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Child Item

Eir Not Fair

Ultimanemo

The FTTH line stops 130 metres away from my house, Eir wouldn't connect me because I am outside the commercially viable area, They wouldn't agree that I pay for the cost of connection, parts and labour, but they can give me a broadband with speed of up to 3 mbps, I had that service before and the maximum speed is 1.7 mbps.
The biggest thing I can't understand is they will charge me 55 Euro a month for 12 months and then 70 Euro a month afterwards, same money they charge someone 500 times my speed, it is like a car dealer who sells bicycles and Rolls Royce at the same price.

I had contract with them, I left it more than 12 months ago and joined sky, for 55 Euro, you get TV broadband and landline for the first 12 months, then they go higher.
Now I am on mobile broadband, not great but much better than 1.7 mbps

I think all people who are "left behind" like myself should cancel their contract with Eir, and get mobile broadband if they have cover, if you need a landline you can get VOIP, I have one and it works fine and it is very affordable.

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TomOnBoard

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Why
Was that engraved on the tablet God gave to Moses or what

I'm sorry, but I can't even begin to see what your Biblical references have to do with the points that were being made...

Ultimanemo

TomOnBoard wrote: »

I'm sorry, but I can't even begin to see what your Biblical references have to do with the points that were being made...

What I mean is their pricing structure is wrong and they don't want to change it and if you ask them why they don't want to change it they say because this is the way we do business, as if their pricing structure is part of the ten commandments,

They wanted to charge me €55 / month for 12 months then €70/month for up to 2 mbps speed

The link below they charge €35 / month for 6 months then €40 / month for 12 months for up to 100 mbps

That is 50 times my speed.

https://www.eir.ie/bundles/

TomOnBoard

Ultimanemo wrote: »

What I mean is their pricing structure is wrong and they don't want to change it and if you ask them why they don't want to change it they say because this is the way we do business, as if their pricing structure is part of the ten commandments,

They wanted to charge me €55 / month for 12 months then €70/month for up to 2 mbps speed

The link below they charge €35 / month for 6 months then €40 / month for 12 months for up to 100 mbps

That is 50 times my speed.

https://www.eir.ie/bundles/

For better or worse, that's how it works here in Ireland. For your particular situation, it may well be difficult to accept, but for many others the exact same model is great, as they get higher bandwidth at little additional cost.

The recovery of costs by getting revenues through fixed charges where possible is a profitable business model. So I would say it is actually written in someone's ten commandments, the 1st being "maximise profits for shareholders at all times, regardless of the effect on individual customers".

I know of few if any businesses where that 1st commandment does not serve as the core principle of their operations.

ED E

As has been explained, its not what you get, its what it costs them.

An Apple might cost €4 on a tropical island in the pacific. Does that seem ludicrous to you? Yes, but its reflects the cost to provide. On the same island a full fish is €0.20.

Ultimanemo

ED E wrote: »

As has been explained, its not what you get, its what it costs them.

An Apple might cost €4 on a tropical island in the pacific. Does that seem ludicrous to you? Yes, but its reflects the cost to provide. On the same island a full fish is €0.20.

Why does it cost them more to give you 2 mpbs than 100 mbps. the wire is there for God knows and the exchange is there, and with lower speed you will use less data.

ED E

Lets say its a 100Mb VDSL connection in Dublin 6 vs a 2Mb connection in Powerscourt (Wicklow).

Same energy costs
Data costs are for retail operators, not the W/S price
Similar CPE costs (ok, they spend an extra €3 for the 100Mb modem)

Hugely different service costs. D6 will have one callout every 5 yrs-ish on average. Wicklow will have multiple per annum.

Right now callout charges are flat everywhere, but in reality a rural FST does one job maybe every 2hrs while an urban one can do two per hour if he's bothered, 6 if he's a sh1t sitting in the pub.

Add to that mix that the fast connections are competing with Virgin, slow ones have you captive.

Ultimanemo

But many guys who get fast speeds are few miles away from me

ED E wrote: »

Add to that mix that the fast connections are competing with Virgin, slow ones have you captive.

Nope
Sky will give you same speed much cheaper

I am on 4G now and it is much better.

Ultimanemo

I am Ok with 4G, but what eir doing is not fair

The high horse brigade

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Sky will give you same speed much cheaper

Yes they sell it as a loss and subsidise it bundling it with their very profitable TV package. Vodafone did the same for years, resold Eircom DSL bitstream at a fiver loss a month meanwhile adding flyers to the bill to tempt customers move mobile phone to them.

