Live areas from Smart

cman

What areas have gone live from Smart so far?

dub45

cman wrote:

What areas have gone live from Smart so far?

I think Garfield himself is the only one who has reported in so far as being 'live' on Smart. But he did say it was great and definitely no contention problems so far!

thebigdude

dub45 wrote:

I think Garfield himself is the only one who has reported in so far as being 'live' on Smart. But he did say it was great and definitely no contention problems so far!

I'll wait for you to correct that....

(HINT: he is the only one using it...)

asharkman

so what area's have gone live?

cavanman

Was contacted by Smart on Friday to say that Dolphins Barn exchange was ready. Small hitch in that I will have to change my phone number to get connected because of some problem with eircom. Am going to cancel my eircom broadband on Tuesday and get the Smart broadband installed.

Sponge Bob

Hmm, it seems no ENFORCEABLE number portability agreement exists which means you will have to be allocated a new number by Smart themselves.

They only have a few ranges allocated to them at present.

01 4850000 4850999 Dublin Central
01 6580000 6589999 Dublin Central
01 5078000 5078999 Dublin South
01 5077000 5077999 Dublin South

As the eircom number is not porting you should really ring eircom to make sure they won't keep billing you for it

cavanman

Apparently there is a court case pending in April against eircom for failing to fully implement a Comreg directive for LLU. According to the agent, this will most likely result in delays until Autumn for people wishing to retain their existing number and avail of the Smart DSL service. As a workaround Smart are offering customers who wish to avail of the service before then a new number.

Sponge Bob

AUTUMN :eek: , no wonder Garfield is hiding out rather than answer my outstanding Telephony questions

Lex_Diamonds

Change number? Ha, ha, no ****ing chance.

cman

what areas are after dolphins barn

digitaldr

cavanman wrote:

Apparently there is a court case pending in April against eircom for failing to fully implement a Comreg directive for LLU. According to the agent, this will most likely result in delays until Autumn for people wishing to retain their existing number and avail of the Smart DSL service. As a workaround Smart are offering customers who wish to avail of the service before then a new number.

Jesus this is worrying. I've told digiweb to cancel my dsl on may 11th as I thought this would give smart plenty of time to sort themselves out (my exchange was supposed to go live in march/april). Is there any guarantee they'll win the court case?
I might try a free trial in the meantime - how long does it take to get connected and what's agood one? Thanks

cman

don't change the topic digitaldr i want dis one on smart

GarfieldConnoll

cman wrote:

What areas have gone live from Smart so far?

The exchanges that are ready to accept customers are:

Dolphin's Barn
Summerhill
Ship St.

Progress is going well on most of the other exchanges, but either eircom haven't fully handed the site over, we haven't installed the equipment, or the civils aren't complete, or a combination of these.

Dub45 is right, no contention issues so far.

Garfield.

TimTim

Roll out the Ballyboden exchange and I'll die a happy man.

...After I see how amazing 2Mb Broadband is.

eth0_

You *have* to change your phone number? Jeez Eircom are low lifes.

cman

thanks for the list garfield but what do you mean by no contetion issues so far

machalla

How soon will people who applied for Smart BB on the live exchanges be contacted? I'm eager to get it installed (I'm on on Dolphins Bar exchange).

iano

Garfield,
Can you confirm that the only customers that you can connect at present:
1) Do not have Bitstream-based broadband (or have completely cancelled it in advance)
and
2) Are prepared to change their telephone number?

Is it true that this will remain the case until the legal and regulatory issues are sorted and that this could take months?

DEmeant0r

Garfield,
Any idea when the Galway City exchange will be live?

Sponge Bob

iano wrote:

Garfield,
Can you confirm that the only customers that you can connect at present:
....

2) Are prepared to change their telephone number?

Is it true that this will remain the case until the legal and regulatory issues are sorted and that this could take months?

There is another way.

1. You LLU to Smart and get a new number. Thats €35 a month to Smart
2. You forward the existing number from the eircom exchange to the smart number . Thats €24.20 a month to Eircom for the forward.
3. You pay local call rate for every call that comes to Eircom and is forwarded to Smart, assume €5 a month of calls and you have to keep telling the callers your new number if you want the calls to stop . Ths may only take a short while.
4. You ensure your old number goes ex-directory if you wish to switch to Smart fully but REMEMBER that Smart numbers cannot be ported from Smart to another carrer whle Ericom numbers can .

Thats €65 a month or so in total .

In 6 months or so (the Autumn) you port the number to Smart finally, Smart will have to agree to allow you to use both numbers for the forseeables as some people wll have your new number only .

