Eircom ADSL pricing.

SkepticOne

Eircom's current ADSL pricing:

At the time of writing, these are:

512 kb/s down / 128 kb/s up
Basic uncapped ADSL: Not Available
ADSL (3GB download): EUR 107.69 [1]

1024 kb/s down / 256 kbs up
Basic uncapped ADSL: EUR 204.49
ADSL (6GB download): EUR 168.19 [2]

Equipment
Single User:
USB Modem: EUR 175.45
Ethernet Modem: EUR 242.00

4 Users:
4 Port Ethernet Modem: EUR 326.70

Other charges:

Connection fee: EUR 199.65
Data surcharge: 3.63 cent / MB [3].

The above attempts to be accurate at time of writing. All prices include VAT @ 21%. Prices subject to change. Contact Eircom for up-to-date pricing.

[1] Restricted to 1 user.
[2] Restricted to 4 users.
[3] For download restricted services, this is the cost per megabyte for additional data above the cap that you may be charged.

longword

SkepticOne, I notice your closed "Eircom ADSL pricing" thread mentions user limits of 1 for "Solo" and 4 for "Multi". Where does this information come from? Does that mean you get four IPs with Multi? Are Eircom taking a stand on the use of ICS & NATing routers? Did they sneak out a list of Terms & Conditions?

Not that I think for a minute that a 3GB cap could serve any more than a single user.

SkepticOne

As far as I know, they are all single IP products. I phoned them up around the time they first announced pricing (back in September) and I was told that the 'enhanced' service was a single fixed IP, the others variable. I assume, therefore, that all of them are single IP products, the mult-user aspect of them being supplied by NAT/IP masquerding hardware. This may be incorrect or may have been changed since then.

The information in that closed thread was got from www.adsl.ie.

Whether the 'single user' option is such because of Ts&Cs or simply because they don't supply the appropriate hardware, I don't know.

sceptre

Merged and reopened.

Dr99

Hay SkepticOne
Do you know if you have to use Eircon's (overpriced) equipment
or can you buy your own?
Those Modem prices strike me as a little high! and ~€200 for connection!!

(Ah who do I think I'm kidding there's no way I'll be paying over €100/month for caped ADSL anyway - back to dial up for me ):( )

dahamsta

Do you know if you have to use Eircon's (overpriced) equipment or can you buy your own?

The pending changes [PDF] for the Telecommunications Scheme would suggest not:

It shall be the responsibility of the eircom i-stream customer to ensure that compatible customer premises equipment is available to enable the company to effect the connection of eircom i-stream access.

This would be in-line with their policy for "Hi-Speed", which allows you to supply your own equipment. Bitstream competitors may consider subsidising equipment, as in (most) other countries, but Eircom's high connection charge may preclude this. That said, competitors should be able to offer lower equipment pricing than Eircom, as Eircom's quoted prices for equipment are rather expensive.

adam

Giblet

Who the F**k is gonna be able to pay €200 a month for ADSL. The other packages are rip offs as well. But €200 a month for something that other countries get for less than half that.!!!!!
4 user wth only a 3gb cap is cheaper but useless for my house.

Calman

So if I wanted to buy ADSL for my house tommorrow it would cost me the following at the cheapest:

EUR 200 for connection
EUR 175 for cheapest (USB) modem
EUR 110 for the month

prices rounded giving a total of
485 EUR

I take it that this is right?

c0y0te

Gotta be honest here.... I think that anyone who forks out 100+ euro for a 512K/128K capped connection, or indeed the higher level service (for a higher price) is INSANE!!!!

I can understand an SME or existing business looking to do this, as a way to reduce costs from ISDN.. but for a typical home user/consumer to pay this for ADSL is madness... in my opinion.

On the other hand if you have the money to throw away.. and don't mind the cap.. well who am I to comment

Bottom line - nice that the ADSL service is finally here, but no way am I paying these prices. Bring on the competition:D

c0y0te

infomat

Originally posted by longword
SkepticOne, I notice your closed "Eircom ADSL pricing" thread mentions user limits of 1 for "Solo" and 4 for "Multi". Where does this information come from? Does that mean you get four IPs with Multi? Are Eircom taking a stand on the use of ICS & NATing routers? Did they sneak out a list of Terms & Conditions?

