Eircom Line test.

212.2.179.66

Is there such a thing as Equality in Eircom? If there is I seemed to have missed it. Or is there one law set down for the Ritch and another for the pore? It is my opinion that if you pay €1,000 (just an Eg.) for a phone line you should be entitled to the same service as everyone else. Otherwise Eircom should structure their prices like this:

Jimmy is in the middle of Nowhere and he has a Copper Line to his exchange so we will charge him €500 for his ****ty connection where as John lives in Dublin and he has all the benifit of a digital line so we will charge him €1,000 for his connection.

As far as I know Eircom charge everyone at the same rate. So it goes without saying that everyone is entitled to the same service from their line. Eircom charge everyone the same price for their line/s so the service should be equal for everyone else. For far too long we have accepted disscrimation as being 'Ohh well his/her line is way out from the exchange and what do you expect?'. And while I am at it. ADSL seems to be a Dublin thing now and to hell with all the rest of the country. No fair! (No offence to the Dubs)

It's time we all stood togeather and not just look at Dublin for equal rights. Cork/Limerick/Galway/ in fact any Town/City should have the same connectivity as Dublin anything less should be treated as disscrimination by Eircom.

212.2.163.164

jd

Originally posted by 212.2.179.66
is my opinion that if you pay €1,000 (just an Eg.) for a phone line you should be entitled to the same service as everyone else. Otherwise Eircom should structure their prices like this:

Jimmy is in the middle of Nowhere and he has a Copper Line to his exchange so we will charge him €500 for his ****ty connection where as John lives in Dublin and he has all the benifit of a digital line so we will charge him €1,000 for his connection.

212.2.163.164

Acting devils advocate here-
If you are living half way up a mountain it probably costs more to provide services than if you live in the city centre:)

ando

ah man, I really hope my line passes the test (failed for trials, installed a second line, that failed to) but I seriously doubt it will pass as I'm aprox 3.1 Kilometers away from the exchange. I got 3.1Km by driving directly to the exchange, but I dunno if the layout of the wiring is shorter or longer ?

BT have Radsl out now (5km range), any sign of eircom/esat doing the same?

*me gets on me knees and prays like me's never done before* !

Boston

allmsot certain Eircom will release that, but not yet

dRNk SAnTA

what about Leap? Would their prices be competitive to Eircom or is their form of wireless DSL too expensive. I thought I read that they would be releasing late april but there hasn't been much talk about it, Im just curious as to does anyone know whats going on.

KdjaCL

Well 72 hours later and still no call back.
Guess i failed
Will ahve to ring em agian in morning .
Kdja

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by 212.2.179.66
Jimmy is in the middle of Nowhere and he has a Copper Line to his exchange so we will charge him €500 for his ****ty connection where as John lives in Dublin and he has all the benifit of a digital line so we will charge him €1,000 for his connection.

And while I am at it. ADSL seems to be a Dublin thing now and to hell with all the rest of the country. No fair! (No offence to the Dubs

Incidentally I'm in Dublin, within 1k of an enabled exchange, I'm in a newish house (2yrs) I get 45.5kps on my modem, (used to get 38/40 in my old house a half a mile away) but have failed the line test for ASDL, and no they couldn't give me a reason. No timeframe for when it would get sorted.

So in summary if you think its anything other than a lottery your barking up the wrong errorcom pole.

Supercell

Interesting to see this old post dragged up given that i'm now on a magically working adsl line..ie the one i posted a few months ago where i was wondering if it would pass now that money is involved ..mind you it really hurt my wallet initially getting hooked up.

segadreamcast

Just to bring my comments up to date in a 5 months on kind of way.

I'm still failing for ADSL*

I'm still getting connection speeds between 46.6kbps and 53kbps.

* = However, in July an interesting development occured. Eircom told me I passed. Repeatedly. Over various line tests. I got my kit sent out to me in the post and everything was good to go for <date I no longer remember>.

I sat around waiting... the appointment passed...nobody showed.

