Eircom set wholesale DSL charge @€27

hmmm

GoneShootin

if broadband would be €50 per month, why the hell is ISDN still €40 per month ?!!!

Tom Dunne

One word - monopoly.

PiE

Well this is what we've been expecting... and it's about damn time.

€50+ is still not good enough, but feck it... if UTV offer it, I'll take it.

Agent7249

Well at least now we know now when its coming out , And I was gathering up funds for the installation charges

Winters

Originally posted by tom dunne
One word - monopoly.

No, its Oligopoly.

Cork

There is a report in today's Irish examiners on the high cost of both Irish local and national calls compared to our EU partners.

It blames lack of local loop unbundling. A spokesperson for Eicom pointed out that vat rates were differant accross the EU.

Urban Weigl

ADSL must be priced at between 30 and 40 euros per month, inclusive of VAT and without a high setup fee OR LESS. Any more, and people just simply won't buy it. At least that has been the experience everywhere else. Eircom's ADSL on the other hand will be priced at 54 euros, a whole 14 euros higher than the maximum, and that's not even considering the setup fee.

And the wholesale price is just too high to offer competitors the ability to launch a cheaper product, considering that they still need to interconnect and provide bandwidth, etc. The only way to change the situation here is if ComReg were to force Eircom to offer a similar wholesale package to the UK. That way, companies such as UTV would be able to launch DSL products at between 30 and 40 euros or less.

ando

Eircom has said it would set up its consumer product at a flat fee of €45 per month

Ok, say its 50euro, thats still only £33 english pounds. Its not that bad, or at least not as bad as it could of been

parasite

waaay too expensive, i can't see utv competing profitably with that price

jonski

I'm not so sure we should be too quick to knock this , lets wait and see what the other companies have to say ie: utv ,

I got to be honest here , I'm definetly thinking of going over now ,my only problem is that I would like to stay with utvip but if they have to use eircom's systems then they will be going with the same setup , ie: interleaving turned on , which I believe is bad for gamers . But i presume now that esat will lower their prices to fall into line with eircom's .

JTMan

Originally posted by ando
Ok, say its 50euro, thats still only £33 english pounds. Its not that bad, or at least not as bad as it could of been

The product will be €55 which is a lot more than the offerings in the UK.

nahdoic

This is great news. E27 is far too expensive, but I honestly don't know if we could have hoped for a better price starting out. Once it comes in at E27 we can still campaign to get it reduced in price, once it's here it'll be easier to get the price reduced more. It will at least generate more interest in BB at that price, and more and more people will be complaining about the high cost.

This is great news.

eth0_

Originally posted by Fungus
The product will be €55 which is a lot more than the offerings in the UK.

You can't possibly expect it cost the same here as in the UK. There are simply stacks of companies offering DSL and cable internet in the UK. There's massive competition.

Comparing something like BT Openworld broadband to EsatBT's would be silly as well....the customer base here is always going to be much smaller than the UK, DSL is bound to be a little more expensive here.

<50 euro would be grand for me with no cap.

nahdoic

Originally posted by eth0_
Comparing something like BT Openworld broadband to EsatBT's would be silly as well....the customer base here is always going to be much smaller than the UK, DSL is bound to be a little more expensive here.

So what? Let's roll over and accept the fact that our Broadband penetration rates are never going to be as good as the 'bigger' countries?

Cork

Ok, say its 50euro, thats still only £33 english pounds. Its not that bad, or at least not as bad as it could of been

50 Euro is far too expensive - how can you encourage people away from copper wires in a post FAIRCO situation by charging them these prices.

They won't be a very high take up at €50.

jonski

50/55 euro kinda seems ok to me , gamers and heavy users will be ok with this i think ,

bring it on then .

pencil

55 Euro is too expensive!

Don't forget that you still have to pay line rental, thats 20 euro a month totaling 75 euro p.m for broadband (900 p.a).

I think not. I'm a web designer & I'm not going to pay that, the take up is going to be very low from the average joe.

It's going to be Irishbroadband for me @ 45euro p.m instead

Urban Weigl

Originally posted by eth0_
the customer base here is always going to be much smaller than the UK, DSL is bound to be a little more expensive here.

What rock do you live under, or do you work for Eircom? You know that what you are saying simply is not true; ADSL modems and DSLAM's are not somehow magically cheaper in the UK because they have a bigger population, as you appear to be implying. And with regards to international connectivity, that is very cheap in Ireland as well, due to our good connectivity with London and also Government subsidised international connectivity.

Not to mention that there are many countries in the world with smaller populations than Ireland who still manage ADSL for under 30 euros.

zz03

Originally posted by Cork

It blames lack of local loop unbundling. A spokesperson for Eicom pointed out that vat rates were differant accross the EU.

Eircom are absolutely correct.

However the difference between the highest and lowest (VAT rate applicable to internet / telco services across the EU) is just over 6%.

When it comes to DSL VAT differences only explains EUR 2-3 of a price difference at the very most.

Eircom's wholesale bitstream price of EUR 27 per month confirmed yesterday excludes VAT.

If one adds VAT to it (21%) the cost is EUR 32.67.

The eircom wholesale offer excludes the vital ISP feed (without which one has nothing in the context of DSL internet access) and it excludes the backhaul from the eircom POP to the service providers campsite.