Marlow

The biggest cost to provide the broadband is staff .. salaries .. vans ... fuel.

That is what defines your base level price for the broadband.

Then you talk about people near you having 100 Mbit/s. These people more than likely live in a bigger cluster of houses. So it's feasable to bring fiber up there and distribute it between the houses (VDSL).

Once your house however is past the 2km mark of feasability (of cable run) and there isn't enough houses in the area or they are too far apart, then it becomes unviable to build another fiber cabinet in your area.

Due to the amount of maintenance your line requires over any given year, just to provide you with any odd service (basic service cost), the cost of providing you this is higher.

This has nothing to do with being fair or not. It's simple calculations of economics providing any service at all.

Fixed wireless providers have similar problems. The way their network is build is a bigger core network with micro-pops hanging of that. But the amount of sites and gear they need to archive that coverage means, that their base cost for providing the service in the first place is high.

So as an example: 30 EUR for 2 Mbit/s, 40 EUR for 20 Mbit/s, 50 EUR for 50 Mbit/s, 60 EUR for 100 Mbit/s.

30 EUR would be just about breaking even. Once you add from there, more bandwidth comes with very little increases.

And in your case with Eir, that the line is there isn't the factor. The line and the gear has to be maintained. And because of the line distance, older gear may have to be used, which is harder and more costly to come by. So in some cases less speed can end up at a higher price tag than more speed in more viable areas.

/M

TomOnBoard

Marlow wrote: »

Once your house however is past the 2km mark of feasability (of cable run) and there isn't enough houses in the area or they are too far apart, then it becomes unviable to build another fiber cabinet in your area.

There is also an element of strategic rollout of Fibre by Eir in the recent past that took 300,000 out of the original 750,000 households in the NBP. This means that you could well find that your next door neighbour is getting FTTH/FTTC as their house is closer to the cabinet than you are and Eir decided to stop rolling FTTH/FTTC beyond that point. Much of this was done (cynically some would say) to lower the potential economic benefit to other potential suppliers within the NBP, although there is no suggestion that it was illegal or anything like that. It simply means that Eir were able to shut out other operators from rolling out Broadband services to households under the NBP, thereby forcing those potential suppliers out of the NBP running.

Was that fair? From a national competition perspective, probably not. From the perspective of achieving successful NBP rollout, certainly not. However, it was entirely in line with law and regulation, so it was probably a very good commercial decision by Eir.

And that brings us back to the 1st Commandment that underpins Eir's (and most/all other providers) business model.

Marlow

TomOnBoard wrote: »

Was that fair? From a national competition perspective, probably not. From the perspective of achieving successful NBP rollout, certainly not. However, it was entirely in line with law and regulation, so it was probably a very good commercial decision by Eir.

And that brings us back to the 1st Commandment that underpins Eir's (and most/all other providers) business model.

Of course it isn't fair. It it may look like lunacy from a commercial perspective. But it isn't from a long term perspective.

The NBP is a 25 year guaranteed contract. OpenEIR would be stupid, if they let anyone barge in on their monopoly and snatch a 25 year contract from them that would mean, that they actually have to finance a lot of their roll-out themselves.

But yes: every provider has to be profitable at the end of the day. There is no way around that. Once they aren't profitable, they go bust. And then you have nothing.

How you archieve that is another story and varies very much from provider to provider. Fair means: that everyone gets paid their wages and cost is covered. And if that means, that somebody in the arse-end of nowhere has to pay more for his service, then that's what has to be done ..

When I hear the odd argument: "But why can I not have the same speed as people in the city ??", I tend to ask: "Do you pay the same rent or did you pay the same price for your house as somebody in the city ??".

Savings on one end are cancelled out by cost on the other end. Your house may have been cheaper to buy, but it's more costly and difficult to get services out to said house.

So yes .... it's fair.

/M

Johnboy1951

Marlow wrote: »

Of course it isn't fair. It it may look like lunacy from a commercial perspective. But it isn't from a long term perspective.

The NBP is a 25 year guaranteed contract. OpenEIR would be stupid, if they let anyone barge in on their monopoly and snatch a 25 year contract from them that would mean, that they actually have to finance a lot of their roll-out themselves.

But yes: every provider has to be profitable at the end of the day. There is no way around that. Once they aren't profitable, they go bust. And then you have nothing.

Yes there has to be commercial reality.

How you archieve that is another story and varies very much from provider to provider. Fair means: that everyone gets paid their wages and cost is covered. And if that means, that somebody in the arse-end of nowhere has to pay more for his service, then that's what has to be done ..

