Important - need info re: broadband (or lack of it)

Shiminay

Hi guys and gals...

I've been talking to my local TD (Enda Kenny - FG) about the lack of broadband in this country and he rang me a couple of minutes ago to talk about the situation. He's had dealings with Etain Doyle, but is gonna go back to her to ask a couple of things.

Anyway, I said I'd try and get more information to help the case...

Do you know what exactly the situation is with local loop access for Eircom's competitors? Do they have access yet (as was agreed for April 1st) or are Eircom still acting the muppets?

Also, he had word from Ocean and they've said they're getting ready to roll - judging by what Enda told me, it seems they're gonna use the ESB Network as basis for the service. I had heard something about this, but not a lot.

I need info as quick as possible (before the Dáil breaks for Easter). I encourage you to give your local TD a shout too - it can't do any harm.

Cheers all!

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Prepare yourself - The Beefy King stirs from his slumber...</font>

[honey i] violated [the kids]

MiCr0

well from odtr.ie

have a read of this <A HREF="http://www.odtr.ie/docs/odtr0114.doc&quot; TARGET=_blank>
link</A>

better for local loop

have a look at the second one

Shiminay

Cheers Dave - I'm having a quick skim through them and I'll see what's relevant and usefull!

More info please ppl!!!

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Prepare yourself - The Beefy King stirs from his slumber...</font>

[honey i] violated [the kids]

Evil Phil

Esat are introducing ADSL at some stage, apparently. For information you can register at the following link:

http://register.esatfusion.ie/adsl/index.html


However they require your home number, the number you'll be connecting to The Ne' from, and suprisingly, your mobile number. So if you don't want to register the auto response is below, I'll keep any further updates posted:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">

From: adslinfo@esat.ie
Date: Tue Apr 3 10:13:29 2001
To: phil@showerof*******s.com
Subject: ADSL

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Many thanks for contacting us regarding the forthcoming introduction
of our ADSL service.

Like you we are really excited about the implications for Internet users -
particularly in terms of increased speed and cost benefits.

At the moment we are putting the finishing touches to our roll-out
plan and a comprehensive ADSL brochure will be available in the near
future which will spell out all the details you are likely to need. We
will forward a copy as soon as it becomes available.

Once again, thanks for your interest and if you will just bear with us
for a short time longer, you can soon avail of the time-saving and
money-saving benefits which ADSL will bring.

</font>

[This message has been edited by Evil Phil (edited 03-04-2001).]

Moriarty

Kharn, it goes as follows.
Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) was meant to occour in all EU countries on Jan 1 2001. Eircom have been stalling other operators getting access to the exchanges, by setting the prices far too high for other telco's to reasonably access the exchanges. From memory, they started off with a £35 per month access fee. Now, compare this to the infamous BT in the UK, that have an access fee of £8 or so per month. Eircom have since brought down the price to somin like £25, which as you can see, is still far too high for other telco's to reasonably get into the exchanges and set up their own equipment ( Eg Esat ).

Secondly, Eircom said that it would introduce 'Bitstream' access to their exchanges from April 1 2001. To explain bitstream access, it is basically Eircom sub-letting their equipment to other telco's. This means that only Eircom will actually be in the exchanges, but they will lease their equipment out to other telco's for a nominal price. This has the advantage of being cheaper for the telco's, but the disadvantage of not having actual control over the hardware controlling everything. For true competition, specifically broadband competition, full unbundling of the local loop is the only action that will help. I believe that Eircom are now liable for legal action, because they have taken so long in deploying access to the exchanges.

Now, at present, no other telco is in an exchange, because of the exorbitant prices currently in place, even though they can technically request space in exchanges, it is completly unviable for any other telco to enter the exchanges at the present time. The ODTR has said that whatever final price is agreed upon will be backdated to Jan1 2001 for anyone availaing of local loop access in the interim.

I havent heard much about the Ocean business myself, so ill leave that

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Moriarty
moriarty@gamersfm.com

[This message has been edited by Moriarty (edited 03-04-2001).]

