ODTR to investigate Esat over SNL Debacle

Kix

Look down the article a bit and you'll find

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The same paper [Irish Times] also reports that the Telecoms Regulator is to investigate Esat Fusion's move to cut off 2,000 "No Limits" customers. The Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation (ODTR) is believed to have received over 50 calls and has confirmed it is currently investigating Esat's decision.
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http://www.electricnews.ie/news.html?code=1540882

Gunn4r

Also in the Indo

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ti=41&ca=35&si=426273&issue_id=4412

ConUladh

Definitely arseways, the most I ever spent in a month is 105 hours and they're getting rid of me

Lenny

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2"> Customers who spend more than 75 to 100 hours a week on the internet will be affected from May 31. </font>

was it not 75 hour's a month?

Joe22

yea a month, thats the secound ****ign place ive seen that,
esat must be telling them different to us,
75hours a week is one thing, i could cut back to below that no problem, a month is imposable, even people on eircom use more then that, maybe someone should ring the indy

Ronan|Raven

I worked it out that I Was using the service for around 200+ hours a month so maybe I was abusing the srvice but hell If they didnt want it used so much why didnt they bloody advertise it an limited surfing! ah well im gona get my moneys worth before may so much so my poor lil modem will melt lol

Cond0r

The fscking point is, it was an UNLIMITED service! You can'y fscking abuse an unlimited service, I think ppl are starting to forget this !

Snaga

Well now its not an unlimited service. Youve been given your month warnings and in one month when your all kicked Ill have a better connection as it wont be knackered due to you guys downloading from 6 in the afternoon till 8 the next morning every night and all weekend.

It states in their terms and conditions basically that they can do whatever the hell they like to the service with a one month warning.

Well guess what? Youve got your month warning and they are changing it.

Did they handle this transition well? Nopers, the marketing department really arsed it up by placing the blame elsewhere, but that doesnt hide the fact that they are a business and are losing money so they can do whatever the hell they want.

Stop moaning, youve had it good up till now, now its time to go back to pay-per-minute until something better comes along, in whatever form it takes.

Stop whinging ffs, a new board every two minutes with the same ppl moaning and moaning, get over it.

Gerry

it was a mistake, and a misjudgement for esat to introduce no limits in the first place. They can't have made very much profit on it, seeing as after you go over 40 hours a month, they are losing out.

So it makes good business sense for them to pull the plug, they are just doing it in the worst way imaginable.

Chris_533976

Hopefully the ODTR will do something and end this madness. Maybe like what was done to RedHotAnt in England.

--Chris--

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<A HREF="http://uie.8m.com

THE" TARGET=_blank>http://uie.8m.com

THE</A> source for Internet news in Ireland. Polls, broadband, letter to ODTR, ISP details and A PETITION AGAINST EIRCOM.

Blade

Yah bang on Snaga and Gerry, thats exactly how it is. The way I look at SNL is:

They brought the best thing since sliced bread to happen to the Internet in Ireland on a national scale. Everyones attitude then was 'Nice one Esat!, up yours Eircom!' Lots of hard core donkey pr0n users saved a fortune and even the not so hard core users. I believe the whole SNL service was costing esat money but it was just a brave attempt by them to force Eircom to lower their prices through the regulator, but now that thats not happened for them their p*ssed off and their pulling the plug on it. This should be perfectly understandable to anyone with a bit of cop on.

However I think Esat should have been totally straight with their users and told them this instead of trying to blame them for it. Their PR staff should be sacked and they should make a public apology and say they made a mistake in the newspapers and that the new limit is infact 75 hours a month not a week. Basically both the letters sent to customers and that press release pointed ALL the blame on users where it should have been pointed to Eircom. I believe customers are owed a public apology for this.

Pix

Snaga ... you are an idiot if you think they're going to hang onto you for long, once the rest of us NL users are gone. How financially viable is a service with only a few hundred users??? DUH!

Pix

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Snaga:
Stop moaning, youve had it good up till now, now its time to go back to pay-per-minute until something better comes along, in whatever form it takes.

Stop whinging ffs, a new board every two minutes with the same ppl moaning and moaning, get over it.</font>

I'm extremely annoyed by this little bit of stupidity...