Not that I think for a minute that a 3GB cap could serve any more than a single user.

I phoned on Tuesday and was told that a single static IP was only available with the Enhanced service.

Winters

I think it might be a good idea if everyone boycotts the ADSL for a month or so to show that we dont want to pay high prices. Theyll get the message if E33 Million is spent on ADSl and nobody gets it. They will have to bring the prices down

longword

Originally posted by Winters
I think it might be a good idea if everyone boycotts the ADSL for a month

We're not Eircom's target market, and we'd simply be validating Eircom's assertion that we don't want ADSL. They're targetting businesses. Even at the rates on offer, DSL is a good deal compared to the only alternative, a leased line for a thousand plus euro a month.

Xara

Originally posted by Winters
I think it might be a good idea if everyone boycotts the ADSL for a month or so to show that we dont want to pay high prices. Theyll get the message if E33 Million is spent on ADSl and nobody gets it. They will have to bring the prices down

Surely this is what eircom want you to do? i.e. Remain paying EUR 200 - 300 per month for phone calls to use a crappy dial up service?

You can't win!

Why not try drugs instead? They are far easier to get one's hands on in Ireland than DSL!

Xara

Winters

The business will either go with ESAT or NTL's cable network. Most business are on ISDN so theyll have to change there telephone lines if they wanna go ADSL. most offices that rely on the web have aboot 10 ISDN lines into there offices. They'd rather wait for esat then have to stick to a s**tty CAP that will be gone within a day

The_Bullman

yes drugs are more available than dsl.


though trying to stay on drugs 24/7 is pretty risky for your health and also more expensive than the price Eircom are charging.

SkepticOne

I would tend to wait until the competition arrives. What I see here smacks of a monopoly pricing structure, i.e., start with a basic product and charge a fortune for it, then disable it in various ways for the cheaper options. Charge according to the utility people will get out of it rather than the underlying costs. That way, they maximise revenue from as many people as possible.

On the other hand, the high wholesale price (EUR 50 per month, 350 connection, 99 disconnection), together with the fact that Ireland is a small country, means that there won't be a lot of competition and what little competition there is will be forced to cater mainly to the business market. Without much competition, a lot of this pricing structure will remain, possibly undercutting Eircom slightly.

Xara

Originally posted by SkepticOne
On the other hand, the high wholesale price (EUR 50 per month, 350 connection, 99 disconnection), together with the fact that Ireland is a small country

The wholesale cost of using eircom to deliver one's DSL offering is surely the bottom line? If National Toll Roads had two gas stations on the M50 charging EUR 1 per litre, and the government decided to open up the "M50 petrol market" to competition - but allowed NTR to charge a royalty of EUR 0.50 per litre to any reseller of petrol along the route - competition would be irrelevant. NTR would control the system and who'd bother opening a gas station?

The fact that Ireland is a small country is in my view irrelevant. DSL is widely available at affordable prices in virtually any small European country you care to look at. With or without competition as we have seen from other postings. It's down to government policy everywhere.


Xara

keithwhir

what are those eircom adsl modems like ? why dont ireland offline offer to sell there own modems , buy them in bulk and sell them cheat to members . ( like www.letsbuyit.com ) what ya think?

infomat

Is anyone here actually planning to subscribe to any of Eircom's I-Stream offerings?

BoneCollector

NO! not @ those extortioned Price`s:mad:

Shamo

I'm going to wait and see what other companies like ESAT release, after the release of Eircoms ADSL service.

Even if it was availible in my area tomorrow I wouldn't order it.
I MIGHT be able to pay the cost of the Solo but the fact it has a 3Gig cap puts me off totally.

BKtje

ill wait till the end of the summer to see what the competition offer. By then im sure some people will have it and will be able to tell us what its like .

