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.

Tazz T

Well, at least FRIACO and broadband are finally becoming a real option for the Irish user. I'm with Ciscokid on the line rental issue though. I live alone and only use my landline for Internet only. If I didn't use the Internet it would be far cheaper just to rely on a mobile.

Complete LLU and real competition should be the ultimate goal here. Only then will we see Irish users getting a fair deal.

kamobe

I was under the impression that the service would be "up to" 512 down and 128 up, but there would be no guarantees of speed due to the TERRIBLE contention ratios. This would basically mean that during peak times the connection could fall down to as low as ISDN speeds, and theres shag all you can do about it

Regardless of price, I personally refuse to get any offering with a cap on it.....

Paulw

Originally posted by Urban Weigl
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,

But, they ARE cheaper in the UK. It's cost reduction based on volume. The more you buy, the bigger your discount, hence the less they cost per unit.

That's simple business, and not magic at all.

sceptre

True Paul but in an economic sense economies of scale don't lead to the cost price of the modems dropping towards zero as the amount increases. In other words, I'll bet I could buy 1000 little plastic electronic boxes for the same price I'd get if I ordered half a million. Or close enough that we're talking pennies of a difference in price. The price difference can't be explained by the difference in population size.

Boston

Originally posted by jonski
Don't we know this already ?

512 down and 128 up ?

and probably capped at 4 gig per month.

Since thats the business model i doubt the residential service will have that spec. Maybe it will be just the contention ratios.

popinfresh

Well I think I'll most likely get it, it's a tad expensive but fukkit. Eircom seem to be missing out here, if they dropped their prices to 35, they'd easily double the amount of subscribers therefore making more money. The cap is a bit of a turn off though..

SkepticOne

I agree with sceptre. Economies of scale level off after a certain point.

As to the spec Eircom did state that it would be 512k down and 128k up maximum. They also said that it would adapt to distance and that some users would get less than this, but the majority would get the 512k (this suggests the use of RADSL, rate adaptive DSL, an ADSL varient).

This is what Eircom said. Usual disclaimers apply

A former Eircom employee then confirmed on the IIU mailing list that it woud be 512k down, 128k up. He further said that it would be using RADSL, that there would be a contention ratio of 50:1 and that it would be self install.

LFCFan

if you were to get in IBB for your broadband service you could get rid of the phone line altogether and the cost would only be €48 a month. With DSL you have to pay line rental aswell as for DSL so I think you have to factor line rental into the cost. €55 a month is still too high but at least it's moving in the right direction, albeit very slowly. I for one am holding out for a Wireless service whether it be IBB, Leap, IrishWISP or someone else. They are cheaper(apart from installation), less contention and they are symmetrical up and down. No contest.

MDR

Me thinks ireland.com is blowing smoke up our asses,
don't believe a word of it until you hear it from COMREG,
this could very possibly be Eircom sponsored media hype,
to show it is moving on affordable broadband (I use the term lossely), I suppose it maybe nothing more than an attempt on their part to appease Minister Dermot Ahern without actually producing anything tanigable (they historically have been masters at doing this sortof thing).

COMREG has said nothing (as far as I know) on this matter,
and I for one will keep my powder dry until they do.

milltown

It is more than is charged in other countries yes, but as has been said before its a lot better than what was on offer. I will get it if I can but that may be a big if. My exchange is enabled but when I got my line tested about a month and a half ago I was told there was no way I could get DSL on my line.
Is RADSL a new technology to Eircom? I mean were they previously testing lines with a different flavour in mind, meaning I have a chance with RADSL?

Ardmore

Originally posted by milltown
It is more than is charged in other countries yes, but as has been said before its a lot better than what was on offer. I will get it if I can but that may be a big if. My exchange is enabled but when I got my line tested about a month and a half ago I was told there was no way I could get DSL on my line.
Is RADSL a new technology to Eircom? I mean were they previously testing lines with a different flavour in mind, meaning I have a chance with RADSL?

Yes, Rate Adaptive DSL is designed to "skip over" some channels if the signal quality isn't good enough, so that you can still get a usable service even if the full signal isn't available. This means that lines that wouldn't pass when tested for a 1MB service (even if you only wanted the 512 service!) might now be able to deliver a usable service.

It also means that some people won't get 512, but that's just the way the service works.

Ardmore

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

How much was your last phone bill? So you currently pay a minimum of €50 (assuming you use a package like UTVs). You can have ADSL for an extra €25.