Then, three nights later my mother noticed a message on my answering machine - allegedly from the night before the installation, though I was in all night and wasn't on the net...

It told us that the engineer had been down to the exchange and said it wouldn't work out - and that they'd have to cancel the installation for tomorrow. In addition to that, I could "probably never get ADSL".

What the hell happened? I'll never know - but just a few weeks ago I was talking to a nice guy on the DSL department who said this case was completely unique and stood out, they had even "skimmed over the topic in a meeting".

Up until last week - I was still passing the line tests, I even had another appointment arranged (13/9/02). Once again, nobody showed up. There were no voice messages. I rang eircom that day - and was told that (a ) I had infact FAILED my last line test. and (b ) No appointment was ever arranged.

Now I know you're probably thinking "Well, perhaps you misheard and you just failed..." Not the case. I was talking in-depth with this guy about what had happened previously, and was assured that I had passed and that the installation would be on Friday the 13th of September - as I remember him saying "rather ominously". How can Eircom claim this appointment was never made? How can they claim I failed? Do they have rogue staff pissing me off for the hell of it? I have no idea.

I still have the dsl manual and whatnot in my closet if anyone feels like burning it on my behalf though.

Thanks for listening. End rant.

- Noel

Kevok

:eek: that would actually make a pretty good horror story. It's pretty spooky.


Whats really spooky is that this time last year when they were "about to release ADSL" I actually passed the line test, only to be subsequently told that because my line was split it was impossible to ever get adsl.

When I asked the sales person if I could get my original line "reunified", i was told "I'm sorry we don't do that."

Oh btw, for any legally inclined people here:

When Eircom did split the line they installed the box inside my house (inside the ESB cabinet). If I request they remove it (as it is their property) will they do it?

Hannibal_12

My own tale of woe is similar.
I rang up the DSL number, line test, good, would you like to order?. Decided to think about it.
Rang again ,sorry cant order or do line test because your exchange has not been upgraded??????

..and we cant give you an estimate as to when it will be.

At this point I, understandably, gave up. Its really unfair to be penalised for living in this country when you think of the range of services available in other European states not to mention better weather, better transport etc....

iwb

Sorry for the long winded post. However, it will help me to get it off my chest and may help others here also.
I am recently returned from North America where I enjoyed quite a reliable and fast cable modem connection for about 25 Euro a month. It is really hard to go back to dialup after that.
I do work for many companies over the net from my home and recently had one of them mail me some CD's as it just wasn't feasable to try to pull down files over dialup.

I first applied for DSL about mid july. There was at least a two week lapse before they could even test the line for compatibility as we had just moved here and the new phoneline records weren't fully entered yet. That was a frustrating few weeks.
Eventually, many calls later, I got the reply that they could now test for DSL.
The lady on the freephone number tested the line and got back some kind of inconclusive result. She explained that she would have to send off the request and it would take two weeks. My guess is that she was pulling from a database and the indication was that perhaps the line was marginal. The next internal step would be to get a live test done.
I was impatient and tried for the result after one week. She was very polite and understanding but no result.
At the end of the second week, I called and was told that my line failed. I was very disappointed. I got my first phone bill and I think about 100 Euro of it was dialup to internet. That was with me being very careful.
I decided to not take no for an answer. I continued to call the DSL number to no avail. They were fairly patient but couldn't help. One lady suggested I talk to the local exchange to see if they could help to fix my line. I spent a week or more tracking down the correct number for the exchange. They gave me one that doesn’t work at first. Eventually someone gave me the mobile number for the lead technician. I spoke with him and he was very professional but also very adamant that he wouldn’t discuss DSL for two reasons.
1. He was running four exchanges with eight technicians
2. He was specifically told that DSL wasn’t anything to do with him.

I did push him a bit though and he told me that distance would be an issue. He also said the problem could be anywhere.