Its not a problem as long as Smart gve you 2 numbers coming into the line and by paying Eircom ther €24.20 a month your number is kept 'alive' and portableiseable until the eircom legal kak dies down.

NocturnalDonkey

thebigdude wrote:

I'll wait for you to correct that....

(HINT: he is the only one using it...)

Talk about being slow....

ando

Lex_Diamonds wrote:

Change number? Ha, ha, no ****ing chance.

ditto

lomb

ando wrote:

ditto

well smart arent really going to have any new customers until number portibility is sorted. all those people who signed up arent going to transfer if a new number is required unless they are young/skint and havent lived in the house for long

WillieFlynn

If everyone effected by Eircom not porting numbers to smart. Were to ring Eircom every day, they would eventually give in, as the number of calls would be costing them so much to answer. I think their 1901 number is free Maybe ringing Comreg as well would do no harm

My cousin used this tatic to get his phone line replaced (for free) so that he could get broadband, he called them twice a day for two weeks or so, They gave up and would have done nearly anything just to get rid of him.

Willie.

lomb

WillieFlynn wrote:

If everyone effected by Eircom not porting numbers to smart. Were to ring Eircom every day, they would eventually give in, as the number of calls would be costing them so much to answer. I think their 1901 number is free Maybe ringing Comreg as well would do no harm

My cousin used this tatic to get his phone line replaced (for free) so that he could get broadband, he called them twice a day for two weeks or so, They gave up and would have done nearly anything just to get rid of him.

Willie.

thing is eircom 'own' their numbers so they shouldnt have to port anything if they dont want to.

Moriarty

lomb, you don't know what you're talking about. If you don't know what you're talking about, please don't post.

Fairly simple, isn't it?

Boston

Well isn't this pretty poor. I'm on the summerhill excahnge and the boyo's are coming next week to install smart broadband. I guess it's a good thing I didn't cancel UTV like smart wanted me to.

dub45

Boston wrote:

Well isn't this pretty poor. I'm on the summerhill excahnge and the boyo's are coming next week to install smart broadband. I guess it's a good thing I didn't cancel UTV like smart wanted me to.

Any chance of tellling us a bit more about this? What contact have you had with Smart?

Boston

Pretty poor contact tbh, they have been unable to answer allot of my questions about how the whole utv transition will be handled. I've a preliminary date for sometime next week, with a likelyhood a definite date for instal the week after.

dub45

Boston wrote:

Pretty poor contact tbh, they have been unable to answer allot of my questions about how the whole utv transition will be handled. I've a preliminary date for sometime next week, with a likelyhood a definite date for instal the week after.

Thanks for the info and sorry if I seem to be interrogating you:) but this is the sort of thing I was concerned about from the start (without the complications of the legal stuff even!) I presume that you have not yet cancelled your Clicksilver account?
Presuming that you havent its hard to believe that UTV will waive the notice period.

And when you say they are ''coming next week'' I presume you mean they are visiting you? If so have they told you why this is necessary? I would have thought that most boards users would be well able to do the 'install' themselves.

Boston

TBH I've no idea what they mean by coming next week. They are fairly flakey. I haven't canceled my utv account either

ando

Boston wrote:

TBH I've no idea what they mean by coming next week. They are fairly flakey.

sounds a bit hit and miss to me. I can see people being left dangling with no broadband for weeks

bk

lomb wrote:

thing is eircom 'own' their numbers so they shouldnt have to port anything if they dont want to.

No, Eircom don't 'own' their numbers. ComReg 'own' all numbers and allocate number ranges to Eircom, Smart etc. There is no reason why Comreg can't enforce number portability, they already do it for mobile numbers.

WillieFlynn

Here is the reply I received from smart telecom to my questions on number porting and getting their services if a bitstream product currently enabled on the line.

Willie,

Dear William,

Thank you for your Broadband enquiry.

You will have to cancel your existing broadband service prior to receiving
Smart Broadband.

We are currently installing our equipment in the Dolphins Barn exchange and
we will be ready to go live by the end of April.

You can keep your number but you may be aware that Smart Telecom are locked
in a legal battle at present with Eircom.Basically Eircom will not transfer
customers existing phone numbers to Smart Broadband.
Comreg are taking Eircom to the High Court on the 13th April and we await
the outcome.

To halt any delay with our installation of Smart Broadband we can issue our
customers with a new number.This allows us to keep to our commitment of
providing Smart Broadband to the Dolphins Barn exchange by the end of April.

You can of course wait, if keeping your existing number is important to you.
We cannot at present give you an installation date for your Smart
Broadband,pending the result of the Court case.
We expect that it could be late summer. Of course if you register
successfully you will avail of the free line offer. This will apply either
way.