There are many, many more people paying for a 2nd phone line for the 'net than there are people who wouldn't bother with a phone if it wasn't for the 'net. Those people can now cancel the 2nd line and effectively get DSL for €35.

crawler

Few things to note....

1) The price to the end user will have to include line rental ( as mentioned already ) so you actually have the line rental charge and the service charge , and line rental is about to be increased

2) This version of DSL will not be good for gamers , Not because it's RADSL but because of the network topology , inter-leaving etc..

3) There will be no cap passed on to OLO's for the wholesale versions - that will be up to the OLO's to impose

4) Only about 20% at max will actually get a full 512k service but that's just life.....

5) Apart from the €27 pm charge there are also service establishment , Port charges etc for OLO's so in real terms the price will be more or less the same as eircom's

Gremlin

Originally posted by crawler
2) This version of DSL will not be good for gamers , Not because it's RADSL but because of the network topology , inter-leaving etc..

I'm interested in this service for gaming. Not for high bandwidth but for better ping times. The games I play require very little in the way of bandwidth (typically 33K is fine) but I'm hoping that this new service will help with reducing ping times. Am I to be dissapointed?

ANother thing that makes me wonder is why on earth anyone would want to d/l more than the cap allowance. Where do you plan to store all of this? For me, all i want is to be able to play the odd game and to d/l software without having to shave between starting and finishing the d/l:)

crawler

I dont work for eircom Gremlin but me guess is you might be. Muck is usually a good authority on these things......

what I can say is the people I have spoken to me that are "close to the situation" say that it wont be great for gaming....

Lemming

Gremlin,

everytime that you 'load' a webpage, you are eating into your download cap. All those images, audio, video, text and html objects/items take up bandwidth. Everytime you download an email via pop/imap, you're also eating into your download cap. Everytime you receive an message from some IM client (yahoo messenger, MSN messenger, ICQ, etc) you are eating into your download cap. NOT just when you click on that "download uber-large donkey-pr0n video file now" button.

Do you begin to see the makings of a rather possible problem?

spongebob

Originally posted by Gremlin
I'm interested in this service for gaming. Not for high bandwidth but for better ping times. The games I play require very little in the way of bandwidth (typically 33K is fine) but I'm hoping that this new service will help with reducing ping times. Am I to be dissapointed?

Eircom set thir lines iup in a way which is not good for gamers as Crawler said. I am not an authority on the matter but it is widely known.

Gamers and VoiP users would be affected by this, possibly some VPN users too. Others have tried to get Eircom to turn off the ' Interleaving ' feature on their DSL but have had no success.

ESAT pings are significantly faster than Eircom's ....... in fact I heard that Eircom and someone in Slovenia are the only 2 carriers who turn on Interleaving as standard. That is because we have some of the very worst lines in Europe (along with Slovenia it seems) as well as their being the most expensive of all.

M

Ardmore

Originally posted by Muck
Gamers and VoiP users would be affected by this (interleaving)

If VoIP was adversely impacted by interleaving, that might certainly explain why eircom would want to enforce it, but I'm not sure that interleaving hurts VoIP. The lag should still be within acceptable limits with interleaving on, and the increased reliability will improve sound quality.

(A quick google search suggests that some form of interleaving is actually used to improve VoIP performance, but it's not clear if it's the same "interleaving" that eircom are doing).

spongebob

may be found Here and includes a quick explanation of interleaving.

To confuddle matters some more, I was left with the impression that Interleaving may be used by Eircom (as standard) not because Eircom lines are exceptionally crappy by international standards but because their preferred DSL modem (an Alcatel) is exceptionally crappy instead. The DSLAM at the exchange end is also Alcatel.

Even if you buy yourself a less crappy DSL modem they still won't turn off the interleaving on your line, allegedly they can't but I suspect that they could.

This situation may change when they bring out the new RADSL product next month. It may come with interleaving turned off as standard.

Has anyone heard about the kit they will be using for this, is it still Alcatel at both ends or do €ircon have a different supplier for their RADSL DSLAMs and Modems ?????

M

jonski

Originally posted by Muck
Has anyone heard about the kit they will be using for this, is it still Alcatel at both ends or do €ircon have a different supplier for their RADSL DSLAMs and Modems ?????

M [/B]

The good news is I know a person in the company that is supposedly supplying the modems.....the bad news is I stopped talkin to him last week cause the little **** did me out of 50 euro

I was told by him that they would be involved in the setup...
but never got to find out the name of the modems