Stonemason

Some months ago i posted on these boards that i beleived ocean read ESB/BT may suprise us all by being the first in with a viable broadband service. But i have to admitt this was based on the idea that BT being a teleco would have an ideal way to lay lines useing the ESB pipes as a medium.But this was just a very vague hopeing rather than based in fact.I certainly hope its true and if anyone knows for sure please let us all know.


Stone

spod

kharn

iiu list has had alot of discussion on this topic lately.

iiu - irish internet users forum.

it's "run" by justin mason, who's been around for donkeys years, used to be involved in efi (electronic frontier ireland), is a big ilug type, and was one of the first webmasters in the country, ran www.iona.com when it was something like the 80th webserver ever in the world.

iiu.taint.org

there's alot of discussion on possibile strategies for starting a campaign for consumer broadband.

basically, ireland and portugal are the only eu memberstates where you can't get adsl in at least the capital city.

it puts off alot of prospective tech workers. how many people you know who considered moving to tallaght to get ntls cable inet access? and many americans/europeans i know of have said, **** that i'm not moving to dublin if i can't get cable or dsl.

e-hub of europe, sure.

even people i know of in medialab europe in dublin are ****ed off that they can't get broadband in their flats here, but they could in boston...

chorus powernet is the only semi viable consumer solution at the minute, if you can get them to put it in. ntl have stopped doing a full 2way upgrade on their network in ireland because of cost, so they won't offer broadband anytime soon.

eircom are dragging feet unmercifully on local loop unbundling. last excuse was that they cancelled a dsl order from newbridge for several million which was setting back their dsl campaign by at least a few months because of some ridiciulos excuse.

esat are running into problems with their wireless broadband and formus have gone under.

so, unless you wanna go with some satellite solution you're basically fux0red at the minute.

spod, angry as hell about it

Skeptic1

Well put spod. Eircom recently reduced their local loop access costs by 25% (still a multiple of the European average). The reason they gave for being able to make this reduction was "due to efficiencies in the automation process". ?!?!?!

They can't even be bothered to come up with a decent excuse. In answering queries about xDSL, they used to have a form letter saying they were going to release details "in six to eight weeks". Those words were being used in a form letter sent out over many months.

The Irish Times, at one point, had a story saying that Eircom were going to release news about dsl "in six to eight weeks". I think they took them up on this letter. I think this was back in October 2000. I think they were forced to release some blurb around that time.

We are very unfortunate to have such a company running our phones.

Interesting that about Medialab. I heard that they originally turned down Dublin in favour of Germany because of the lack of broadband infrastructure here. However the subsidy was so much better in Dublin that they were persuaded, eventually, to come here.

The main problem here is Eircom's p1ss taking attitude. They were trialling xDSL equipment for years and just when they were being forced into bitstream bundling, they decide to ditch their equipment (saying it was too unreliable). They are unfit to run their own xDSL services so they prevent others from doing so, contravening a European directive.

astrofool

Esat were about to start trials on ADSL(I was involved in them), Eircom couldn't get Digital TV, streming movies etc(u need about 5meg/s), to work, so they disallowed everyone access to the local loop, Esat was pressing ahead at current prices for businesses, but Eircom have decided if they can't no one shall, Esat are bringing them to court, but u know how long that can take, ISDN or NTL is the only way to go right now unfortunately, I really cannot wait for Eircom's share price to go rock bottom, and maybe AT&T might be interested in buying them.

kayos

Surely AT&T buying Eircom would be monoply sort of thing as they Own BT and BT are involved in Esat....... Esat had a big add in last sundays business post ranting about eircom and not unbundling the local loop. In which they fairly made it clear that they were ready to roll with ADSL once they get access to the exchanges. Will someone please kick eircom around the place....

kayos

WhiteWashMan

/me puts on his stomping boots

Ronan|Raven

Aye its so sickening to see how eircom are shaftin us all and the other telco's in turn, they should be dragged out and shot!

astrofool

if Esat were allowed acces to the exchange this is how long it would take for them to have the ADSL working:

1 DAY

Dustaz

FYI, If your in Portugal, you might not be able to get DSL, but you can get Cable whereever you are. That just leaves us then. I love living in this e-hub.

spod

alot more on the whole thing in last sundays sunday business post magaziney bit.