So we've had it good have we? Have you looked at any other countries recently? Ireland is a joke and that's no exaggeration. ADSL has been available for years in some places and cable even longer. SNL was an 'acceptable' compromise while we waited for broadband and allday flatrate services, but still poor compared with the likes of Britain or get this.... Belgium. Yes, even Belgium has better internet services than we do.

To move onto your last few words of wisdom, I think its fair to say that if we were all like you, happy and contented with this joke of a situation and simply 'got over it', then nothing positive would ever happen in this damned country. So you can stay happy and contented, until you to get kicked off SNL yourself (which may happen). If you can be happy with 75 hours a month, then so be it. You're obviously not an avid net user of any kind and therefore wouldn't understand its importance...

Skeptic1

I think it's important to realise that "nolimits" is gone for _everyone_. Of course the name never realy fit the product. The flat-rate aspect only applied to weekends and evenings. But now the flat-rate aspect itself is gone. Remaining customers will now be limited to 75 hours a month. I don't know what happens after this. Do they start charging local call rates or do they send you "the letter"? Anyway, it's now a pre-paid service rather than flat-rate.

In my opinion, Internet access took a big step backwards, not a few days ago, but a couple of months ago when Esat stopped taking on new customers. The majority of Internet users never used flat-rate services but the important thing was that they had the choice. Incidently, I was affected by this move when I tried to sign up for the service.

I agree with Pix that Internet access in this country is woefull. As far as I can tell, were at the very bottom of the EU countries. A few have no xDSL but all have some sort of cable modem service at least in the cities.

True "always on" internet access will only come through action by the Government/ODTR. So far, they only get silence from the Internet users because there is no organising bodies representing the users.

Joe22

i do love teh way some of you are braging about being left of nolimits,
I DONT CARE, i've gothen more out of my nolimits connection in the last week they you in a month.
and ive been on it for 2 years.
ill go off to ntl, and instead of paying 20 a month ill be paying 5 so ha ****ing ha.
PS flate rate serivce cant be held up much longer.id expect to see them in july.
so be very very happy with you esat for the two are so months the rest of us are on per minute

Snaga

Bragging? Nope im afraid not. If NTL were operating fully in my area id probly join them too, but they arent, so im not.

What im annoyed with is people saying - oh look at the state this country is in internet wise and no nolimits has cut ppl off its obviously all their fault.

Im not accusing you of that as youve abviously done plenty of research into it recently yourself. When i started on nolimits i got great pings when gaming, good connects and decent downloads.....it lasted about 2 months and all ive had since then was bad pings, bad connects and bad download speeds, but it was cheap, my main concern at the time.

Now at the end of the month it looks like it may get better, _thats_ what im happy about. Im not foolish enough to think its gonna last for ever, i think 3-4 months is a good estimate, but you never know, older services seem to get supported long after the product has been cancelled.

As soon as something better is available to me, Ill be there, dont worry. But at the moment there isnt. And who do i blame for that? Government/eircom mainly, plus the fear in all irish telecoms that ADSL will destroy all their profits.

Pix

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Snaga:
lol - about 2 thousand users got the letter, ummmm.....you do realise that thats a mere fraction of the nolimits userbase?
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Really? only 2,000 you say? HA HA HA! That's funny :P

How many are gonna be able to hang around on 75 hours a month? SNL is dead man. Wake up!

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">obviously not - but fair play on trying to have a point there anyway.</font>

And fair play to you for having no point at all.... isn't this infuriating???

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">As for my avid net usage, Im usually on 3-4 hours a night and all day in work/college.</font>

You don't say what you mean by 'night' , but I assume you mean using SNL? If that's the case it doesn't take a genius to realize you are using over 100 hours a month, waaaaay over your limit. So we clearly have another case of Esat's consistent policies, as all users over this limit were supposed to be kicked, including yourself presumably????

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Chances are i spend more time on the net than your good, hard done by self. </font>

Your college time is irrelevant to me. We nearly all have internet access during the day.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">But guess what.... i didnt get a letter...cos i dont leave my machine logged in from 6pm to 8am and all weekend helping to max out the limited bandwidth. </font>