If you have any further queries please contact me.


Kind Regards,

Ciaran Sloan
Smart Broadband Representative

Sponge Bob

WillieFlynn wrote:

You can of course wait, if keeping your existing number is important to you.
We cannot at present give you an installation date for your Smart
Broadband,pending the result of the Court case.
We expect that it could be late summer. Of course if you register
successfully you will avail of the free line offer. This will apply either
way.

A dreadful response , first mentioning a court case on april 13th and then saying that the result will take until late summer . This is a sure sign that the Call Centre management spend all their time in meetings and never do anything customer facing and it bodes ill for Smart in the long run

You can leave Eircom, keep your own number while the 'issues' are sorted and take the new smart number for €64 a month as I explained earlier in this thread .

Entry level Eircom BB (1MB) on top of the fraudulently excessive lire rental from Eircom will cost you €64 a month so you are still better off going to Smart and doubling your bandwidth for less money and getting better contention and no cap .

If you can let your Eircom number go it will only cost €35 a month like the ad sez

Except there IS one small problem, how much do Smart intend to charge for their Voicemail , is it €5 a month or €10 a month ????

seamus

Good figures Muck.

I think Smart have to be transparent and upfront about why and how though. If people asked, "Well why can't I keep my number?", answering "Well, there are technical and paperwork issues at present that we hope to resolve by the summer" leaves the customer feeling like Smart are a bunch of cowboys. The fact of the matter is that it's completely out of Smart's hands, and I don't see why they should cover up or tiptoe around the actual cause.
Using your suggestion when people ask would be a good idea though.

By mention the court case and the "It's eirciom's fault" line, they also piggyback on existing mistrust of eircom, and instantly get the potential customer onside as just another pawn oppressed and abused by eircom.

Sponge Bob

seamus wrote:

By mention the court case and the "It's eirciom's fault" line, they also piggyback on existing mistrust of eircom, and instantly get the potential customer onside as just another pawn oppressed and abused by eircom.

Its a cack response and they are obviously hiding other unpalatable details of their LLU telephony product as well . Otherwise Garfield would have answered the questions I set him in Feb (and since) would he not .....and don't even think of saying you'll get back to me Garfield ?

dub45

WillieFlynn wrote:

Here is the reply I received from smart telecom to my questions on number porting and getting their services if a bitstream product currently enabled on the line.

Willie,

Dear William,

Thank you for your Broadband enquiry.

You will have to cancel your existing broadband service prior to receiving
Smart Broadband...................


If you have any further queries please contact me.


Kind Regards,

Ciaran Sloan
Smart Broadband Representative

Ciaran forgot to mention the 10 days downtime which has been quoted by another Smart csr and has been posted here.

dub45

Boston wrote:

TBH I've no idea what they mean by coming next week. They are fairly flakey. I haven't canceled my utv account either

Fairly flakey? In view of the post from Willie Flynn above which quotes Smart saying your existing contract has to be cancelled and the down time of 10 days quoted by Smart it would seem that you have not got the faintest hope of getting bb from Smart anytime soon?

WillieFlynn

The reason why you have to cancel your existing internet connection before moving to smart must be down to Eircom business decision to fustrate smart. As I can see no technical reason for it because the LLU involves physicaly moving jumper cables, once they pull the plug and reconnect it to smart's equipment, they will have disconnected your existing internet connection. The contract and payment stuff is another issue, which smart have said is up to you to sort out.

The number portablity issue, is a more technical issue and it is possible to see why it would take time to implement from when they decide (or are forced) to. But Eircom is doing what the mobile operators did a while back, where they held out untill the last minute when comreg forced them to implement full number portablity.

All in all, smart have been caught in a difficult position where they have committed themselves to roll out the product and Eircom are doing anything they can to delay them and fustrate compitition. I think Eircom playing silly buggers and it is a delibrate attempt to undermine a compeditor. We must also rember that smart is paying Eircom to colocate their equipment in the exchanges and are rewarded by blatent attempts to stop them using it.

I feel it will only backfire on Eircom in the long run as it will lead to solutions being imposed on them rather than being able to shape the policies to their liking. This is appart from creating even more ill fieeling against them, which will not help in winning back customers in the long run.

The email I posted from smart, who were replying quickly to a series of questions I sent them. Was an honest attempt by one of their employies to address my concerns (with the expected bias towards smart of course but then all companies would do the same). This was better than ringing their customer support lines as they didn't know the answers (one told me he didn't know and gave me a diffent number to try and the other tried to bluff). It would have been nice if smart were more fortcomming with the information than having to ask them the correct questions to find out.

