Net charges opinion in Irish Times

Dangger

J McManus of the Irish Times has a good overview of the mother of all battles brewing up with Eircom and the ODTR.....

Expect some fireworks in Net charges row



"The significance of the latest spat between Eircom and Ms Etain Doyle, the director of telecommunications regulation, should not be underestimated. On the surface it seems a fairly routine dispute about the price at which the dominant market player should let rivals access its new high-speed internet service. Without wanting to overdramatise it unduly, it also represents a very important battle in the war being waged against Ms Doyle and her office by Eircom. "

Read the whole text at

http://www.ireland.com/business/news/2001/0924/news7.htm

SkepticOne

A very good article.

Given that Eircom owns the bulk of the State's telecommunications network and almost every household in the State is a customer, it is vital that Eircom both respect and co-operate with the statutory regulator. The failure of politicians of any hue to voice an opinion on Eircom in the wake of its disastrous flotation serves to highlight the importance of the ODTR's job.

Apart from this article and possibly a few others, there has been an astonishing lack of interest from the press as well. I can't understand how there should be so little interest in the prospect of handing over so much of the state's infrastruture to a consortium of financial interests including George Soros and is fronted by the publisher of Ireland's largest broadsheet newspaper. Apart from our desire for decent Internet access, what will be the effect on the economy?

Another url for the story which appeard in the 'Finance' section of the print edition is here:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/finance/2001/0924/fin15.htm

neverhappen

The presence of independent directors such as the businessmen Mr Jim Flavin and Mr Niall Mackay on the board gave some assurance that the company would not act in a way that was detrimental to the national interests.


Is this suggesting that eircon have not been acting in a way that is detrimental to the public interest up to now ??

BTW, dont think this has been posted before, but its a draft contract for OLOs to buy bitstream adsl from eircon...


http://www.eircom.ie/bveircom/pdf/adsl.pdf

Couch Potato

Given that Eircom will go private - is this a good thing or a bad thing when trying to accertain if the charges that they are going to impose on others fair or not ?

Do we not loose a lot of visibility of the company ?

kendragon

Eircom has made it clear that despite the concerns voiced by the regulator it will not be reviewing its prices and has threatened to scrap the whole €150 million project if the ODTR imposes its own charges. This does not sound very different to saying that it will not submit to regulation.

[/B]

That seems a pretty spiteful and dare i say Childish attitude to the whole situation. "if we cant get it our way then no one will get it" not the type of professionalism that you would expect from such a large company huh.

Ivan

Just one more valid reason (heh, like we needed another one) for Local Loop Unbundling. Ooooh.....when eshat and co. get their grubby hands on the lines....weeeee!


Ivan

pork99

Its obvious what Eircom are up to;

1 Resisting and frustrating the OTDR

2 Making things as unattractive as possible for any potential OLOs who might consider moving into the Irish market. It is in their self interest as a company to do so.

However this conflicts directly with the national economic interest.

With Eircom we are getting the worst of both worlds - public sector bureaucratic inertia and from the private sector ruthless exploitation of an unfair advantage to screw competitors.