Perhaps the "Examiner" reporter might go back to their eircom PR contact and ask them to account for the price differential between the VAT inclusive (19.7% VAT rate) offer of a service provider such as http://adsl.free.fr/ who charge end users EUR 29.99 per month for unlimited 512k DSL internet access with no minimum contract period, no service set-up fee, free modem too, and eircom's "wholesale" EUR 32.67 charge for doing nothing more than transporting the ISP feed between a regional eircom POP and the end-users premises?

And as far as voice calls are concerned some of eircom's prices are even further out of line in relative terms - as in a factor of ten!

Almost nothing to do with VAT at all.

zz..

PS: Unlimited flat rate local and long distance calling has arrived at http://www.mci.com/

nahdoic

Does anyone have the wholesale rates for other european countries?

http://www.point-topic.com/cgi-bin/download.asp?file=DSLAnalysis%5CWholesale+benchmark.htm

The site looks a little out of date, but has some interesting prices. Does anyone have the latest figures for other countries?

One thing that is interesting is the tight margin between the wholesale and retail price offered by the incumbent. France Telecom's retail price actually went LOWER than the wholesale price, I don't know how that got passed their competition authority. But from the wholesale prices listed on that site, eircom's 27 doesn't rank that badly, anyone have the latest figures for different countries?

jonski

Originally posted by pencil
55 Euro is too expensive!

Don't forget that you still have to pay line rental, thats 20 euro a month totaling 75 euro p.m for broadband (900 p.a).

ah correct me if i'm wrong here but line rental ..? if you want to use the phone you have to pay it even if you don't want dsl .
So I think the line rental part should be left out of the argument .
Its only 75 euro if you never had a phone .

gandalf

Well personally I think €50-€55 is a good price to start off with.

Given my own situation I will actually save money. I can get rid of my ISDN line which costs me €40 per month line rental and as I already pay UTV €29.99 I will end up saving €15-€20 per month and end up paying less to Eircom which will delight me. And all this for a faster connection thats not limited to the time I am allowed to connect

So come on Scott & Martin in UTV what is the story with DSL from you guys? Are you going to be offering it ?

Gandalf.

Scruff

At least €55 is a bit more realistic than what they are currently charging. i'd be more inclined to pay that especially seeing my house mate also wants broadband so it woiuld only be €27.50 each.

Hopefully this will mean that products like EsatBT's 256kb broadband (*vapourware?*),for the lighter users, should also fall in price...?

Heres the article on it from the most unbiased of newspapers regarding €ircom...The Indo *cough*

EIRCOM and the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) have agreed a wholesale rate of €27 per month that the incumbent will charge competitors like Esat BT for the provision of a digital fast internet access service over telephone lines.

The development means that Eircom itself will now be in a position to provide a Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service at a reduced rate and this will be available from April at €45 per month, excluding VAT, for a 512 KB connection.

The connection fee has been set at €150

DSL is the technology that brings high-bandwidth information to homes and businesses over ordinary copper telephone lines at a fast rate.

New figures from ComReg released earlier this week show the slow take-up of the service that up until now cost over €100 a month.

There are only 3,300 DSL subscribers in Ireland currently and market watchers said the main reason for this was the cost factor. For example, British Telecom provides a service in the UK at a charge of stg£27 per month and free connection.

Ailish O'Hora

theciscokid

Originally posted by pencil
55 Euro is too expensive!

Don't forget that you still have to pay line rental, thats 20 euro a month totaling 75 euro p.m for broadband (900 p.a).

I think not. I'm a web designer & I'm not going to pay that, the take up is going to be very low from the average joe.

It's going to be Irishbroadband for me @ 45euro p.m instead

glad someone sees it my way

and i posted a reply just like this,, and ppl went on about paying for infrastructure and blah blah..

i have one line into my flat , dont use the phone just for net..

dsl for me a month including line rental is €75 - no bloody way

i thought for ages that dsl prices included this..

how i was wrong :rolleyes:

nahdoic

Yes, it's still firmly out of the reach of most people. But this is a good starting block, more people are going to be able to afford bb now and we need to keep campaigning for the price to be reduced more.

dathi1

I'm an existing eircom dsl user...whats the odds of my bill comming down? after april.?

SkepticOne

Originally posted by theciscokid
i have one line into my flat , dont use the phone just for net..

dsl for me a month including line rental is €75 - no bloody way

If you were planning to get a phone line in purely for DSL (for example if you currently used a mobile for all voice calls) then it would make sense to allocate some or all of the line rental costs to DSL.

Boston

As far as i can see no one know what the spec for this service is yet. Dont be surprised if its 256kdown and 64 up and has a fee per mb downloaded. Just saying. BTW if i remember correctly Bt's wholesale price to start with was something very close to this. I wouldn't pay 55 euro a month for this crap anyway.

jonski

Originally posted by Boston
As far as i can see no one know what the spec for this service is yet. Dont be surprised if its 256kdown and 64 up and has a fee per mb downloaded. Just saying.

Don't we know this already ?

512 down and 128 up ?

and probably capped at 4 gig per month.

nahdoic

My understanding is, that it will be a RADSL, rate adaptive. So if you're close to the exchange you'll get your're 512kbit/s down, but if you're further away this can drop to 256kbit/s down.

I'm not sure what the situation is with caps, and more importantly restrictions placed on OLOs wrt caps.