However Eircom have not even responded to a complaint I sent them last week on a different issue within the timeframes given in their complaints procedure listed on their website.

One of the reasons for me thinking of changing to smart is I have heard that give a good service in the business market.

I still think that if every potential smart customer were to ring Eircom about number porting and the bitstream issure, they would sort it out quickly as it would swamp their call centers.

Willei.

dub45

WillieFlynn wrote:

The reason why you have to cancel your existing internet connection before moving to smart must be down to Eircom ..................
I still think that if every potential smart customer were to ring Eircom about number porting and the bitstream issure, they would sort it out quickly as it would swamp their call centers.

Willei.

It is easy to forget that boards users are not typical of internet users generally who dont have a clue about number porting etc etc and unfortunately they are not going to swamp call centres about something that they have not got the foggiest about. I suspect they will blame Smart especially when they start hearing they will have to change their number if they want to go with Smart.

While obviously Eircom are going to do their best to frustrate a competitor a lot of this stuff - even the basic transfer - does not seem to have been anticipated by Smart at all prior to their launch and surely it should have been?

Sponge Bob

I'd email the boss , phil.nolan@eircom.ie

WillieFlynn

I have just been reading the investor relations section of Eircoms website:
http://investorrelations.eircom.net/about/index.htm

and one of the services they offer is
"geographic and non-geographic number portability, which allows customers to keep their telephone numbers regardless of the authorised operator they choose"

dub45

WillieFlynn wrote:

I have just been reading the investor relations section of Eircoms website:
http://investorrelations.eircom.net/about/index.htm

and one of the services they offer is
"geographic and non-geographic number portability, which allows customers to keep their telephone numbers regardless of the authorised operator they choose"

I wonder what the definition of 'authorised operator' is?

What about existing customers of Smart? What happened to their nos when they transferred?

dub45

Sponge Bob wrote:

I'd email the boss , phil.nolan@eircom.ie

Being totallly realistic do you really think that 'Phil' or anyone in his postion is going to be bothered unduly by an email saying ''I wish to protest strongly that you are not facilitating one of your competitors who wishes to take customers from you.''

machalla

You have squarely hit the nail on the head there dub45.

In other news well we got a call from smart yesterday (an email actually since they tried to call on landline and no-one was there).

They will be shipping a dsl-modem to us on monday apparently and we should (with luck) expect to be on their BB system in the next 11 days. We will have to change phone-number but thats not a bother. Also they are giving us €20 call credit due to having to shift phone-number which is better than a kick in the teeth.

This would be for the Dolphins Barn exchange.

So heres hoping theres no new problems.

toil

hey machalla,
when were you asked about changing number?
As in, did they ask you about this when they called you regarding installation?

Cheers,
toil

dub45

machalla wrote:

You have squarely hit the nail on the head there dub45.

In other news well we got a call from smart yesterday (an email actually since they tried to call on landline and no-one was there).

.....................

This would be for the Dolphins Barn exchange.

So heres hoping theres no new problems.

Did you have an existing bb account? Good luck with the installation anyways!

machalla

Yep that would be it. When they called they apparently go through a spiel (I didn't take the call) about the case with Eircom which is due to go to court mid-april. I think they ask you if you want to change number or wait for the number move thing to be sorted out.

Dub, no there was no existing BB on this line as Eircon have claimed all along its not suitable for BB. It appears to be though at least with DSL2. I will wait and see what happens with it.

Moriarty

dub45 wrote:

While obviously Eircom are going to do their best to frustrate a competitor a lot of this stuff - even the basic transfer - does not seem to have been anticipated by Smart at all prior to their launch and surely it should have been?

It was thought about. The thing that is currently tied up in the high court would have sorted out all migration issues from bitstream dsl to llu dsl, along with all the other stuff like number portability. Delaying that framework is a showstopper, and eircom know that full well.

Sponge Bob

The biggest showstopper IMO is that Smart have refused to countenance a post facto manual number port where a bulk manual request is sent into Eircom on the day that a batch of pairs is jumpered over on LLU .

They want full automation or nothing while the customer wants something rather than nothing , even if the port took a month.

The person affected, without a their functioning number at this point, can chase Eircom themselves as it is Eircom that are refusing to release YOUR number not Smart who are refusing to accept it and therefore Eircom must take responsibility.

Nor should you have to pay a penny line rental to Eircom during this time for holding you hostage and yes you can sue Eircom in the small claim court for loss of (pick anything you want) because Eircom never show up in the Small Claims Court anyway .

In the meantime you can spread your new number around to those who need to know it.