[UK] 'Touch and go' whether BT will hit 1m BB target

dahamsta

[ Be lucky if they reach a friggin thousand here with the level of competence and committment to competition they display. (Aren't I alliterate?) ]

The Register

BT may fall short of reaching its target of one million broadband customers by the end of June, according to a report just published.

Enders Analysis reports that the wholesale take-up of BT's DSL service is currently growing at an "exceptional" pace and that this would have to be sustained until the summer for BT to meet its target.

During January, the report says BT Wholesale connected 70,000 ADSL lines, compared to an average of 50,000 a month during Q3 2002.

This is disputed by BT Wholesale, which said that in January more than 80,000 DSL lines were connected. It also claims that connection rates are accelerating with 25,000 connected in the first week of February alone.

[...]

spongebob

Originally posted by dahamsta
[ Be lucky if they reach a friggin thousand here with the level of competence and committment to competition they display. (Aren't I alliterate?) ]

The Register

At the new figure of 70,000 ADSL conenctions a Month installed....and allowing for 21 working days a month, this means the British are installing 3,300 ADSL lines on every working day.

The Irish have installed 3,300 ADSL lines in TOTAL and thats EVER and not last month.

And the Reg thinks the poor Brits are going to miss an important milestone. FFS

What is BT's miserable target in Ireland again, is it not 4000 by end December 2003 (not 1,000,000 by end June 2003) based on 40 exchanges x 100 punters each ..someone please lnk.

M

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Muck
At the new figure of 70,000 ADSL conenctions a Month installed....and allowing for 21 working days a month, this means the British are installing 3,300 ADSL lines on every working day.

The Irish have installed 3,300 ADSL lines in TOTAL and thats EVER and not last month.

Interesting how that figure breaks down. From that ectaportal site:
http://www.ectaportal.com/ectauploads/dsl_feb03.html

We have:

Eircom: 2,654.
Esat (and resellers): 633 (LLU)
Via: 9 (bitstream).

(these figures for end of december).

Scaled down to match the number of lines in Ireland, Eircom would need to install 4,175 DSL services a month. As of December 02, they were doing 235 a month.

Therefore BT, who started long before Ireland are speeding ahead 18 times faster than Ireland. We're still at the starting blocks.

If you substitute Esat for Eircom the situation is, of course, much worse.

Dustaz

Some interesting stuff on that page, not least the fact that Sweden has so little DSL lines.

Whats up with that?

PiE

Remind me to scroll across as well as down in future :]

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Dustaz
Some interesting stuff on that page, not least the fact that Sweden has so little DSL lines.

Whats up with that?

As a percentage of total lines they have 7%. Ireland has 0% (rounded off ) and the UK has 2%. Belgium wins with 11%, but Sweden is not doing too bad, joint third.

Ireland to all intents and purposes has no DSL.

I'm curious as to what the 3,000 "other broadband infrastructure" refers to in Ireland. It can't be wireless, surely. Possibly there's a different definition of broadband that ComReg are using when submitting these figures.

Combining Cable and DSL and ordering by percentage of subscriber lines we get the following broadband ranking:

Austria 17.40%
Belgium 16.69%
Netherlands 13.05%
Denmark 12.88%
Sweden 9.60%
Finland 8.58%
Spain 6.89%
Germany 6.34%
Portugal 6.27%
France 4.87%
UK 4.66%
Italy 2.58%
Luxembourg 1.43%
Ireland 0.43%
Greece 0.00%

Well done Ireland. Still ahead of Greece! Get a move on GreeceOffline!

captainpat

I see Lux at the bottom of the table. (Above IE)
Surely these are some of the most wealthy citizens of the EU? Do they not need the Internet or BB, just local contacts are enough?

iwb

It also says that Ireland has 4,000 Cable Internet Broadband Connections. Is that correct? Where are they? I understood there was some in Dungarvan and Clonmel aswell as the few areas of Dublin. Are there others or do those areas have 4,000 subscribers?

SkepticOne

Originally posted by iwb
It also says that Ireland has 4,000 Cable Internet Broadband Connections. Is that correct? Where are they? I understood there was some in Dungarvan and Clonmel aswell as the few areas of Dublin. Are there others or do those areas have 4,000 subscribers?

I'm not surprised. They are not selling it at ripp-off prices, like ADSL.

spongebob

Good point Sceptic.

Cable is ONLY available in

Sw Dublin (Tallaght Crumlim Harolds X areas)
Thurles
Kilkenny
Clonmel
Dungarvan

Yet there are 20% more cable connections to the providers (Casey, Chorus, and NTL in alphabetic order) than there are ADSL in the whole country. Their coverage is no more than 100,000 housholds passed and is probably a lot les than that. Eircom claim their product is available to 500,000 lines (back in November 2002 in full page ads everywhere) . NOt 1% of these have taken taken the product.

As Sceptic said, the one thing the Cable companies have in common is that the price they charge is €50 a month including VAT for 512K connections. NTL have a 1Gb a day cap. Chorus have a 10Gb a month cap on theirs (bog off Ardmore) Casey charge €36 for 256k and NO CAP , see Here ........

Why is Bandwidth an unmetered commodity in Dungarvan of all places?

M

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Muck
Yet there are 20% more cable connections to the providers (Casey, Chorus, and NTL in alphabetic order) than there are ADSL in the whole country. Their coverage is no more than 100,000 housholds passed and is probably a lot les than that. Eircom claim their product is available to 500,000 lines (back in November 2002 in full page ads everywhere) . NOt 1% of these have taken taken the product.

I think NTL charge around 35 euros and have been achieving sales of 10-20% in their upgraded areas. There's probably only about 40,000 upgraded homes in all of Ireland, but the demand for reasonably priced broadband is very high in Ireland as the MRBI survey showed.

spongebob

Indeed

Sounds more plausible all right Sceptic. I still refuse to believe a single thing emanating from NTL by the way ....

10% (4,000) of the passed 40,000 have taken the service at prices around €35-€50 then.

If Eircom were to drop their DSL to those prices we would Equally expect that there would be 50,000 DSL lines by now and not 3,400 .

Thats because Eircom told us 500,000 lines had been 'upgraded' in that huge advertising campaign of their 3 months back and I took a 10% portion of that as 50,000.

Shows how much they make on Dialup when a 50% drop in price would lead to a 1000% increase in customers ....

M

zz03

Originally posted by Dustaz
Some interesting stuff on that page, not least the fact that Sweden has so little DSL lines.

Whats up with that?

How do you make that out?

Do the numbers again. Sweden has more DSL subscribers per capita than even Germany. Four times as many as GB on the same basis.

Aside from the fact that when you have fibre to the home or kerb as they have in Sweden you don't need DSL.

70% of Swedish households have cable TV, virtually all of which offers broadband.

And there are LANs all over Sweden enjoying 30% take-up rates charging under EUR 20 per month for flat rate (ie no download "allowance" limitation) service.

zz..

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Muck
Thats because Eircom told us 500,000 lines had been 'upgraded' in that huge advertising campaign of their 3 months back and I took a 10% portion of that as 50,000.

On a side note, notice how this is pure political advertising. "Look at us and how we're helping solve Ireland's appalling broadband problem". It's not actually selling a product, merely trying to improve their image with the public and the decision makers.