Dustaz

yep, im going for it.

Kegser

I agree with Dusty. I'm too tired of waiting; and it's not too far off my phone bill anyway so what have I to lose?

KdjaCL

and it's not too far off my phone bill anyway so what have I to lose?

#


Thats my line of thinkin anyway
Hey Dustaz could you post a Poll on "are you getting it or not" (DSL...b4 sum smart ass replies).
But the i need to know about DSL modems ,as there is no way i am buying one of theirs (or do i have to),
Then maybe the 1st month wouldnt be so bad.
Kdja

pete

Me, I'm waiting to see what Esat etc offer - who knows what they'll come up with. I really don't fancy getting tied into a 12 month contract with Eircom now if a better deal is around the corner.

Another few weeks on 56k won't hurt.

Mountjoy Mugger

I think I'll sign up too.

As I already got the installation and hardware gratis for testing, I can't see Esat introducing something that's going to save me that much for the first year.

pete

Originally posted by Mountjoy Mugger
I think I'll sign up too.

As I already got the installation and hardware gratis for testing, I can't see Esat introducing something that's going to save me that much for the first year.

If I was on the trial, and was considering signing up, i'd leave it until the absolute last possible minute.

Just in case.

Pimp

Just ordered the single user....i dont d/l all that much, i use the net for gaming. Note: My line failed the line test for the trials but has now mysteriuosly passed for the actual product.

OMG i can smell the low/stable ping.
Anyone who online games knows what i am talking about

Pimp

dahamsta

The information coming out of Esat is very conflicting. One person has told me (via another) that Esat's pricing will be very competitive. Another has told me (again via another) that it's not prudent to wait, as Esat are in no hurry to release a service. Course, they're not /really/ conflicting...

adam

Gunn4r

they should launch a no limits adsl service ;-)

Mountjoy Mugger

Originally posted by dahamsta
The information coming out of Esat is very conflicting. One person has told me (via another) that Esat's pricing will be very competitive. Another has told me (again via another) that it's not prudent to wait, as Esat are in no hurry to release a service. Course, they're not /really/ conflicting...

It would be very interesting to see if Eircom react to a competitive pricing from Esat.

[dream mode] Esat launch unlimited 512/128 for €80, inclusive of VAT[/dream mode]

Pimp

does it actually cost eircom money when people d/l? or is this purely a money making thing?

and another thing. Is there a minimum term of contract eg 6months/1 year?

manonthemoon

Does anyone lnow would the Adsl be suitable for a small internet cafe.

Say 10 PC's

Would customers have a fast enough connection for gaming

koneko

Minimum contract is 12 months. If you cancel out, I believe they can charge you up to a few months of the cost.

dahamsta

does it actually cost eircom money when people d/l?

Kind of. In a way. Not really. Uh...

See, connectivity is bought in bulk, for fixed fees; and you don't buy transfer, you buy bandwidth. Plumbing is the best way of explaining it: Say Beecher H2O[TM] supplies you with water, and I have a pipe going into your gaff (so to speak). But I have an innovative (and rather devious) business model: I charge you for the /pipe/, not the water. When you pay me a fixed fee for the pipe, I turn on your water, and you can pull as much water as you damn well please though it; I won't charge you a red cent for the actual water.

But you can only get a certain amount of water through the pipe, right? So if you want more water, you have to buy another pipe. Ha! Gotacha, sucker! To bring this across to backhaul: If Eircom have a 155Mbps link to New York, they pay a fixed fee for it. If they fill the link, they have to get another one, again for a fixed fee.

Industry seems to find this perfectly acceptable, which I've always found rather odd. It strikes me as one of the biggest, longest-running and most widely-accepted scams in history. No-one has ever explained why bandwidth is billed in this way. Perhaps someone could explain it to me today?

or is this purely a money making thing?

Kind of. In a way. Not really. Uh...

