Esat Launch NetSmart

Dangger

Esat BT to launch evenings and weekends Internet Package

Esat BT today announced plans to launch NetSmart, Ireland's newest Internet access product. NetSmart provides a number of monthly, bundled subscription-based Internet options, targeted at residential dial-up users looking for better value from their online costs. This is an Internet-only package, and users are not obliged to take Esat BT telephony services and there is no sign up fee.

NetSmart will be made available through Ireland On-Line (IOL), the Internet service provider within the Esat BT group.

Three subscription packages are available to choose from, covering light, medium and heavy Internet users as follows:

NetSmart 40 @ €15 per month provides users with 40 hours of Internet access per month during evenings and weekends. This is equivalent to 15 free hours per month compared to Ireland On-Line's standard Internet access rates.

NetSmart 80 @ €25 per month provides users with 80 hours of Internet access per month during evenings and weekends. This is equivalent to 38 free hours per month compared to Ireland on-Line's standard Internet access rates.

NetSmart 120 @ €30 per month provides users with 120 hours of Internet access per month during evenings and weekends. This is equivalent to 70 free hours per month compared to Ireland on-Line's standard Internet access rates.

On-line usage outside the NetSmart monthly minute allowance or during peak daytime periods will automatically switch to standard IOL rates.

Single channel (64k) ISDN is also supported.

MDR

uh-oh ... I smell competition in the air, surely this is not the Ireland we know and love ... ?

pete

They can shove it.

ESAT can thank their accounts department for losing them a customer.

fabien

Is Bill also going to show up on this board? I'm sure we all have a few questions for him, like, if you can do this deal now, why didn't you so it first time around???
Maybe it could even be better still? Will you support 128k ISDN for the price of a local call on the second channel?

Somehow I'm doubtful about his or even ESAT's appearance on this board...I wonder why?

Bard

By any chance, could the IOFFL committee or anyone else tell us if Esat BT are providing existing IOL NoLimits users with the option of updating their NoLimits account to one of the NetSmart account options?

spongebob

seems to me these deals are mainly worse than nolimits....which reputedly allows 100 hours a month nowadays, quietly, no disconnects or 'letters'

Could someone compare the 3 new packages with nolimits?

M

Bard

Originally posted by Muck
seems to me these deals are mainly worse than nolimits....which reputedly allows 100 hours a month nowadays, quietly, no disconnects or 'letters'

Could someone compare the 3 new packages with nolimits?

M

seems to me that if you use 40 hours or less per month, then this is a better deal than NoLimits, if you use 80 hours or less per month then this is still (marginally) a better deal, and if you use over 80 hours then NoLimits may be a better deal.

I don't know where you're getting this "100 hours a month" from for NoLimits. NoLimits didn't have a time cap applied. There was talk of them applying a cap of 75 hours but this never materialised.

NoLimits isn't an option for someone who isn't already signed up to it, and with Esat BT releasing a product along these lines, I wouldn't be surprised if they were to announce the cancellation of the NoLimits service at some stage in the near future.

spongebob

If u are STILL on no limits AND use 80 hours a month or more then stay where you are.

Come here Bill so we can ask you quastions......or else send on that dennis fella.

M

Dustaz

Looks like some frantic re-packaging went on over the weekend

Seems like a bit of geniune competition for utv (for the lesser user anyway)

Any word on disconnects? Or can you stay connected from 6pm to 8am?

Proves they were stalling all this time anyway.

Kevok

Gonna stick with UTVip myself, infamous letter aside if they could've launched with this kind of package in the first place, why didn't they?

Esat, although your praises are sung by some, in many ways you're no better than Eircom.

Aggie

Jeeeez, what a bunch of sad cynics. MOVE ON for God's sake. No Limits was almost 2 years ago, and the environment was very, very different then i.e. interconnect rates have improved only recently which determines what us end-users get charged. The good news is that prices are coming down, even in a week we've seen UTVip (lots of strings attached) and Esat BT all push things in the right direction. Reaitly is that FRIACO won't happen until eircom provide the UTV's and Esat's with the right wholesale prices, so let's get real here and not blame the alternative operators for taking the initiatve. What about eircom ? Very nieve of They've not budged an inch.

Is nobody concerned about having to give UTV their phone business too ? It's a TV company for Gods sake, not a phone company, and their rates are no great shakes when you add in eircom/Esat BT discounts.

spongebob

but unlike the UTV crew you only bEETch yourself and warble about Eshat voice rates wehn we are talking about their Internet rates.

