So what price is it per minute?

The Gopher

Looking at the phone bill today on the back was the list of costs.A local call costs 1.5c per minute i think.Under internet calls it said 1 cent poer minute and 1891 customers only(i think that was the number).Is that hi speed only?I always thought the net was the price of the local call.

segadreamcast

As far as I know - 1891 is subscription internet and local calls is 'free' non-subscription internet. If anyone else knows different :P feel free to correct me...

stormkeeper

1891 has different call charges linked to it, as NoelRock mentioned, it's subscription. Whereas local calls, such as 1890, or 01 (if you live in Dublin), for example have 1.26 cent/min call charge on off-peak and weekends, and about 5 cents/min peak. 1891 charges are something like 1.5 cent during the day and a little under 1 cent at off-peak. I get the feeling that Eircom or Esat would most likely refer you to this service if you asked about flat-rate. The service seems fairly decent, and cheaper for a start, but it's still not flat-rate. and, to answer your other question 'Is that hi speed only?', the answer is it can be used for hi speed and a normal telephone line. i don't really think there is much difference between ISDN and 56k, other than a single ISDN line being only slightly faster and more stable, but also a tad more expensive.

if you want to have a download rate of about 10k/sec, you'd really need 2 ISDN lines, and that means you have to pay for the price of 2 local calls, and x2 ISDN rental. It would be cheaper going for 'shotgun 56k' (2 56k modems hooked up), but expensive all the same. On a side-note... I bet if we had flat-rate, we'd be seeing more ISDN uptake, as well as 56k uptake. Kinda makes you wonder why Eircom aren't giving us flat rate.. .I'm sure everyone would really go to ISDN if it was flat-rate. I sure as heck would.

vampyre

Belive me it is anything but cheap, I am billed monthly and nearly fainted at last months bill. Guilty of the crime of sending and receiving a few office hours emails and gasp- downloading some drivers. 24/7 flat rate. Now. I may be a vampyre but it is necessary for me to do things between 8am and 6pm. Fascinating things such as using the phone book service which if it is being obtuse can take a while. You are subject to a large minimum charge on connection to this service and I am disconnected with monotonous regularity. I really hate this set up but as they pedantically chant it is the cheapest way of using the net during the day.

Digi_Tilmitt

On eircom's site in the price comparison section it says "In order to provide you with the most accurate, up-to-date pricing for eircom versus our competitors, we have made this page temporarily unavailable. We are currently auditing our competitor's pricing. When this is complete, we will publish a new competitor pricing table."

In otherwords eircom's competition is 21% cheaper and they are lying to the public by putting up ****e like that.

steve-hosting36

Anyone ever looked at setting up a flat rate ISP? AN small bank of ISDN modems and an auth server, a pri and some connectivity and you could provide flat rate access to the country

Steve

Tippex

Steve,

The company i work for has investigated this previously and have found that the level of support needed would be too costly to make it worthwhile for a start-up.

The only sort of companies likely to make money from the service would be errrcom or esat.

Tip.

steve-hosting36

Hi Tippex,

True, but, for example us, we already have servers, connectivity, support systems/staff etc. All we would need is a PRi (30 circuit digital phone line) with a bank of 30 isdn modems and an auth server, set up a freephone number to hunt on the 30 lines, and you could have 30 authenticated users online at 64k at a flat rate?

Mind you, the cost may be high, as the freephone would cost normal call rates x usage. So if someone were using the system 24/7 fort the month, that would be the same as local/national call rates for that period

?? Steve