Number of ADSL Connections

MDR

FYI : Figures from the ODTR,

There are 997 ADSL connections in the Republic Of Ireland.

Right I am off to Solvenia, be back in two weeks ...

ando

I'm supprised to see the figures so low. I'd like to see how many line tests have been done ? and how many have failed

Hannibal_12

I tried in vain to get it since my exchange hasnt been upgraded yet . I wonder when it will be, I'm guessing 2050.
I would not expect anymore than 997 as it is grossly overpriced and restricted (3gb).
You probably would get a better deal in Slovenia.

Delphi91

According to last Fridays Irish Times, a lot of the 997 ADSL connections are people who were originally part of the trials.

So, if you remove those, you get an idea of how many "genuine" ADSL connections there are.

Mike

aidan_dunne

Originally posted by ando
I'm supprised to see the figures so low. I'd like to see how many line tests have been done ? and how many have failed

As has been pointed out somewhere else on this forum, Eircom's widespread and cheap way of expanding the network by using DACS boxes is probably a major reason why the numbers are so low as a lot of lines would have failed because they've got DACS boxes on them.

Once again, Eircom's policy of "quantity over quality" seems to have proven to be a shot in their own foot because they can't get more ADSL customers (and tons more money!) due to the fact they chose to take the cheap way out when it came to expanding their network.

MDR

May have had something to do with the price ...

woopps did I say that, I was meant to be gone to Solvenia already ...

aidan_dunne

Originally posted by MDR
May have had something to do with the price ...

woopps did I say that, I was meant to be gone to Solvenia already ...

Yeah, you can bet your a$$ that the ridiculous prices Eircom are charging had a hell of a lot to do with the low number of connections too!

And as for Solvenia, I bet they've got flat-rate dial-up and uncapped DSL no problem and reasonably priced, too. Christ, we really are a Third World country, aren't we? That thought is just so bloody depressing.

Tellox

marvellous. Now whenever we ask when we'll be upgraded to ADSL, they'll throw those figures back in our faces and tell us how there's no real demand for it.

aidan_dunne

Originally posted by Tizlox
marvellous. Now whenever we ask when we'll be upgraded to ADSL, they'll throw those figures back in our faces and tell us how there's no real demand for it.

A point that was also made here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=57139&pagenumber=3

The way things are going, I seriously wonder if Eircom actually wants to see ADSL succeed. I'm starting to get the feeling that Eircom would like nothing more than to drag us back to the days of telegraph, morse and carrier pigeon!

segadreamcast

I suppose me connecting (and taking us somewhere to the 1,000 mark) would do the cause a favour...? Yay...guilt free zone and all that.

Fallschirmjager

Now the figures i would like to see is not who has connected -- but who as asked to be connected...997 versus ??? anyone

997 is more a problem for eircon -- are we back to the great 70's and the ' jaysus your LUCKY we want to give you a phone...'

i dont want to be too downbeat but i atually am now beginning to think that the 3G mobile solution with 2mbits link will actually be here (and cheaper) before it is all sorted out on the fixed lines...

Cond0r

I think it'll be a case of:

Meet someone in a pub years in the future abroad who's complaining about the internet access:
<english accent>
Him: In myyyy day all we had was ISDN!
You: Pfsh! ISDN! That was a luxury! all we had was 56k dialup! and we were LUCKY if it ever weeeeerked!
</english accent>

Like that monty python sketch only about net access:P
Oh the joys of living 10 years in the past. :rolleyes:

< Cond0r >

gurramok

There are 997 ADSL connections in the Republic Of Ireland.

Is that 997 include business connections or all residential ??
Oecd figures are normally based on residential ?

I for one refuse to get dsl even though its available to me until that price drops to sane levels !!

That 'no demand' argument does not wash, ireland only country on globe that does not want broadband......LOL

Shred

I seriously wonder if Eircom actually wants to see ADSL succeed.

IMO, Eircom don't want it to succeed, why would they?

Look at the money they can make on dialup in comparisson to ADSL..

Lemming

Originally posted by Shred


IMO, Eircom don't want it to succeed, why would they?

Look at the money they can make on dialup in comparisson to ADSL..

Short term only. Long term, all those lovely-dovely IT companies that came over here will realise what a croc-of-sh*t the whole "e-hub of Europe" line is, and relocate elsewhere.

Who provides their bandwidth? Eir-Coma. Big business is where the money is for them. The Residential market is an after-thought. Bye-Bye lots of revenue you short-sighted little tossers

regi

Hopefully, we're 998, the DSL man is here now.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Lemming
Short term only. Long term, all those lovely-dovely IT companies that came over here will realise what a croc-of-sh*t the whole "e-hub of Europe" line is, and relocate elsewhere.

Some of the IT software companies here are just performing sales and localisation for US parent companies. They import partially complete software cheaply from the US, localise it for different markets, package and ship it. Some of them make substantial profits but these are paid to the Irish treasury at 10%. This is a practice known as "transfer pricing" and is one of the ways that US corporations pay very little taxes in the US. The US parent companies pay very little tax because the actual development is done there and is marked down as an expense, hence not profit making.