Please identify yourself clearly if you want to be taken seriously. I think you are PR fluff myself and will always treat you accordingly.

M

Kevok

Erm, have you looked at the telephony pricing of UTV? It's much cheaper than Eircom. Off peak per minute is 0.95 cent, with Eircom its 1.26cent i think.

Peak: UTV = 3.8cent per minute; Eircom = 5 or so cent per minute

So Yes! I have thought about having to give UTV my telephony business and i'm all for it thanks very much.*



*I am in no way employed or in any way affiliated with UTV or any respective partners. (except for the fact that I will soon be a customer)

Aggie

Oh Muck....I'm so devastated that you might not take me seriously !!

I'm an accountant with a small Irish company, mostly doing business nationally, a bit into the UK and Germany. We are 38 people, but use Internet and phone services extensively. Believe it or not Muck, we're not all Internet anoraks - some of use do actually use the phone. If you're running up voice call charges of €5,000 per month, believe me, you get very interested in those rates. I've done the sums, and for our business Esat's rates are the best - simple as that. I have no connectionss with the company other than as a customers of SOME services.

Muck - I think you're a man (person ?) with too much time on your hands. I'm only interested in nailing real info on what's best value out there, and have no desire to get into a pathetic ding-dong with you, so let's stick to the subject at hand, i.e. what's the best deal out there. Just seems to me that eircom have made no effort whatsoever to provide us or other Irish operators with any sort of compelling offer - DSL is a case in point, which would be the ideal fix for our company. Esat's new packages look ok for home users, but what we all want is FRIACO. Fact is that until eircom create a wholesale product for UTVip, Nevada, Esat or whomever, we'll have to make do with these interim offers.

Bard

Originally posted by Muck
but unlike the UTV crew you only bEETch yourself and warble about Eshat voice rates wehn we are talking about their Internet rates.

Please identify yourself clearly if you want to be taken seriously. I think you are PR fluff myself and will always treat you accordingly.

M

and you bitch about other users and warble on as if your what you say is gospel.

Please treat the other users with a bit more respect if YOU want to be taken seriously.

I suggest you not judge people so harshly and consider the possibility that you're not always right.

spongebob

Precisely Thus.

,,you not judge people so harshly and consider the possibility that you're not always right

Naturally I am not.

Aggie came back with a most coherent outline argument just there for using esat fro voice during office hours when the rest of the Irish net is discussing off peak bundles for data. I fail to see the overlap at all so I do. That may be because I am not right.

€5000 euro spend a month does get you funky discounts all right.

Like with like pls Aggie, lash a spreadsheet in as an attachment to illustrate the point you are making about esat rates.

More!

M

strat

nice wan esat, making a desperate grap when you smell competition :rolleyes:

at lease it shows they have some clue to whats going on around them, im tempted as i get a much better ping when i dial into my local 'ocean' numebr

nahdoic

Ehm I really don't think any of these new products from Esat or UTVip are aimed at the business market. It's off-peak internet usage only. Pretty useless for any business.

But UTVip kicks the residential internet market's ass so hard, it ain't even funny.

- 150 hours for 29.99 a month

- 30 hour for 10.99 a month

- no forced disconnects

- the Managing Director interacts quickly with customers on the Ireland Offline Forum

- they just rock

PiE

Eh? Isn't there a 2hr cut off with UTVip? Or did they change that just for us?

[edit]
Whoops, just read the other thread, yay! I Love UTV.
[/edit]

keithwhir

This is currently set at 2 hours. In order to keep the cost of service lower for everyone, we may implement a session timeout. This is in order to deal with customers who stay connected for very long periods, often inadvertently. You will be able to reconnect immediately again.


yaaaaaaaaa , its still on the site , did they change it ??????

Rags

Ya utv changed it from 2 hour cut off to 12hours now.

Well I guess gotta give esat some credit even tho I hate them nearly as much as eircom. Least they kinda trying. But lets not kid ourselves they would of given us a ****ty offer until they saw utvs offer and they changed it. I see people making out that u have to change to utv for ur phone a bad thing but utvs rates are cheaper . Oh and esat wont be supporting dual isdn either.

spongebob

and now they are being groovy about 1 channel.... I see both their points about 2 channels (accounting nightmares).

whats the no-limits connection , 56k or isdn or either.... seeing as I asked Bard for some comparative analysis earlier in this thread between the different eShat options.