As I really need an always on and preferably high speed service, I decided if I can’t get it on my line, I will get it on someone elses line and share it by whatever means. I did some checking. My friend with line of sight about 300M away has two lines and both failed on the spot. I was told that it was unlikely that DSL would ever be delivered on these lines. A few others in the area passed but none of them wanted DSL. I asked my neighbour in the apartment building if he would be interested. He thought he might so I got his line checked. An immediate pass. A month later he still hasn’t made up his mind if he wants the service or not.
I called the DSL people again and asked if they could swap copper with my neighbours agreement. They had no idea what I was talking about. They put me onto the PSTN side who said it was a DSL issue. Eventually I called my friend at the exchange who told me that even if they swapped copper right outside the apartment, the problem might be wiring inside the apartment and it still might fail. It would also cost me a minimum of 2 x 129 euros to try if they could ever figure out how to enter it into the system. It is a very unusual request.
I called DSL again and asked for the manager. They put me onto a lady who said she could check out the LEBA? Allocation. I never heard of it before but it sounded like something positive. She promised to call me the next day but I never heard from her again nor would she take my calls.
When I complained, they put me in touch with a guy, the first one I spoke to in nearly two months who was actually somewhat knowledgeable and seemed very sympathetic to my plight.
He asked me to call the fault number and ask for my line to be checked. No faults on the line. I asked the lady to check again. She was sure there were no faults.
I reported this back to DSL and he looked into it further. He had the line rechecked which took a while and it registered a fail again. He called me this morning and asked me to unplug everything from the wall jacks except a phone and he would get it checked again. He called me five minutes later and announced that it failed again.
I have asked several times if they can ignore the fail and come install it anyway. I am willing to risk the 200 Euro if it doesn’t work. They say it isn’t possible as the system won’t allow them to go to the next screen if it doesn’t pass. Even if it did, they pass the order on to the implementation team and if their pretest doesn’t pass, they won’t go any further.
I can’t think of anything else I can do at this stage. It has been a few months now of many, many phone calls and lots of waiting to get to this point. I can say for sure that very few people at Eircom understand DSL at all.
My biggest frustration is that they won’t install anyway. As someone stated earlier in this forum, many telcos all over will sell a kit which you install yourself and no test is done in advance. I installed a few in North America myself.
Eircom is busy connecting up the people who do qualify and my guess is that the testing is quite stringent as this means less trouble calls later. Only when all the easy to install ones are done will they come back to trouble lines like mine and remove the line taps and coils etc that may be on them after years of chopping and changing with bad maintenance practises. Although I will take anything I can get right now, I know if I have a choice in the future, I won’t use Eircom!!!!!

lphchild

One of their installation people told me that they know why most lines fail but are under orders not to give specific reasons as this would encourage people to complain and give them a foothold from which to argue for an upgrade,new copper or whatever the specific fix may be.

lph

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by iwb
Although I will take anything I can get right now, I know if I have a choice in the future, I won’t use Eircom!!!!!

I think most people are in agreement with you there. However the reality is that there may never be an alternative while they have a monopoly of the local loop nationally. They know this which is why they can afford to deliver such poor service at every level.

Ayashii

The really weird thing about Eircom's ADSL rollout is that they genuinely seem to have no plan or schedule as to which exchanges are being upgraded and in what order.

Considering that they are supposed to be spending close to 120 million in rolling the thing out, its frightening to think that they don't appear to posess any plans as to where and when the money is being spent....

I was told the other day upon inquiring about Malahide availability, that they didn't know when it would be upgraded (even though I think that exchange was one of the real original trial exchanges back in 1999) and that it "was up to the technician's to tell us when it was ready". Funny thing is that Swords (right next door) has been upgraded.

Didn't Eircom receive governent funding in some shape or form to roll this thing out and if so surely that money can only be paid out on clear and tangible deliverables...... or am I only being too realistic?!

