Telco Timeline ( Help needed from everyone )

yellum

A very very rough timeline is up at: http://www.irelandoffline.org/home/staticpages/index.php?page=20021103155054868

IrelandOffline is trying to create a timeline of all events leading up to the present situation with the state of internet (broadband and flatrate) access in this country.

Contributions are needed from everyone on this as its going to be monumental. Maybe in the future this will be one of the main references of what went wrong with the governments EHub dream.

So, if you have any relevant dates post them ! They don't have to be in order or anything I'll sort this.

Can this now be made into a sticky ?

Also can the membership be emailed and asked to help ?

Damien

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Yoda

The source for the analysis below is my phone bills. It may not perfectly reflect whatever Telecom Éireann and subsequently Éircom was doing at the time.

June 1991 – Telecom Éireann price "per unit" is IEP 0.1117. Different call types accrue greater or smaller numbers of "units" for calculation. The specific rate isn't apparent from the bill.

September 1993 – Telecom Éireann inroduces "per minute" billing for local calls. Cost is IEP 0.095 + VAT for three minutes 0800-1800 M-F, IEP 0.095 for 15 minutes at other times. (That means it was IEP 0.0317 per minute weekdays, and IEP 0.0063 per minute at other times.) This cost increase is shown on this bill and not any subsequent bill. "Units" as well as minutes continue to be displayed on first page of phone bills until June 1999.

July 1998 – Telecom Éireann bills now show internet calls billed at a different and lower rate than other local calls. The actual rate doesn't appear on the bill.

August 1999 –_Telecom Éireann bills no longer show "units" on the first page of phone bills. Itemized phone bills indicate "rate per second" for local and internet calls. "Units" are still shown on the summary page; apparently the rate is still IEP 0.095 (EUR 0.1206) per "unit".

October 1999 – Éircom bills do not show "units" and indicate that calls are charged "per second". The actual rate is not shown on the bill.

August 2000 – New format Éircom bills show that local calls are IEP 0.04 (EUR 0.0508) per minute during the day, IEP 0.01 (EUR 0.0127) per minute at night and weekends. Internet calls are given at IEP 0.016 (EUR 0.0203) per minute during the day, IEP 0.008 (EUR 0.0102) per minute at night and weekends.

February 2002 – Éircom bills show that local calls are EUR 0.05 per minute during the day, EUR 0.0125 per minute at night and weekends (a drop in price at the third and fourth decimal places). Internet calls (1891 numbers) are given at EUR 0.019 per minute during the day and EUR 0.01 per minute at night and weekends (again a minor drop in price; at least they didn't euro-gouge).

June 2002 – Éircom bills show a sudden rise in price for local calls to EUR 0.051 per minute during the day, EUR 0.0126 per minute at night and weekends. (So much for what I said about gouging. How much does that EUR 0.001 and EUR 0.0001 add up to when spread out over every call in the country?)

I hope that this is useful to IOFFL.

Dangger

Yeah lets have it sticky.

Also can the membership be emailed and asked to help ?

Let us pull together the latest happenings for a newsletter, its (as ever) long overdue. But we now have a lot of content for it. Then we can hit the members with the timeline info request.

BoneCollector

I notice the last entry is "gov anounce flat rate"
was there not a previous statement made by ms o rourke 6 years ago..?
and didnt cable link also advertise cable around that time too?

SkepticOne

Here's some notes on NTL. I was going to continue with the other cable companies then move on to Eircom. Other threads could cover legal and regulatory issues, Government decisions etc. A lot of these points would fit into multiple categories so the idea was to create a database driven interface to avoid duplication of web pages. I can supply the database design if required.

It's probably worth keeping notes of links and references as you work through it.

yellum

I was thinking as well of trying to get costs as much as possible so we can show the money movements and the result of all this money.

I'd love to have some "Net Cost to the taxpayer" type thing too. Ooooh Ooooh and if you had an interest generator so it was always increasing as you look at it.

If we could store all this documentation in some format so that we can turn into various diff formats. SGML or XML

xml -> pdf
xml - > xhtml
xml - > word doc

Dangger

We do have an Internet cost calculator buried somewhere.... Fergus?

yellum

I was kind of thinking of one that shows how much taxmoney is being spent, is that what you were working on ?

That national fibre loop that was given to Esat, grants to all the Telcos , NDP money . Add it all up and then add daily interest

DonegalMan

Dunno if this is useful, Yellum, but some points I made at last year's confernce (dates supplied by an IOFFL member, can't remember who)

Late 1999
Internal ADSL trials, Eircom using Newbridge kit, half the world
using Alcatel kit.

February 2000
Alcatel buys Newbridge

April 2001
Promise of Bitstream access for LLU

Summer 2001
Eircom changes technology supplier to Alcatel and delays Bitstream to September with pricing promised for 11th June
(Now, remember that Alcatel bought Newbridge last year and Eircom was using Newbridge already so what took a year to decide?)

11th June –
Nothing happens

9th August
Eircom delivers pricing to ODTR who rejects the submission

29 August
TODAY - some TWO years since trials of ADSL started in Ireland – no broadband.

Going forward:
Sept 5th
New pricing to be submitted by Eircom

Sept 28
Eircom supposed to launch Bitstream service - with what pricing?

Nov 5th (or earlier)
ODTR will approve/ reject / impose pricing decision on Eircom



Martin

jmcc

Originally posted by DonegalMan

Late 1999
Internal ADSL trials, Eircom using Newbridge kit, half the world
using Alcatel kit.

Eircom/TE internal ADSL trials were going on in 1998, possibly as early as 1997. I still have the messages from the TE Adsl website with the "help I can't get this working" messages. Though if you want:

31/10/1998 - HackWatch.com runs story about secret TE ADSL tests in Dublin.



Regards...jmcc

pete

Originally posted by SkepticOne
Here's some notes on NTL.

Early 1995 was when I first heard that Cablelink had a rather large, rather well known computer company in doing consultancy about hardware for cable modems / broadband and the services they could sell over them.

Jesus.... that's 7 years ago.

Haven't we come a long way?

sob

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Just had a quick look at the page on the website...

To clarify it was (late) April /not/ March that Esat kicked off their 2000 "spirit of the service" breakers


--
Good Proposal
I anxiously await a completed timeline