Competition Authority & eircom

BoneCollector

I have finaly had a reply from the competition authority after sending them mails june-august.

Its is considered that the possession of a monopoly is not cause for concern rather than the ABUSE! of such a monopoly.
what they say is that without specifics on the matter of errcom abusing its monopoly it cannot persue any further.

If anyone would like to contribute to this please send all correspondence to them through there online complaints form.
It would be appriciable if people who can commit specifics to do so now.

Make our ref as..

Our Ref: Eircom Monopoly

This way all our correspondence maybe correlated together.

Good Luck!

spongebob

Hi

the new European regulatory framework is out.

It comprises 5 separate directives.

4 of them are primarily for the ODTR (The Commissars) to enforce.

The 5th one,the Universal Services Obligation for Dominant Carriers is a matter of prevention of abuse of position by carriers with Significant Market Presence..... newspeak for monopoly as good as.

It is therefore, pand primarily, a matter of competition law to ensure that the provisions of this directive are actively enforced in Ireland.

I trust that the Competition Authority are already aware of their responsibilities here and have implemented a protocol or memorandum of understanding with the ODTR on a joint framework to ensure that ALL aspects of this directive are complied with and that monitoring is in place to ensure that the matter is kept under ongoing review going forward.

An FOI request to have a look at the trojan work carried out by Carmel and co will no doubt throw up a fascinating insight on the process whereby the Irish consumer is protected from being abused by Eircom. Must get that in and publish it here.

M

vinnyfitz

Bone Collector if you could show us their full text this would be useful in helping us see what they are driving at - maybe you could post your initial complaint too?
I can understand why its abuse of monopoly they have to focus on.
What abuse or abuses of monopoly can we point to?

spongebob

BASIC rights of the consumer vis a vis the Telecommunications Industry where there is a USO operator such as Eircom.

We are entitled to a good analogue line with decent internet speeds.
We are entitled to control costs in our use of this line.

An operator must be "Designated" as a USO carrier, Eircom has been designated for 3 years..

See following except from page 10 of the PDF I linked in my earlier post in this thread .

"(11) Member States should monitor the situation of consumers with respect to their use of publicly available telephone services and in particular with respect to affordability. The affordability of telephone service is related to the information
which users receive regarding telephone usage expenses as well as the relative cost of telephone usage compared to other services, and is also related to their ability to
control expenditure. Affordability therefore means giving power to consumers through obligations imposed
on undertakings designated as having universal service obligations. These obligations include a specified level of itemised billing, the possibility for consumers selectively to block certain calls (such as high-priced calls to premium services),
the possibility for consumers to control expenditure via pre-payment means and the possibility for
consumers to offset or defray up-front connection fees."

What are the Competition Authority doing about this directive then? Eircom do not have to be a monopoly to have consumer obligationsand have been designated for over 3 years now.

M