Hannibal_12

IWB, Welcome (back?) to Ireland, land of incompetence. Your post is an amazing read simply beacuse it demonstrates the utter shambles that is Eircom and the Irish Telecoms industry. Have you ever considered fowarding that to the ODTR(whatever that would do) or the consumer association?
North America is a place I have a few relatives and friends and somewhere in the not to distant I hope to move to, where I may eventually get a decent internet connection.
I was recently in Cyprus, a country that is hardly classed as the most industrially developed in the world and to my surprise [sarcasm] thay have DSL available for a whopping [sarcasm] £12 cyp per month (roughly €22 per month) for 640kbps: http://www.cytanet.com.cy/netrunner/moreg.html#1
. What do we have in the E-Tub? €107 per month for a slower service that is effectively unavailable maintained by people that dont seem to have a clue about it.

lynchie

He asked me to call the fault number and ask for my line to be checked. No faults on the line. I asked the lady to check again. She was sure there were no faults.
I reported this back to DSL and he looked into it further. He had the line rechecked which took a while and it registered a fail again

I had the same problem. I live less than 50m from the exchange, and my line kept failing the pretest. Their excuse for my line failing - your too far from the exchange. (After me explaining that I could throw the phone out the window and hit the exchange I was that close) In the end, I asked for a new line to be put in and I asked them to note that I wanted it for DSL. When the engineer came out to install the second line I got him to look at the first line. He tested it and said there was nearly a full short circuit on the line. He said thats the reason it was failing for DSL. Rang faults, "sir, theres no problem on your line" - "Well the engineer says there is".... arguing for ages before he said he'd send somebody out to have a look at it. Anyway, the peons at the end of the phone havent got a clue, never believe what they tell you.

iwb, best bet, if you really want DSL, like I did, was order a new line, telling them that you want it for DSL and ask them to note it down on the order form.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by lynchie

iwb, best bet, if you really want DSL, like I did, was order a new line, telling them that you want it for DSL and ask them to note it down on the order form.

I'd nearly try this myself except they'd probaby use a DAC on the line to give me a second line, and then I would have two lines neither of which would test ok. Or am I missing something?

zynaps

Originally posted by iwb Eventually someone gave me the mobile number for the lead technician. I spoke with him and he was very professional but also very adamant that he wouldn’t discuss DSL for two reasons.[/B]

Well... do you think it might be something in your apartment?
Maybe you could try following the wire back as far as you can go and replacing all the rest, or something... though maybe eircom wouldn't like that :P

Here's an idea though...
As you mentioned you were talking to an engineer guy, and he actually had a clue.. maybe it'd be an idea for the irelandoffline guys to grab an engineer in eircom somewhere, and get him to dump all the scoop and real info on dsl/adsl/...?

We'd be more likely to get somewhere by talking to someone who knows their arse from their phone jack, than by getting led around a maze of drivel by marketroids, no?

How about setting up an anonymous Q&A session or something?
zynaps

iwb

I doubt that it is something in my apartment. I can't say for sure as I don't have access to all the junction boxes etc. The stance the tech was taking is the safe answer stance.
I don't know what is to gain from having an Eircom guy spill the beans as I doubt that anyone would be any better off in the long run. They will do what suits them for the most part anyway. It would be interesting though to hear some of the stories that are doubtless out there already from the tech perspective.
The bottom line is that DSL doesn't like line taps and loaded copper. Unfortunately, through bad maintenance of the cable plant, there are lots of line taps and probably coils also. It would cost Eircom some serious cash to go out and clean up these lines one by one when requested by guys like me. They could have a policy of removing these problems as they come across them and eventually have a way better infrastructure for the likes of DSL service but that kind of thinking isn't really the telco way.
When they have exhausted their ample supply of people whose lines do qualify, in a year or two, they will then have to start looking at lines that don't, to keep the business growing.

ando

Originally posted by lynchie
best bet, if you really want DSL, like I did, was order a new line, telling them that you want it for DSL and ask them to note it down on the order form.

been there, done that...