On the hardware side, some companies import circuit boards and boxes cheaply from the Far East (the whole thing may be designed in the US) and snap them together in Ireland. Normally the whole thing would be best done in in the Far East, but the 10% tax keeps them here.

The most extreme example is probably pharmaceuticals. Drug powder is imported, pressed in to pills, bottled and shipped. Profits per employee can be as high as 700,000 euros. You can see why the wage-inflation we have been experiencing is not really a problem for these companies. This is why a friend of mine who worked in Glaxo-Welcome said, "There is no pharmaceutical industry in Ireland". He was exagerating a little, of course.

I know people will be saying, "It's not like that in my company", etc. The fact is that these companies I'm describing only employ a minority of people in the country although they are responsible for most of the economic growth. During the '90s each time one of these companies located here, there was a jump in economy. The growth in employment as opposed to general economic growth in the latter half of the '90 was largely in the service sector. The first half of the '90s had high economic growth but low employment growth.

This explains a few paradoxes of the Irish economy. 1) Very high manufacturing productivity but low services productivity, 2) Very low corporation tax but a very high proportion of overall revenue taken from corporation tax (companies are coming to ireland in order to pay corporation tax here and avoid paying it elsewhere). 3) Very high GDP per capita but fairly low typical incomes.

How does this link in to IrelandOffline? Well, this "one trick" economy is very risky. Threats are:

1. Eastern European countries joining the EU and attracting inward investment through low corporation tax (I believe Estonia has 0% corporation tax);

2 The EU 'harmonising' tax arrangements among countries and clamping down on countries like Ireland (though Ireland and Britain vetoed this during the Nice treaty negotiations, the ability to veto in this way is changing)

3. US companies reporting losses. If a company is not making a profit overall (at the group level) then it does not need to locate a subsidiary in a low corporation tax country in order to move profits through that subsidiary. Corel and Lucent may be examples of this.

4. The US tightening up its tax rules on transfer pricing. This could emerge out of the current SEC investigations as part of a general clean-up.

Wage-inflation, lack of infrastructure, high cost of living of course are all factors too, but these are more related to growing a proper domestic economy, and it looks like this is what we'll have to do in the future. Things are changing and we are all aware of the latest news about a massive short-fall in tax-revenues even though, right now, employment has not been affected greatly.

Since we may not always be able to rely on inward investment to drive our economic growth we must develop skills and knowledge in our own people and attract people with skills from abroad. This means providing them with the environment in which they can learn. The current situation where Ireland has the third lowest home internet penetration in the EU has to change. Anyone who works in the IT, science or engingeering industries knows how important the internet is to gaining knowledge and skills.

We have to stop catering directly to corporations and start catering to people if we are to progress.

SkepticOne

Just to put people at ease, the above is not part of the IrelandOffline 'line', it is just my personal insane rantings.

Quorthon

Originally posted by Shred


IMO, Eircom don't want it to succeed, why would they?

Look at the money they can make on dialup in comparisson to ADSL..

I just made this point to an admittedly helpful Eircon sales rep on the i-stream sales line. I am an ISDN customer, and she pointed out that in order to test whether my line would pass, I would need to pay to get my line downgraded to analog. If it then failed the line quality test, in order to get ISDN back I would be treated as a new installation.

At this point I sounded amused and pointed out that they cant be trying very hard to sell this product. Surely, I reasoned, this is a premium access product from which they would make more money than I am currently paying on ISDN. Surely also, the people most likely to be in the initial takeup are those on ISDN who have already demonstated a willingness to pay extra for reliable , faster internet access. Finally I pointed out that all the isdn equipment was already installed at my house; all that is required to convert back to analog is a flick of a switch at the exchange - charging a downgrading fee plus a new installation fee for this (should I fail the line test) was surely extracting the urine so to speak.

She accepted all my points and said that they had a lot of enquiries from existing ISDN customers about upgrading and were working on a solution to allow testing to take place without having to go down the downgrade/upgrade route. In any event, she told my my exchange (Whitehall) is not adsl ready so the whole thing is irrelevant :rolleyes:

So, are they trying to make it succeed? Many people would say no, but I think in reality, Eircom accept ADSL will be inevitable - its just that, as in all other areas of life, the irish will be several years behind our European counterparts.

Q

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Quorthon
So, are they trying to make it succeed? Many people would say no, but I think in reality, Eircom accept ADSL will be inevitable - its just that, as in all other areas of life, the irish will be several years behind our Eu1ropean counterparts.

I would say that Eircom don't mind people switching to ADSL provided they compensate Eircom for the loss of revenue from whatever it is they were using before, e.g., ISDN. I'm sure there are a lot of offices running up huge bills providing internet access for their workers through ISDN.

This will all change when there is genuine infrastructural competion or competitors get proper access to Eircom's network but until then there's milking to be done.