When I hear the odd argument: "But why can I not have the same speed as people in the city ??", I tend to ask: "Do you pay the same rent or did you pay the same price for your house as somebody in the city ??".

Savings on one end are cancelled out by cost on the other end. Your house may have been cheaper to buy, but it's more costly and difficult to get services out to said house.

So yes .... it's fair.

/M

Here we go with the same old BS arguments.
I thought that had been stopped a long time ago.
The price of houses has sweet damn all to do with it!

On that basis, people in Waterford, Limerick and Galway cities should also be paying more for their broadband than those in Dublin!

Maybe that could be turned around ......... those who buy houses in Dublin should pay more for broadband ....... after all if they can afford to buy a house in Dublin they can surely pay a bit more for their broadband!

Yeah! Right!

Marlow

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Here we go with the same old BS arguments.
I thought that had been stopped a long time ago.
The price of houses has sweet damn all to do with it!

On that basis, people in Waterford, Limerick and Galway cities should also be paying more for their broadband than those in Dublin!

Maybe that could be turned around ......... those who buy houses in Dublin should pay more for broadband ....... after all if they can afford to buy a house in Dublin they can surely pay a bit more for their broadband!

Yeah! Right!

No. You are taking it personally.

This is sometimes the only way to explain commercial reality to people. It's not supposed to be taken literally.

When you buy a house in the city,
- you have access to more frequent busses/trains/trams, because the volume to operate these is present
- you have access to gas directly brought into your house, because the houses are build dense to each other and it makes sense to do this
- you have access to shops, that are 24x7 open, all day long. Because they have a much larger turn-around and hence can afford to keep staff there 24x7

This is because of volume. And it also applies to broadband. In a dense community, a road-side cabinet is filled up quite quickly. So it makes sense to run the fiber further down the road and populate the next one. Shorter distances on the last mile means faster broadband. Shorter distance to the core means the same.

As you gradually move out into less populated areas, the infrastructure thins out. You now don't have for example oodles of fiber (like the T50 fiber around the M50) to backfeed your infrastructure. So there is less competition and your backhaul gets more costly. Also, the further the distance between the houses, the more cabling has to put in place and maintained as you move further out the country.

At the time you're in rural Ireland, that's a scarce commodity. The majority of mast-sites don't even have fiber. So now you're not even restricted on the amount of fiber, that are available, but also on the amount of bandwidth you have to site. It has to come in on microwave.

OpenEIR faces the same problems. Now, they have a massive network, sites, ducts etc., that they can build on. But do you know, how many rural exchanges still are on microwave opposed to copper and fiber for their backhaul ? Quite a few.

So yes, the further out you go, the more costly it is to provides services. The less margin is their for the providers.

It's not only infrastructure. It's also staff. Eircoms NOC for the broadband part of it consists of maybe 6 people. At least that was the case just a few years ago. Thats possible with their cabled infrastructure. There is actually not that much gear to maintain.

When they started rolling out FTTC, they entered a nightmare, that is normal for most fixed wireless operators: managed 100s of micro-pops. Opposed to a few central sites. In a city, that's ok, as the distance between them isn't too far between them.

But if something goes wrong in the countryside, you'll be on the road for hours fixing it. And you may look at a completely different scenario of access. That cost has to be calculated in.

Also here:
- Busses run maybe one or two times a day, because of the scarce population.
- Gas is brought to you in bottles or your on site tank is filled regularly (extra cost for the truck, the guy driving it and the time it takes)
- And your local shop may close at 8pm.

It's all down to volume and density. Hence why OpenEIRs 300k roll-out is lunacy. It's a massive investment. The reason they've done it is clear: make sure nobody else bothers their arse tendering, so that they're guaranteed to get the 25 year contract.

They've taken a big hit by doing it. And I guarantee you they will try to recoup that through the NBP.

/M

Ultimanemo

Hopefully NBP will never happen, and eir can hang their clothes on the wires they are putting up now

Marlow

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Hopefully NBP will never happen, and eir can hang their clothes on the wires they are putting up now

e-net is also still running for the NBP. Unfortunately, they're not an inch better than Eir in their workings.

/M

TomOnBoard

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Hopefully NBP will never happen, and eir can hang their clothes on the wires they are putting up now

If NBP doesn't happen what's going to be done to give all those in the remaining 450,000 households a chance of a usable broadband service? You may be one of the lucky ones who has a usable alternative to a land-based service in that you are getting good 4G, but I suspect the vast bulk of the remaining 450,000 are not within a 4G signal area.