My new 'DSL capable' line is now an Isdn line

LFCFan

I was told when I rang up that because my line hasn't been tested for 4 weeks that a different department needs to carry out the test and sent the results to the department that are supposed to carry out the test. So my understanding is that when you ring up Sales to do a 'test' all they are doing is entering your number into their computer and getting back the result of a previous test. If and when they tell me I am eligible for ADSL I will be telling them where they can stick it at the prices they want to extort from me.

LFCFan

My line has failed the test as the Tyrrelstown Exchange is not enabled for DSL. Can anyone tell me where the Tyrrelstown Exchange is? I recently moved into a new house there and was told that a new exchange had to be set up to accomodate all the new housing in the area. If this is the case then surely they should have build a DSL enabled exchange to start with instead of having to go back at a later date and enable it. Gob****es!

Matt Simis

Well LFC,


I live there too and also am quite confused\annoyed over this. For the past 6months I made it my business to talk to the different engineers putting in the lines and exchanges. They confirmed that all the equipment been used in the exchange is new and confirmed that it would be suitable for ADSL.

Off I went to the ADSL Sales team and asked for the line test. At that point in time they were having difficulties finding my name and address in the system, but the 3 people I spoke to assured me that such a new development would be ADSL enabled. Well, due to problems in the system and issues caused by "other departments" in Eircom they could not test the line for 3 weeks (I was ringing them every two days, "just another day sir").

At the end of the 3 week peroid, they STILL could not find me in the system (well they could find me, but the ac was messed up and useless to them) and then I was told that Tyrrelstown was now confirmed as not being ADSL enabled [yet]. There was no reason given for the apparent stupidity in installing a new non-ADSL enabled exchange or the mis-information I had been fed over the past 3 weeks.

It took 5 1/2 months to get the phone line installed (and the brand new exchange), 3 weeks to attempt the "test" and still no ADSL line test at end of it, just a "No". We have sent a letter of complaint on how they handled the matter, although I doubt much good will come of it.

FYI LFC, the Tyrrelstown exchange is physically located within Tyrrelstown, making it rather ideal distance was for ADSL.



Matt

LFCFan

Hi Matt,

Are you in the development closest to Mulhuddard(where I am) or the one furthur on down with the barriers? Where exactly is the exchange within the development? I am disgusted that a brand new exchange was not DSL enabled from the start and now we have to wait till they upgrade. What a farce. Not that I will be paying their extortion money but like you said, whenever it is enabled and the price comes down(if ever) we will be nicely situated for ADSL access.

Matt Simis

Im there too. The Exchange in the second development, beside the Bus Stop\round about thing, based on what Eircom told me.



Matt

LFCFan

I know this is off topic but I just wondered how you'd found living here so far? Have you heard anything about the Town centre they are supposed to be building?

I like you took ages to get in the phone line with Kranok Construction telling me it was €ircon at fault for not laying the lines and €ircon were telling me Kranok were at fault for not putting the ducting down. What excuse were you given?

If the exchange really is there then ADSL access in our estate would be very good. All we have to do now is wait a couple of years :mad:

sceptre

Originally posted by LFCFan
I know this is off topic

Actually (and I don't normally do this) it's very off-topic.

I'd recommend using PMs or exchanging email addresses (by PMs)

It'll save me moving part of the discussion to the Recycle Bin

There is a "Dublin" forum (under "Regional" in the top of page list) where you could well have a discussion on the non-building of a town centre.

Dustaz

LOL, i was just going to suggest that, but i didnt want to see things that should be in PMs on Dublin (cos id have to issue another pm

RicardoSmith

Its pretty obvious that the problem is that errorcom don't know what they are doing. Based on all the stories I've heard so far, it doesn't seem to matter if the exchange is enabled or not, or even if its a brand new exchange with brand new copper going to the house next door. They don't know how it works and if theres a problem they simply don't what it is. Basically errorcom are incompetent. They tell you a different story nearly everythen you ring them, and then they contradict themselves. Only for the fact that they have a monopoly and they are protected from any competition do they exist at all. I know that as soon as I have any option other then errorcom I'll be talking it.