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NTL deploy cable-modem "broadband" in Dublin since Monday 4th Feb.
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I have just rang NTL enquiring as to which parts of Clondalkin are upgraded. As usual, my area is not ready
but she assured me that it should be ready within the next month or so. I asked her if she could tell me what parts are upgraded but she said she didnt have a list. She mailed me on some information on the service - the usual stuff plus a special offer that waives the installation charge if I subscribe before the 1st March.
I may have to wait a while longer but it is definitely a different situation from when I rang them at the beginning of January when they said Clondalkin wouldnt be upgraded for 7-10 months.
It would be helpful if NTL had a page on their website listing newly upgraded estates in each area. At least you could tell how quick and how far away they are from reaching your own estate0 -
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I enquired to NTL about when the Blackrock area would be upgraded, but I was unlucky enough to get a foreign customer service person who hardly new the English language let alone when the area would be upgraded, so this news makes me smile a bit more.
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Ok, so it's six months later...
...any progress???
I've called them several times askin bout the odd Dublins (Northside), and my one in particular. Responses varied in consistency and sureness:
# Not sure - hopefully 6 months #
# Won't be within the next year, yes I'm sure #
# Definitely within the next 6 months #
They seem to like the number six.
Anyone else notice that they tell you they'll take your number to register your interest, then say bye and hangup, without you telling them your number. Pretty much a "stop hogging the line" effort. (That particular call I gave no full address or account number)
Got a cold-call on the door from a rep for NTL Digital. The cables were changed on the houses a few weeks earlier, so I was interested in the prospect of cable internet. Blah blah blah great lineup of Digital channels blah blah blah. Asked him bout cable net. Er hold on, I'll call my supervisor. And ya know on those Nokias, you can hear the callee miles off. A lil' youngfla. I could hear somethin along the lines of no we're not doing cable net there. Flog him the weekend thing.
So I got the forms, I asked him to come back for the copy of the Eircon bill (cos they need CPS to provide free weekend net access).
He came back two days later after I read all the pixieprint, and I pretty much told him to feck off I changed me mind! He looked none-too pleased.
But in the meantime they'd set our bill to monthly so I called themt o revert. They asked me for my PIN. My what? Em, do you like Leeds? (WTF has this gotta do with anything? methought)
Although I did get a guy who was frank about the whole thing. Told me they had problems with existing users of the service abusing it and slowing the network for others. And that he didn't think that it would be rolled out any time soon in this area.
What a ramble, eh? :rolleyes:
Seems we've all heard the same carp before
It is what it's.
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Most of NTL's network is physically not suitable for two-way cablemodem traffic. It does not have the bandwidth. There was a project to upgrade it a couple of years ago, but around February of 2001 all work stopped. No area has been upgraded since then.
Here's an extract from an interview with Stephen Carter, MD of NTL (UK and Ireland).
I don't believe that it's malice that is causing NTL to concentrate its broadband investment to Britain. Rather it is the legacy nature of the Irish cable system. Due to the lack of mult-channel TV in Ireland in the 60's and 70's, Ireland got cabled up far earlier than other countries. At that time, the requirement was simply to pipe in two or three British channels. Initially it was just BBC1 and Ulster TV, later adding BBC2. Much of the cable infrastructure dates back to these days. This was sufficient to give a choice over the single RTE channel.Why have you lost customers in the UK market recently?
If you are running a customer service business that is based on connections to people's homes you are always subject to people moving house. Especially if you are not running a national business. And we don't in the UK or even in Ireland where we just serve Waterford, Dublin, and Galway. In the UK there are 24 million homes and we pass 8 of them, so we are a third of the size of a national company so that means there are lots of people who can move off our network and we can't sell them a service.
The other thing is the NTL business in the UK has been concentrating our growth on broadband rather than on digital TV. We are adding 10,000 broadband customers a week, at the moment. If you factor that up on a national level, bearing in mind that our broadband network only passes a third of homes, it would mean we are adding 32,000 broadband customers a week. BSKB who are romping home on digital TV are only adding 24,000 pay TV customers a week and that is a national business. So it depends how you look at the picture.
Due to halting the upgrading of NTL's Irish network you can't launch cable modems here? Will there be more money to invest in Ireland?
This year we will spend £400 to 500 million sterling on capital investment and we have been in chapter 11. So it's a myth and an inaccurate fact that we haven't been making investment in our business. Operating expenditures are not even included in this, so if you wrap that in its about a billion sterling.