Articles by a guy in esat, eircom and the network and telecoms research group in tcd.

interesting reading.

http://www.sbpost.ie/supplements/story.jsp?story=WCContent;id-17668

is the only one of the 3 articles i can find online atm.

kayos

Ya I know there were other articles and the SBP were not on the side of eircom in the ones I read. The best article had to be about the new head boy in eircom

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">
Employees say if you listen very carefully in the early morning you can here Alfie Keanes chainsaw at work
</font>

or something very along those lines

kayos

PiE

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">"However, having lobbied for the service, many of the other licensed operators (OLOs) have made no constructive effort to assist Eircom in its development. With the exception of Esat, no other company has expressed interest in any of the three forms of LLU."</font>

So why wont they open the fuqn things to Esat at least?!

Moriarty

A lot of you dont understand the situation actually

Esat can apply to go into any exchange in ireland at the moment, and so can any other telco. Its just that at the moment, its uneconomical for them to start with such a high price being put forward by Eircom. All telco's have had access to the exchanges since Jan 1, they just havent asked for access because of the exhorbitant costing.

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Moriarty
moriarty@gamersfm.com

Stonemason

I was reading about adsl in the UK and how BT is doing the exactly the same as eircom in regards to dragging there feet adsl they are even pricing the lines out of range of most isp,s.Pressure groups are pushing to get the hole board of governors booted out of BT for incompetents.But in the Uk there is choice of ADSL isp`s.So Ireland can be proud of eircom as the worlds #1 in avoiding rolling out ADSL even BT crumbled eventually so ireland stands alone as the only so called 1st world country that doesnt have ADSL what an accolade!!


Stone

PS im so desperate to get away from eircom im actualy going to put a 30/40ft mast in my back garden so i can hopefully get chorus and pt

gandalf

As usual in this country the Politicians talk the talk but they don't walk the walk, e-commerce hub my oriface !

The ODTR needs to give Eircom a good kicking now !

Gandalf.

po0k

Etain Doyle has given Eircoma one month extension on the LLU issue....
Esat were damn right to place taht Ad on April Fool's day, though many peolple might not have been 'clued in' enough to grasp the situation here.....sadly.
They should start a television and radio campaign with ISPs and other telcos to raise awareness..........
I live in Galway so i won't have xDSL for about a year after it comes to Dublin, what with the demand and everything.
The ESB has supposedly loads of fibre cable laid down all over the place already, as does CIE, but they made a botch jopb of the signal fibres, overbudget now. They could have made some small modifications to the plan, prehaps costing a slight bit more and we would have more fibre between the major cities!! They copuld themn have feasibly turned this into a profit by renting the bandwidth....but they obviously weren't all taht far-sighted.......
[/END RANT]

[VTi]SyxPak

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No-one ever suspects the Duck

Play Counterstrike.
Meet interesting people.
Kill them.
All of them.

Shinji

Too right to whoever commented about this situation dissuading tech workers.

Remember all the ads in the papers over Christmas, trying to persuade people with computer type skills who were home for the festive season to consider coming home for good, since Ireland is crying out for folk with tech skills?

Nice idea; potentially nice salary; the chance to live in my own country again...

... but the best net access I can get is ISDN paying by the minute. Here, I may be abroad and in a less employee-driven market, but I get 2mbit into my living room for 20 quid a month.

This may be the ultimate in geekery, but I honestly wouldn't consider moving back to Ireland until I can get some form of broadband there.