The high horse brigade

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Hopefully NBP will never happen, and eir can hang their clothes on the wires they are putting up now

I'm alright Jack!!

Marlow

TomOnBoard wrote: »

If NBP doesn't happen what's going to be done to give all those in the remaining 450,000 households a chance of a usable broadband service? You may be one of the lucky ones who has a usable alternative to a land-based service in that you are getting good 4G, but I suspect the vast bulk of the remaining 450,000 are not within a 4G signal area.

This is exactly the thing. The NBP is there to accomodate the fact, that it's expensive to non-profitable to cover these areas. So it has to happen.

The only thing is, that OpenEir have taken a proactive attempt to ensure, that they're the only viable contender. Shrude, but calculating.

On the other hand, it also has a potential downside to them. IF ComReg should be turned around and regulation happens, they will need to adhere to this. Not much of a risk right now though.

/M

Ultimanemo

The high horse brigade wrote: »

I'm alright Jack!!

It is more like Samson in the temple

Ultimanemo

If NBP will go ahead and taken by eir, do we have to sign a contract with eir or other ISPs will be allowed into it.

Johnboy1951

Marlow wrote: »

No. You are taking it personally.

No, I am not.

They've taken a big hit by doing it. And I guarantee you they will try to recoup that through the NBP.

/M

IIRC it has already been decided that the same monthly prices will apply across the whole country.

The only way I see they can massage that is to charge a higher connection fee in some areas. Good luck with that idea eir!

Marlow

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

The only way I see they can massage that is to charge a higher connection fee in some areas. Good luck with that idea eir!

They can't, as they're regulated ... overall.

But what they've done is to make sure, that they're funded 25 EUR and nobody else purges in on their turf.

/M

Ultimanemo

The high horse brigade wrote: »

I'm alright Jack!!

That is not the way I look at it, The way I look at it is: The way things are going; it seems that NBP has very little chance to come alive in the foreseeable future, probably never, Naughten is up with bells and drums behind commercial fibre projects, he wants to be seen as if he is doing something, while the only thing he is doing he is trying to get free credit, My idea is forget about NBP and press on the government to support other solutions with tax incentives and similar things. 300K is one of them, but they shouldn't stop there claiming that NBP has achieved something.

turbbo

Ultimanemo wrote: »

That is not the way I look at it, The way I look at it is: The way things are going; it seems that NBP has very little chance to come alive in the foreseeable future, probably never, Naughten is up with bells and drums behind commercial fibre projects, he wants to be seen as if he is doing something, while the only thing he is doing he is trying to get free credit, My idea is forget about NBP and press on the government to support other solutions with tax incentives and similar things. 300K is one of them, but they shouldn't stop there claiming that NBP has achieved something.

True - I've been travelling lately and the few countries I've been to outside of Europe that we consider "poor" in my experience staying in rural areas they all had one thing in common - they already had fibre connections. This came as a surprise, after all the droning on in the irish media of how we're getting fibre soon. Naughten has been spouting the same nonsense for the last couple of years hard to take him or any politician seriously on the state of Irelands comms infrastructure. The NBP is another example of Ireland at it's worst.

Ultimanemo

Now eir is offering landline and Internet with speed of up to 2mbps for €35 a month. at least they have some sense now.

Ultimanemo

With the French man taking over, I heard eir won't get any better, for me it won't get any worse either. I feel sorry for people who are going to lose their jobs.

Ultimanemo

turbbo wrote: »

True - I've been travelling lately and the few countries I've been to outside of Europe that we consider "poor" in my experience staying in rural areas they all had one thing in common - they already had fibre connections. This came as a surprise, after all the droning on in the irish media of how we're getting fibre soon. Naughten has been spouting the same nonsense for the last couple of years hard to take him or any politician seriously on the state of Irelands comms infrastructure. The NBP is another example of Ireland at it's worst.

True
But looking at Wiki, Romania ranked higher than the USA and Japan in "Akamai Q1 2017 global average peak connection speeds rankings"
I must admit I have no clue what is Akamai

ED E

Ultimanemo wrote: »

True
But looking at Wiki, Romania ranked higher than the USA and Japan in "Akamai Q1 2017 global average peak connection speeds rankings"
I must admit I have no clue what is Akamai

One of the core backbones of the internet. If your ISP is Spar, Akamai are Musgraves.

corks finest

ED E wrote: »

One of the core backbones of the internet. If your ISP is Spar, Akamai are Musgraves.

Fcuk I'm with Aldi so