades, i hope im wrong tho.

machalla

I think it may have come from somone mentioning they talked to ESATBT about what they might be offering to compete with Smart and they were told that on the 9th March ESATBT would be "offering the best offering in the BB market in the country".

Its on a post somewhere around here. I think it was in the Smart Employee thread.

Sponge Bob

Twas ESAT must take the blame for telling people the 9th. It could be that the brand new rules on Comreg now pre-approving the packages that Eircom resell are causing a delay in the announcement.

Comreg must give a decision by June .

CyberGhost

actually I just remembered that they said 11th, they said 9th is the day trial was ending, I mixed up the dates, sorry!

tammy

I got in touch with esat and this is what they said thats of interest (the rest was just slating smart).

What I can advise you is the following.

On March 9th we are announcing a new Broadband offering to our customers.

It will be the best Braodband offering in the Irish market.

Stalfos

What's going on
9th, 11th which one is it

If they say they'll be annoucing today, they'd better

halenger

You can see for yourself there Stalfos that it said the 9th.

For all we know it was an Esat person just trying to buy more time with lies. I really have no idea.

These announcements were usually made by Eircom in the past, weren't they? I've no idea how it typically goes but I thought that's what was said.

machalla

We better get the brute squad organised in case they don't then, eh?

causal

Well I couldn't take the suspense anymore.
When your ping times are bigger than your download rate it's just not good enough ...but I found a solution ...
I modified* the Firefox sourcecode so that the download rate it outputs to screen is double the actual download rate
It feels great - things are so much faster now :cool:

causal

*completely false