Yeah.... this ones good.... like anyone using the net between 00:00 and 08:00AM is actually affecting your bandwidth.... LOL
And we're just as entitled as you are to use it over the weekend you arrogant little swine. That is what we paid for...... DUH!
You're are also still assuming that you will never and can never receive a termination of your account.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">so in short - No Im NOT happy with the current situation of telecoms in ireland, but i know NTL wont be in my area for at _least_ 12-18 months if ever. Eircom will drag their heels on the ODTR decision, also i hear a new one from eircom is that they dont have ROOM in their exchanges to allow other telecoms(remember theres a fair few of them, not just esat looking to get into the exchanges e.g. worldcom), so i can see that lasting for most of this year, so no DSL for us either. ISDN is too expensive. Flat rate analogue dial up is the best option for me financially speaking, and 75 hours a month for 20 quid is good.</font>

To get off the slagging track, what you say here makes sense. Yes, internet in Ireland sux. Yes, internet in Ireland is not going to improve much. Yes, ISDN is a poor and expensive alternative to broadband and yes, 75 hours for 20 quid is not too bad. BUT, I wish you would stop crowing about how you didn't get the letter and 'I'm gonna get GREAT pings when all ye ****ers are gone.' It's very irritating to listen to that crap from the likes of you.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">What you seem to be doing is blaming esat for irelands net problems here.
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No I'm not... I personally blame the telecomms regulator for their sad performance and I blame Eircom and Chorus for the absence of broadband in the country and for their blatant greed. I blame Esat for dumping me from their service, which I've had since 1998, all of a sudden, with no warnings at all and with no compromise offered. It's unacceptable and I now regard Esat as little better than any other company. They all treat their customers like crap.

So I hope I've cleared that up for you.

bugler

Snaga drop the pretence that the people who got kicked left the service connected all night or even as you state from 6pm - 8am. I've been away at college since september from monday-friday and no-one else in my family uses the net, added to this I have made about 3 overnight d/ls since xmas,hardly the type of customer who had slowed you down to a crawl.Its fúcking annoying when you try and insinuate that those who got kicked off were partly to blame,all i used it for was game playing and occasional browsing.Admittedly I spent a good time playing games at weekends but I have doubts about the total month limit I would have used,I can't have been very much over 75 hrs if at all.

Don't assume you know all about why and how this has been brought in.

zeemoud

SO IS it worth my while getting powernet and what are the other AVAILABE (within a month)broadband services ? and who uses them

Snaga

Ireland and portugal are the two worst off countries in europe for this kind of thing. My post was simply stating that we have NOTHING better available in this country (excluding certain areas where cable/wireless stuff is available) at the moment.

If no limits hadnt reared its head then we would all still be on pay per minute and ****ed off about it. But no, nolimits came along and suddenly there it was....flat rate....free telephone call....this was the cream of net access when it came out. In our country...and considering our situation...yes...we had it good.

Compared to any other european country - were still worse off than some third world countries technologically speaking(telecoms infrastructure/industry regulation).

ok now back to your post.....

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">
with only a few hundred users???
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lol - about 2 thousand users got the letter, ummmm.....you do realise that thats a mere fraction of the nolimits userbase?

obviously not - but fair play on trying to have a point there anyway.

As for my avid net usage, Im usually on 3-4 hours a night and all day in work/college. Chances are i spend more time on the net than your good, hard done by self. But guess what.... i didnt get a letter...cos i dont leave my machine logged in from 6pm to 8am and all weekend helping to max out the limited bandwidth.

so in short - No Im NOT happy with the current situation of telecoms in ireland, but i know NTL wont be in my area for at _least_ 12-18 months if ever. Eircom will drag their heels on the ODTR decision, also i hear a new one from eircom is that they dont have ROOM in their exchanges to allow other telecoms(remember theres a fair few of them, not just esat looking to get into the exchanges e.g. worldcom), so i can see that lasting for most of this year, so no DSL for us either. ISDN is too expensive. Flat rate analogue dial up is the best option for me financially speaking, and 75 hours a month for 20 quid is good.

What you seem to be doing is blaming esat for irelands net problems here. Remember they as a company are losing money. In the nordic countries, sweden for example, home ADSL is sponsored by the government so that its even cheaper for home users to get online with the latest technology.

So I hope ive cleared up my blatant stupidity a bit for you. Now roll around the start of June when my conenction speeds pick up.

Snaga

2 thousand users - ballpark figure released by the company. Maybe they are lying like hell and it was way more...but they are the only numbers that have been released to the public that im aware.

3-4 hours - yup more than my limit, im gonna have to cut down arent I.

Yes you have every right to use it as me,I never suggested otherwise, but in 1 months time the service will in essence be completely different meaning all night downloading wont be a common practice for anyone.