I can't answer this definitively*, but I reckon that it's aimed primarily at stopping "abuse" right from the off. Of course, many (including myself) wouldn't define using more than 3GB of transfer a month as abusive -- BT's soon-to-be-released "BT Broadband" product's cap one 1GB a /day/ demonstrates this admirably. (Transparency: the cap hasn't been confirmed by BT yet.)

Eircom may not be able to match BT on this, because they don't have BT's bandwidth buying power and so pay higher prices, but it couldn't be /that/ far off. And again, this is arguable, because we don't know BT's margin on the product, and we don't know usage averages. It's quite likely that usage averages are far below their stated cap.

Is there a minimum term of contract eg 6months/1 year?

Yes: From the oft-quoted Pending Changes document: "An eircom i-stream access is subject to a minimum contract period of twelve months. Where an eircom i-stream access is ceased during the minimum twelve month contract period the customer is liable to pay the monthly rental for the balance of the unexpired contract period up to a maximum of six months' rental."

adam


* Because, obviously, I don't work at Eircom**.
** Hey Eircom, how about giving me a job? I'm that desperate! I'll even start spelling your name with a lowercase 'E'?!

BKtje

Originally posted by Pimp
Just ordered the single user....i dont d/l all that much, i use the net for gaming. Note: My line failed the line test for the trials but has now mysteriuosly passed for the actual product.

OMG i can smell the low/stable ping.
Anyone who online games knows what i am talking about

Pimp

Apparently the 'ping' is a disgrace. If your on ISDN it will get worse than what you already have but i suppose if your on 56k it will seem like a dream. If you think your ping will be anywhere near what the ppl with DSL in UK or NL ping your mistaken. (according to the ppl on the trial who replied to my queries. Its in a thread here somewhere)

The game itself will dload/upload quite a lot when u play. I can upload/dload about 30 megs or more for a cpl hours gaming and thats on ISDN. On dsl ud be looking at breaking the 3 gig limit with just ur gaming if you aint careful.

BK

TinCool

Okay, whats the Eircom ADSL info line phone number ?

Saruman

If people boycott ADSL until they bring down their prices would they do it you think?

dahamsta

If people boycott ADSL until they bring down their prices would they do it you think?

Of course they would, they've invested a rake of money in it, they have to start getting a return on it. But how many people are really going to "boycott" it? If I was near an ADSL-enabled exchange, I'd already have signed up, because ADSL would both save me money and provide better connectivity. It would be a /necessity/ for me, not a luxury. The same goes for most SME's and sole traders.

Competition will deal with pricing. If competition doesn't, the ODTR will have to sort it out, but it's not time yet. The market has to be given a chance in this case.

adam

Winters

I would like to use it but at thoese prices :rolleyes: .
I think most people will now wait and see what ESAt and everybody else has to offer. If they price it cheap EVERYONE will go with them.

Dustaz

Originally posted by B-K-DzR


Apparently the 'ping' is a disgrace.

The ping isnt that bad. With a bit of tweaking i get 50 on irish servers.

The game itself will dload/upload quite a lot when u play. I can upload/dload about 30 megs or more for a cpl hours gaming and thats on ISDN. On dsl ud be looking at breaking the 3 gig limit with just ur gaming if you aint careful.

Rubbish. Ive had it since august and ive been gaming a HELL of a lot. Ive only run over the cap once and that was when i went absolutly mental on kazaa. Let me make this perfectly clear again. If you only use it for gaming and things like IRC, youll be allright with the cap.

longword

Originally posted by Dustaz

The ping isnt that bad. With a bit of tweaking i get 50 on irish servers.

Did anyone ask them to turn off interleave?

Dustaz

ill speak for more than myself when i say "huh?"

Whos them and whats interleave?
(eircom and an exchange setting?)

longword

Originally posted by Dustaz
ill speak for more than myself when i say "huh?"

I have a feeling that'll be the response I get from Eircom when I ask

Whos them and whats interleave?
(eircom and an exchange setting?)