M

Smiley

Personally, I am delighted with this... whereas I do appreciate UTV for making the offer they're making, I am very happy with Esat home phone and was not pleased about the prospect of having to change to UTV. Now I won't.

UTV may compare very well with Eircon on the home phone front, but Esat is even better.

Everyone's circumstances are different... I happen to find Esat's 32-county local call rate an absolute boon for both my husband, who calls all over the country for his work, and me - I call the North frequently.

So YAY to Esat. I'll take their 120 hours at €30 yoyos per month and thank you very much indeed.


At least until a 24/7 deal comes along.

Ronan|Raven

I was always more or less going to have to stay with the esat package as the line that I use in the evenings/weekends for my net access is used heavily during the day for phone calls. Seeing as esat do offer a cheaper range of call prices than utv itd have been pointless changing over (for the people who use the voice calls) now at least esat have upped the package to 120 hours which will do me grand

Hopefully now with all the "competition" things will be on the up for us irish net users lord knows they couldnt get any worse..... could they ?!

Stonemason

In an earlier post i remember someone (soz cant remember who)saying that UTV would make money on lesser users thus covering the expense of the heavier users. Now Esat comes along with a service that may take the lesser users away from UTV which in theory could cause UTV to lose money.
I cant help feel that though its nice to see competion finally starting to emerge this move by esat is aimed at stealing UTV,s thunder and also putting their business model at risk!. If i were in competion with another company id do the same.

Simple maths says that €30 for 120hrs (esat) against €29.99 for 150hrs(UTV) that esat aims to take the lower users market as UTV dont have the same sliding scale.

BoneCollector

Regardless of whos doing what..
its abvious that UTV package is a lot better for internet users and has already caused esat to rethinks its product launch tarrifs.

I would say we should all go to Utv...
it will make ercom and esate take note and realise where the real demand lays...

utv hits both esat and ercom cos it means you go over to both internet and telephony leaving erocom and esat hanging..

I know as soon as my nolimits account reaches the end of the month i will be droping it in favor of UTV as a mark of support for both utv and internet users of ireland/offline

Supercell

As one of the many thousands that got the now infamous snl letters a year or so ago that booted me off that service...ESAT can go take a flying leap.

That kind of shoddy treatment is not easily forgottin...nevermind the several months of billing for the service they kicked me of off after that....

Esat will never EVER get another red cent off me (unless they offer broadband @ reasonable pricing..read uk style pricing ) after what they did.

Right now they seem to be reacting to UTV Internets brave stance in the face of Eircom belligerence...frankly..they had a good model in the first place and they blew it..why on earth should anyone trust them now?

UTV internet have been consistant for the last few years in the sense that they made no wild promises and always stated their desire to have a flat rate or at least semi flat rate service in the future, Esat claimed to offer something called "no limits" and then banned the people who used its without limits.....

UTVinternet is saying up front honestly.that they are operating in a market with limits..however they are offering a package that the vast majority of people can probably use very happily in the terms of the service.

Yes i'm a bitter ex SNL'R..ex ESAT customer..and only extraordinary circumstances (cheap broadband) will ever bring me back into their fold..so all i can say is....

If you are trying to make your mind up between UTV Internet and Esat..please (think of the children!!) go with UTV Internet, this is a company that has always been honest with the Irish internet user and laid their cards on the table in a fair and just way....frankly..Esat are a shower of....£"%$£%$£ who promised the earth and delivered a dung heap. (IMHO)

Rags

Agree with the last 2 posters 100% , couldnt of said it better myself

I rang esat before utv announced their product and I see I still havent got a application form , well it doesnt matter now since I signed to utv. But it just shows their incompentence. All of you signing up to esat, good luck. YOU'LL NEED IT.

Rags

esat should give the people who were cut off from their "No Limits" service 2 months free service if they really wanna prove they have changed. Then maybe people like me who hate em cause of it might think differently. :rolleyes:

dahamsta

Excellent suggestions Rags. It wouldn't change my mind immediately, but I'm sure some members that were dissed back then would appreciate it, and it would be a start. How about it Esat?

adam

leeroybrown

My big problem with all this is that you can be pretty sure that if one group didn't offer a new better package the rest would stick to the status quo.

Eircom are a massive bumbling dinosaur of a company but their competitors are really not all that much better. At the end of the day their market shares don't really change that much and they don't bother to serve the customer properly (and no-one bothers to keep them in check, present IOFFL company excluded of course). Its all business at the end of the day.