Interesting Article

KdjaCL

http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/18621.html



Kdja

Dangger

I particularly liked one of the comments posted after the article from one JazzyGeoff:

Broadband will never cause the demise of dial-up until the prices come down to dial-up levels. Despite what this article says, price is the major barrier in switching to broadband. There are still millions of Americans out there who refuse, or can't justify, spending $40-$50 a month on internet access.

Fallschirmjager

JHC,

here is the coment from the article....

"It ranks right up there with the fastest-growing products of all time," Goodman said.

and where are those bunch of muppets doing in eircon ...

less than a 1000 adsl connections in Ireland from eircom .....this had completey screwed my weekend..

and as for regulation...well well well...we have, my dear friends, reached a new low in ireland offline....

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Fallschirmjager
less than a 1000 adsl connections in Ireland from eircom .....this had completey screwed my weekend..

and as for regulation...well well well...we have, my dear friends, reached a new low in ireland offline....

This did not get me depressed at all. I would have been depressed if the figure much higher, say 5000, because that would have meant that the Irish public are mugs. If the Irish public are mugs then there is not much that IOFFL can do.

I don't think Eircom will get away with saying that this proves that there is no demand. All it proves is that there is no demand at this stupid price (highest in the EU).

There is a lot IOFFL can do with this information.

Dr.Seagull

yes its clear that eircoms prices for adsl are the highest in the eu but i wonder are they the highest in the world? does anyone know?

aidan_dunne

Originally posted by SkepticOne
I don't think Eircom will get away with saying that this proves that there is no demand. All it proves is that there is no demand at this stupid price (highest in the EU).

I'm not so sure about that, Skeptic. As I said elsewhere, Eircom feel that it's a "lack of interest in broadband" which is the reason why the number of ADSL subscribers is so low, not their pricing. As far as Eircom are concerned, their prices are fine and dandy and perfectly acceptable and the low take-up of ADSL is because of this perceived "lack of interest."

The problem is, Eircom cannot accept that they have gotten it wrong with their prices. They will always use the excuse that there's a "lack of interest" for a particular service (just like Soula Evans' comments about flat rate at the seminar last year) and will, therefore, not release the service (flat-rate) or expand it (ADSL) because they feel there will be no interest in the product. In actual fact, it is their ridiculous pricing that is preventing people from getting ADSL, not a "lack of interest", but Eircom just can't see that. As far as Eircom are concerned, they're perfect and it's all the customers fault.

F**king muppets! :mad:

SkepticOne

Originally posted by aidan_dunne
I'm not so sure about that, Skeptic. As I said elsewhere, Eircom feel that it's a "lack of interest in broadband" which is the reason why the number of ADSL subscribers is so low, not their pricing. As far as Eircom are concerned, their prices are fine and dandy and perfectly acceptable and the low take-up of ADSL is because of this perceived "lack of interest."

It's not just us that are frustrated by this. The value of this information is what you do with it. It all becomes part of our arsenel. It can be used in meetings with the DPE, ODTR for example (if they don't already know about it). If they already know about it, then fine.

The thing is that Eircom don't seem to be offering a serious service, i.e., one they want to succeed. They have priced it in such a way that if they lowered the price - even slightly - they would make more money. Moreover, they have priced their wholesale bitstream product in such a way that competitors too must sell ADSL at a stupid price, and of course, no competitor will bother doing this.

Most people already know they are taking the p*ss with their prices, but the 800 sales figure finally proves this.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by SkepticOne
If they already know about it, then fine.

Obviously the ODTR know about the figure, but they may not care about it.

Dangger

Exactly SkepticOne!


When you combine the dismal take up on DSL with this:

When asked by Martin Harran how she felt DSL would take off in Ireland, Soula Evans said this:

“How much is going to take off, I would like to see it taking off hugely, and this is the biggest thing that will happen between now (August) and Christmas in Ireland, with the Internet in Ireland.”

Now Eircom have spent a fortune in rolling out DSL, and we know they got a government hand out to help them with the roll out too. They blew a load of cash getting ADSL wrong from 1998 to 2001 when they replaced all their Cambridge exchange kit with Alcatel kit. They then changed the service to be offered from all singing all dancing video on demand and Internet access back to the bare bones, of plain Internet access.

They have reduced the number of phone boxes around the country by 1,000 in the last 6 months, launched an attempt to claw back lost revenue from the mobile operators by introducing digital handsets which are sms capable, and have hinted recently that they are looking at becoming a virtual mobile operator in Ireland, even though they signed a non-competition agreement with Vodaphone when they sold Eircell.

Could they get desperate soon, when we add a few serious wireless operators catering for the residential market into the mix? Who knows.

Remember they have to keep themselves looking attractive for when they sell themselves again (shouldn't be too far off), what European telco is going to be interested in a bloated company with too many employees and a non existant broadband customer base?

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Dangger
When asked by Martin Harran how she felt DSL would take off in Ireland, Soula Evans said this:

“How much is going to take off, I would like to see it taking off hugely, and this is the biggest thing that will happen between now (August) and Christmas in Ireland, with the Internet in Ireland.”

And the proposed price was even higher then! After that the ODTR made them raise their retail prices even higher to avoid "margin squeeze". This was because the proposed wholesale price (which the ODTR regulates) was around 75 euros for the 512k service. Later on, Eircom were forced to lower their wholesale price to the still extreme 48 euros / month.