DSL can operate in two modes, "Interleave" or "FastPath" (AKA "Fast" or "Interleave off"). It's an exchange setting. As I understand it, inteleave mode introduces deliberate delays and Forward Error Correction into the data to spread out the transmission a bit on the line and make it less succeptible to interferance. It's the same trick they use on compact discs, allowing them to survive a certain level of damage with no impact on the audio quality.

FastPath allows for lower pings - less than 20ms on the first hop of a traceroute - but might lead to more packet loss or even an unreliable service depending on the quality of the line.

Best link I can come up with is: http://www.gaoresearch.com/news/media/tol/TOLReview2.html

Dangger

The DSL source book from Paradyene is a good futher intro to DSL technology. Its freely available at http://www.paradyne.com/sourcebook_offer/

The DSL Sourcebook - Third Edition
The Comprehensive Resource On Digital Subscriber Line Technology - This edition has been completely revised from cover to cover, featuring dozens of new and updated network diagrams, plus an introduction to Service Level Management for DSL providers.

jmcc

Originally posted by dahamsta

Industry seems to find this perfectly acceptable, which I've always found rather odd. It strikes me as one of the biggest, longest-running and most widely-accepted scams in history. No-one has ever explained why bandwidth is billed in this way.

The ISPs and providers buyers buy bandwidth. The ISPs then resell the bandwidth. Of course they do not want to resell clean bandwidth to the public - that would be just wasting the investment as more often than not the link would be just ticking over rather than being actively used to saturation point.

So instead of selling pure dedicated bandwidth to a single non-leased line customer, the ISPs break it down so that they can sell the same bandwidth to a whole pile of customers. None of these customers are guaranteed any bandwith (most ADSL and DSL agreements would not guarantee that the customer will get rates of X kbit/s up and Y kbit/s down but rather that these are maximum rates that the user will get under optimum conditions.). This is the concept of contention - customers effectively contending for bandwidth. I don't know what contention ratios that Eircom and Esat are using for ADSL but I can guess that the domestic users will get shafted in favour of the business users. Leased line users tend to pay more for their bandwidth.

Packet based networks (the old Eirpac network if anyone remembers it.) used to be billed on packets sent rather than the bandwidth. However with the widespread use of the internet, there is the problem of valuing the packet.

ISPs used to run on users:modems ratios of as bad as 10:1 in the early days. The principal was that no users would be connected continually thus tying up a modem.

One thing that worries me about Eircom is that it would probably try to bill ADSL users for DoS attacks. I doubt that they are using a sophisticated billing model that breaks down traffic types.

As regards the bandwidth selling model being a scam - it is to an extent but it is not as bad as Eircom shares.

Regards...jmcc

BKtje

Rubbish. Ive had it since august and ive been gaming a HELL of a lot. Ive only run over the cap once and that was when i went absolutly mental on kazaa. Let me make this perfectly clear again. If you only use it for gaming and things like IRC, youll be allright with the cap. [/B]

Well i been keeping a record of what i dload/upload a day for the last month and with my gaming habits im doing about 30megs down for gaming alone on an average day. That works out about 1.2gigs ish.
(i realise after re-working my sums that i made a small error which dbl'd the size ). Still 1.2gigs on gaming in a month is a lot . But your right well within limits as logn as you dont go crazy on kazaa.

One thing i am wondering tho. your 50ms to irish servers. I take it thats a game ping and not a dos ping? If so what game plz?
I read on here that the eircom dsl gave dodgy pings (slightly higher than isdn). Ne chance of clearing this up for me cos if what u say is accurate then im much more inclined towards DSL.

Cheers

longword

Originally posted by Dangger
The DSL source book from Paradyene is a good futher intro to DSL technology.

An excellent read. Thanks for the link.

ando

Originally posted by B-K-DzR
I read on here that the eircom dsl gave dodgy pings (slightly higher than isdn

SLIGHTLY !! I once got a ping of 23 to barrysworld (england) with isdn (64k) but for some reason I usually get late 40's now

El_MUERkO

I'd sign up immediately if the cap was 15gigs or more. So I'll cross my fingers and see what ESAT have to offer.

//hurry up ESAT me is stomping my feet