As for bandwidth usage after 12am - usually it settles down at about 2.30am, at 12-1am pings are still dreadfull, so it is obviously having an effect on other users usage.(this isnt so much a blame on mass downloaders(which are the cause, but justifiably so due to the initial terms of the service) but esat for oversubscribing the service).

As for esat terminating my account, I already have an eircom account aswell that i use for clan matches and the like due to unplayable pings during the evening, but as youve pointed out already im going to have to cut down usage regardless, if i recieve a termination letter ill just have to cut back a little more.

As far as the manner in which esat executed this whole thing, if youve read the other threads then you know i think they ballsed it up royally and shouldnt have dared lay blame at the customers feet for their own problems. I agree every user on their black list should have been notified of the change of service to 75 hours per month in advance of said change....and if after that month, usage was still too high then they could kick who they liked.

Im in the camp of - they have every right to kick people of their service given the notice specified in terms and conditions, BUT, they should not lie about the reasons done so....and should give a warning period to the customers if its for a reason like this.

Skeptic1

So, this flat rate thing is gone. Does it make any business sense for any company to reintroduce it? I can't see this happening in the current environment with the encumbant charging wholsale access on a per-minute basis.

NTL currently have a weekend package for those using their phone service. But if all the nolimits users migrate to this and take them up fully on their offer (again doing nothing "wrong"), then NTL too will introduce limits or boot people off.

Eircom will not introduce a flat rate wholesale price under their own initiative - why should they? They need to be forced. I have no problem with this. They control a national asset built up over years and funded by the taxpayer. It was a huge mistake to privatise this network, in my opinion.

It's true that Esat are part of the problem, as are all ISP's not providing a flat-rate product. But the big problem is the country's inability to control Eircom.

[This message has been edited by Skeptic1 (edited 06-05-2001).]

Snaga

How you can blame all ISP's for not introducing flat rate in a situation where it costs them money to do so rather than making a profit?

The reason the service has been reduced is simply because the price eircom charge esat/anyotherISP for use of their phone lines is greater then £20 a month for the users that were cut off.

Eircom/government are my big chiefs in the blame bucket, not the other ISP's who have no choice but to pay the charges set by eircom.

bugler

I don't think it was overnight downloaders that made SNL sh*te tbh.I remember signing up to SNL almost a year ago now and for the first few months it was a quality service, absolutely no complaints.I think its fair to say that people who have a big interest in the net would have all jumped at this chance and signed up too,and these people are likely to be the big downloaders/heavy users. They would have been signed up during the first month surely? Then suddenly,the service starts to chug.I remember emailing Esat about how bad it was and was informed that this was due to a large influx of customers to the service and that they would be installing new modems to deal with this upsurge,and so the service should improve.It didn't really. I believe its just sheer volume of users rather than "over-users" that is to blame.Unfortunatly, I(a long time customer) have suffered for it.

Skeptic1

My theory is that some bean counter in BT did a survey of the profitability of the various services being offered by their subsidiaries. Nolimits came up as one of the loss making ones and Esat were ordered to pull it.

I don't think they pulled it because it was becoming sh*t for users but simply because it wasn't making money. Afterall, people were still queuing up to join.

They way they handled it, however, is a mystery. It's as if they deliberately set out to p*ss off people (which they did).

rymus

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Snaga:
Well now its not an unlimited service. Youve been given your month warnings and in one month when your all kicked Ill have a better connection as it wont be knackered due to you guys downloading from 6 in the afternoon till 8 the next morning every night and all weekend.

It states in their terms and conditions basically that they can do whatever the hell they like to the service with a one month warning.

Well guess what? Youve got your month warning and they are changing it.

Did they handle this transition well? Nopers, the marketing department really arsed it up by placing the blame elsewhere, but that doesnt hide the fact that they are a business and are losing money so they can do whatever the hell they want.

Stop moaning, youve had it good up till now, now its time to go back to pay-per-minute until something better comes along, in whatever form it takes.

Stop whinging ffs, a new board every two minutes with the same ppl moaning and moaning, get over it.</font>

Shutup you stupid tart! You may think youve got a good connection for a few weeks until you get a letter which informs you that you're being dumped as the service is gone under. So we'll see how much whinging your lame ass gets thru then! Maybe if you printed and posted your posts in this topic to esat they'd give you a job, that is seeing that you seem to be so in love with them...