WhiteWashMan

bah, ive only got one in my house.
but it does come in beside the cable conenction, which is nice.
i can use either.
whenever i want.


which is nice

Ryaner

I offer some warning about eircom on past experience. If you sign upto ASDL you will be asked to sign a 12 month contact as usual provided you actually pass the line test. When they tryed to do mine there system when down or something so they told me to go away for awhile.
Anyway if you sign this contact you be made pay the crazy price at the moment for the next 12 months even when they are forced to drop it to allow "home users" get dsl. It will happens and word from inside eircom is that the package will be out with a slower downlink for about 60euro. When no one knows but the person I was talking to who works there said as soon as they are able to get what they have working. That could be never cause it is eircom. I do suggest looking at Beam
Beamsolutions
they are in the process of rolling out a wireless solution with 100k up and downlink. It ain't perfect for games and vpn sessions but they are promising to upgrade that as soon as they fix the problem they are having. Something is cause there tests to only run at about 2meg at the base stations. The testing is ongoing at the moment and a link is being placed in the cybercafe where I play cs very soon as a kinda test. Home tests are also going on in five different places around ireland and I should be getting contacted as soon as the first results are in because I'm down as a probable tester. I ain't sure about their contact but even if you do sign it you ain't gonna get much cheaper than 29euro a month. Eircoms home package if it does see the light of day will never be that cheap.
Also the local lines are being forced into some sort of deregulation at the moment. Something to do with eircom being forced to allow customers to rent their telephone lines from the other companys, namely esat and ntl. From what I've heard they are trying to get the local exchanges done under a similiar bill which would mean any company with the asset could offer adsl and other broadband products

Supercell

Just curious, is there any estimation as to trialists v's newbie adsl'rs like myself.
Whats the real uptake stats?

Fallschirmjager

good one skep, and i think you have an ace one there

i think the low runrate business for adsl is the cost of loosing isdn, particularly at the business end. i know where i work there is 50-100 isdn lines @ home, now add that up per minute cost and then go flat rate for a cheap adsl and you start to see what the loss is per one company -- multiply the effect and BINGO -- thay are crapping themselves...but rather the acdept the change and force it out and earn -- they adopt the delay delay delay tactic-- why dont we just once be equals in europe.

what i would say to the chap who said that the companies will leave because of broadband, i know one of the comms guys here where i work and what i can absolutely assure you -- you can get at a business end (at a very agressive price) as much bandwidth as you need for corporates -- almost anything..it us poor bastards who are left to wait. they are missing one important point

if i dont have access to the web and i am a consumer -- how am i supposed to buy all these products from these corporates..

Build it and they will come..is my message to eircon

Hannibal_12

Originally posted by Quorthon



I just made this point to an admittedly helpful Eircon sales rep on the i-stream sales line. I am an ISDN customer, and she pointed out that in order to test whether my line would pass, I would need to pay to get my line downgraded to analog. If it then failed the line quality test, in order to get ISDN back I would be treated as a new installation.

At this point I sounded amused and pointed out that they cant be trying very hard to sell this product. Surely, I reasoned, this is a premium access product from which they would make more money than I am currently paying on ISDN. Surely also, the people most likely to be in the initial takeup are those on ISDN who have already demonstated a willingness to pay extra for reliable , faster internet access. Finally I pointed out that all the isdn equipment was already installed at my house; all that is required to convert back to analog is a flick of a switch at the exchange - charging a downgrading fee plus a new installation fee for this (should I fail the line test) was surely extracting the urine so to speak.

She accepted all my points and said that they had a lot of enquiries from existing ISDN customers about upgrading and were working on a solution to allow testing to take place without having to go down the downgrade/upgrade route. In any event, she told my my exchange (Whitehall) is not adsl ready so the whole thing is irrelevant :rolleyes:

So, are they trying to make it succeed? Many people would say no, but I think in reality, Eircom accept ADSL will be inevitable - its just that, as in all other areas of life, the irish will be several years behind our European counterparts.

Q

I'm on the whitehall exchange as well. Went out and got a network card as well in anticpation of a real internet connection for the first time in years except the proverbial brick wall shot up again and I went straight into it. "Your exchange hasnt been upgraded yet and we cant give you an estimate as to when it will be".
Edit: I also fully agree that €ircom are in no way promoting the adoption of DSL because as another poster stated they would make quite a loss on it, as BT did in England I believe. You dont need to be an analyst to see that they are doing as little as possible on the ADSL front. Whitehall is a densely populated area located very close to city center and two months after I-Scream launched the exchange hasn't been upgraded. This speaks volumes as to their priorities and the resultant further downward spiral our telecoms (and reputation) sector is enduring thanks to greedy shareholders and short sighted + ignorant politicians and telecoms "experts". The very existence of an organisation such as IOFFL demonstrates quite well how backward we are in good old Ireland.
We will have widely available broadband here one day(of that I have no doubt) but I firmly believe it will be a matter of years, not months and as usual vdsl and other technologies, 3mbs cable etc for what other countries are paying for DSL now will be available(but not here of course). Its a sad fact but as long as you're in Ireland you are going to be behind technologically and in some ways socially too.