Greenbean

Hmm, what I heard about eircom on adsl was they pulled their own trials BUT they are starting up a bigger newer one later in june or so. Seemed to be related to trying to make eircom seem like the whole thing is falling apart, how can they offer anyone access at low rates. With regards to the online tv thing, seemed to be grand - just the odd glitch or two during a couple of hours of viewing - but this is with low amounts of users on the systems. This is coming from recent eircom employees (ie, they have left since).

astrofool

Esat and Eircom are using different companies to provide the broadband solution (Nortel and alcatel, i think(that second company sounds made up to me)), Esat's one is working, Eircom's one isn't, Eircom have DISALLOWED Esat any access to the local exchanges. This is because Esat would have it running FIRST. Eircom's one last hope now is that they manage to supply broadban quick, cheaply and to everyone, if Esat get in there first, this obviously won't happen, simple solution = don't let anyone into exchanges. They need Eircom employee's to facilitate them in there, how likely is that to happen?
this is straight from the horses mouth(Esat's broadband trial was meant to have started already)

Shiminay

Alcatel isn't a made up company
/me is looking at the Alcatel phones in his office

Anyway, it's all big floppy donkey.... ears!

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Prepare yourself - The Beefy King stirs from his slumber...</font>

[honey i] violated [the kids]

tobi

Here are two articles you may want to look at……..

http://scripts.ireland.com/technology/newsshowall.cfm?ID=1508

http://scripts.ireland.com/technology/newsshowall.cfm?ID=1509

Stonemason

It make you wonder who the hell etan doyle asked about how satisfied they were with the state of net access in ireland.Id say it would be the huge companys with T1 leased line connections and little old ladies who collect there e-mail once a month.
If they cant open there mouths without bullsh`ite spewing out i respectfully request they keep there gobs shut.

Stone

PiE

See the eircom gimp on RTE 6.1 news?

Fuqn ****splash. I dont think I've heard such bs for many a moon.

The_Scary_Man

And eircon have the balls to link to the story from their homepage.

Smug c*nts!

Check out the "Internet" link

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And then in a moment of absolute clarity he realised that there was nothing, not because everything had ceased to exist but rather that it had never been there to begin with.
Free Your Mind.

[This message has been edited by The_Scary_Man (edited 10-04-2001).]

Tazz T

All this controversy will rage on for some time. The fact is, time is running out for Eircom. They're holding on by the skin of their teeth. This 'one month' deadline is the beginning of the end for their monopoly.

The question is when it comes to the crunch will we all have the integrity to vote with our wallets when they offer broadband at a lower cost than the competitors they tried to keep out of the market.

Stonemason

Put it this way im so disgusted with eircom im buy a mast so i can get chorus now thats determination lol.

Stone

po0k

I'm going to quote from today's (Sun. 15th April) Sunday Tribune business supplement:
"Eircom paid £5m to DSL consultants" -headline
"sources in the Telecoms industry had indicated that Eircom had spent in excess of £20million in consultancy fees in SETTING UP DSL."
"The DSL offering has been considerably pared down and will now be confined to offering high-speed internet access <Loverly stuff-more bandwidth for games! >with the television and video aspects being postponed until late next year, at the earliest."
"It is not know how much Eirocm has invested in the development of DSL over the past three years"
In another article:
" ODTR pushes for September DSL launch" -Headline
Paraphrasing " ODTR says DSL will be in by sempt., Alfie KEan says by Mar. 2002 earliest"
"No tele can offer DSL without LLU, Eircom said they had technical dificulties with it, went winging to ODTR, who did not spank them for their insolence <again paraphrasing here>"
Actual quote now "Business users might have DSL before that but for home use the most sutiable kind of unbundling <loosely used here!> is bitstream access" -Aileen Canning, ODTR
bitstream is like a winmodem, not as good as the real thing. Esat rents Eircom's equipment, but can't put in their own into the exchanges. Therefore Eircom can offer the cheapest rates eventhough "Eircom is leagally obliged to offer this package of managed access to homes at the same price it charges to its own retail arm" -again Aileen Canning, ODTR.
Quoting Sun, trib now "Canning believes most operators offering home services will offer this product. This means fast internet services from differnet operators are likely to be nearly identical since they will be based on the same Eircom package."
"The September service depends on Eircom providing the ODTR with cost information this week so that a wholesale price can be determined"
For Fúck's Sake. Even the ODTR has 'Finger-up-bum' on this thing..........
[VTi]Syxpak (moving to States or London for DSL - probably never coming back neither)

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No-one ever suspects the Duck
He who must die, must die in the dark even though he sells candles