So its not he case that we are not investing. And we have been at pains throughout the chapter 11 to point out that our operations in the UK and Ireland were not affected by this process. We haven't failed to pay one supplier or a member of staff. We haven't stopped connecting customers or stopped developing a product. As far as broadband in Ireland is concerned Graham and his team are working on some exciting plans in that area.
That sounds like a fudge. Can any company and NTL specifically afford to do that upgrade here now, which was estimated at £300 million?
My answer to that question is the world has changed. Three years ago it cost you £400 pounds to buy a set top box, now it costs £120 pounds. It would have cost over £100 pounds for cable modem at the same time whereas now you can buy one for £30. It's the same with fibre capacity, peering costs and all the constituent elements of building networks. They are not what they were.
So the headline numbers from 3 years ago for capital expenditures are not appropriate measures for going forward. There has been seismic change in that market and as I say watch this space. Right now in Ireland we are concentrating on a digital roll out. Its a different business from the UK, it's a TV led business and we have hundreds of thousands of customers- that's were the focus is. But we don't have an ambition only to provide TV services.
Can you give the consumer an idea of when the focus would move to broadband?
No.
Can we [Irish consumers] put it off for at least a year?
Someone once told me the only luxury you have in an interview is not to say something, we are doing what we are doing in broadband. We've had a trial going in west Dublin that's gone very well. We're emerging from chapter 11 process, we've got new leadership in the business in Ireland, we re rolling out digital, improving customer service and we have some exciting plans for broadband. I think if you look at the telecoms and technology territory that's a pretty good place for the company to be.
"Exciting plans for broadband"- What does that mean?
I don't know yet.
When will the company know?
When it knows.
Other countries got cabled up later than Ireland. The technology had moved on and so had the competitive environment. Therefore a much higher grade of cable was installed to carry a much larger number of channels. In the US, analogue cable systems can carry 60 to 70 channels. When they convert to digital it increases to around 200 (in Ireland I believe that NTL's digital service only offers around 50 channels in total). The side-effect of this greater capacity meant that cablemodem Internet became possible. Upgrading is still necessary but they don't need to upgrade the cable running between the houses - the expensive bit.
In Ireland we have the worst of all worlds. Although NTL now have £400m to play around with, it does not make sense to upgrade here when for a much smaller amount they can be upgrading new towns in the UK to two-way services. Therefore, that is where the money will be going.
There may be other aspects to the situation in Ireland however. Here's an extract from an Interview with Ed Brophy (head of regulatory affairs in Ireland) from the summer of 2001:
Full article here. I don't know to what extent this attitude pervades the telecoms industry in Ireland. It is certainly very different in other countries.A disappointing but inevitable result of doing business in Ireland and the
changing economic climate, claims Edward Brophy, manager of regulatory and
statutory for NTL Ireland. "At the moment it is just not economically viable
to roll out fibre networks," said Brophy. "There simply isn't the demand."
"A year or so ago, operators were getting plenty of capital to fund what I
call a field of dreams, the notion that if you build a broadband network
then the customers will flock to it. That has proved not to be the case and
now operators have to be more pragmatic and look for demand before they put
the infrastructure in place. The simple fact is, that most people in Ireland
are quite happy with a dial up connection - there isn't a pent up demand for
broadband."
Despite the embarrassment of having to revise it original plans, Brophy
insists that any network operator would be mad to build networks when there
is no demand, no services and no applications.
"Realistically, what applications and services are in place at the moment to
make customers want broadband?" he said. "What is so compelling about
downloading a film to watch on your computer screen when you can go to the
video shop and hire one to watch in comfort on your TV?"
The sad thing is that the need to upgrade the cable networks was forseen as far back as 1996 by Government advisory bodies but nothing was done.
Anyway, the chances of NTL upgrading it's network to full two-way standards in the next five to ten years are slim to none (and slim just left town). 0 -
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It is from Jamie Smyth of the Irish Times. The interview is in the technology section of the main ireland.com website and did not appear in the paper itself.Originally posted by Dustaz
Skeptic, where did the interview with Steven Carter come from? The journo seems to be well on the ball.
(i bet its from an Ioffl press release or something and ill be emabaressed
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Originally posted by SkepticOne
We can't expect them to change just for us. We have to do this ourselves.
Any suggestions?
Lay our own cable?
Grab some wireless gear and make a mass movement towards IrishWAN?
Storm eircom's offices with axes?
Noticed one of their exchanges near Camden Street in town while passing by... resisted the urge to throw things at the blue and orange vans though
zynaps0 -
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