Eircom 'technically in default'

blaze1 · 30-03-2012 01:37PM

Eircom's prices have to be agreed with comreg and because they have/had the majority of the market they have to keep there prices above the competion companies a chance to break into the market.

This is same when there is deregulation in any market, telecoms/gas/elec etc.

IMO other companies should be made to contribute more to support networks and using the infrastructure that is in place to support there own usage.

Capt'n Midnight · 30-03-2012 04:46PM

blaze1 wrote: »

IMO other companies should be made to contribute more to support networks and using the infrastructure that is in place to support there own usage.

If eircom were actually putting money into infrastructure instead of asset stripping you might have a point.

If the line rental / wholesale rate wasn't extortionately priced you might have a point.

everything that could be outsourced has been outsourced , it's not like they are using their own technicians to install / fix stuff !

http://www.eircomwholesale.ie/Reference-Offers/Documents/ARO-Price-List-V-5-2/ - price list, LOTS of extras if you want to use their exchanges, and you want them to charge more ?
Notice how many of the prices are dropping, finally. (but having to set prices to market rates won't help their profitability)

Not to say that the other providers are much better, any one got prices on how much it cost per line for the first round of local loop unbundling ??

Capt'n Midnight · 30-03-2012 08:02PM

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0330/decision-due-over-eircom-interim-examiner.html

Mr Justice Kelly said the history of the company since its flotation in 1999 made sad reading for the State and its citizens.

He said it was a game of corporate pass the parcel where the players won and the parcel lost.

Socialist_Pig · 30-03-2012 08:15PM

Kevin Irving wrote: »

Isn't the price which they charge the customer(€€€) for line rental set by the regulator? (along with the price(~50c) they charge another operator to rent the same line)

yes it is.

also have to laugh at people moaning about sh1te speeds when they are miles from the exchange.Ring upc and ask if they will run fibre to your tiny village and they will say no cause they wont make money off it.Eircom arent a charity yet people carry on as if its a god given right to have broadband.A friend of mine lives in the middle of no where and the only speeds he can manage are half a meg!!that would break my heart:D

Borderfox · 30-03-2012 08:20PM

F**k Eircom kept me on outrageously expensive dial up for far too long, what happened to their 60,000 customers return to Eircom each year (must have 120,000 leaving)

squod · 30-03-2012 08:32PM

Absolute cnuts. Glad they're fuhked. Karma coming back to them.

humbert · 30-03-2012 08:34PM

Socialist_Pig wrote: »

yes it is.

Are you sure? I thought they had to offer line rental to everyone who requested it and if the cost of installation was less than some very large number they could only charge a standard fee but that exact fee was up to eircom?

The cost of getting a phone line has risen astronomically in the last few years as a result of them losing customers and using their monopoly on the lines to bleed new customers dry.

plasmaguy · 30-03-2012 08:42PM

I know many people won't sympathise with this, but there are thousands of people working for Eircom, and anyone who'd like to see them put on the dole, really should be ashamed of themselves.

I hope Eircom can sort this out and save all or most of these jobs. Very difficult to find any kind of job these days.

Socialist_Pig · 30-03-2012 08:44PM

humbert wrote: »

Are you sure? I thought they had to offer line rental to everyone who requested it and if the cost of installation was less than some very large number they could only charge a standard fee but that exact fee was up to eircom?

The cost of getting a phone line has risen astronomically in the last few years as a result of them losing customers and using their monopoly on the lines to bleed new customers dry.

not sure exactly which part of the charges are regulated by comreg.It was in a reply by the eircom rep on the eircom forum but it was to do with BB package pricing.Its to stop eircom underselling other providers like vodafone,perlico etc.

will try and find it and post a link to it

plasmaguy · 30-03-2012 08:48PM

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

I disagree.

When Eircom was sold it was in the black, had an overfunded pension,had little debt and was generally a well run semi-state. It was also sold at the time of a communications and tech bubble and hence was grossly overvalued. When the bubble burst, not long after the sale the share price dropped 40%. The company was starting to fail and the only people that saw any benefit were the directors, who rewarded themselves handsomely. Ray McSharry and Dick Spring were among them.

At this stage Eircom was ripe for sale. Enter the George Soros backed Valentia telecoms vehicle. The consortium bought eircom by financing the sale mostly by borrowing against Eircom, they only put up €900m of their own money. In other words Eircom essentially mortgaged itself to pay off its shareholders. ESOT, the eircom employees positively facilitated this. Valentia began to asset strip and seeing they had a monopoly, jacked up line rental. They made 100% return on their investment within a year. Investment in new infrastructure stalled. Most importantly they didn't care about Eircom or Ireland and had no desire to actually run a telecoms company. They later sold on, wash rinse repeat, the same happened again with a new buyer, loading more debt onto the company. Another sale to Singapore telecoms the weight of debt has become to large of a burden and default is the only way out.

So Eircoms problems boil down to it being stripped by vultures aided and abetted by the employees share trust. No one was looking at the bigger picture, which was a shame, because when it was sold we had a damn fine telecoms network. Dare I say it we would still have the best telecom network if it had remained in state hands or even it was run by people who wanted to run a telecoms company. Ireland has been the greatest loser in this, thats the greatest tragedy.

Oversimplistic to be fair.

When it was sold, it was a virtual monopoly, with very few competitors, although Esat/BT were on the rise, but still miniscule.

Once Broadband packages became popular, competition became fierce and Eircom was just another provider.

It carried over massive overheads from its semi state days, as well as entrenched unionisation and so on.

Turning it into an efficient profitable private company was always going to be a massive ask.

humbert · 30-03-2012 08:49PM

Socialist_Pig wrote: »

not sure exactly which part of the charges are regulated by comreg.It was in a reply by the eircom rep on the eircom forum but it was to do with BB package pricing.Its to stop eircom underselling other providers like vodafone,perlico etc.

will try and find it and post a link to it

Thanks, though to be honest and as a result of my own dealings with telecommunications representatives you can usually take what they say with a grain of salt. Sometimes it's the result of ignorance but often it's simply easier for them to blatantly lie and then plead ignorance if they get called on it.

Banjaxed82 · 30-03-2012 09:07PM

plasmaguy wrote: »

I know many people won't sympathise with this, but there are thousands of people working for Eircom, and anyone who'd like to see them put on the dole, really should be ashamed of themselves.

Eircom has an ancient work force as well, so those chaps won't be getting another job again in a hurry.

Capt'n Midnight · 30-03-2012 09:20PM

plasmaguy wrote: »

I know many people won't sympathise with this, but there are thousands of people working for Eircom, and anyone who'd like to see them put on the dole, really should be ashamed of themselves.

I hope Eircom can sort this out and save all or most of these jobs. Very difficult to find any kind of job these days.

5,000 employees, they plan to shed 1,000 by 2017

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/phone-lines-still-work-despite-our-biggest-corporate-insolvency-3056219.html

The numbers involved are staggering. Eircom is in default on €3.75bn of debt -- that's around €1,000 each for its 3.5 million customers.
Managers and top lenders are going to court because they want as much as €1.7bn of the debt simply written off.
...
company set for its sixth set of owners in little more than a decade.
It's a mind-boggling destruction of wealth, but it is also capitalism in action.

Eircom borrowed the money in the go-go years of the boom.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0330/1224314097041.html plan is to loose 1,000 out of the 5,000 by 2017

which isn't all that bad when you consider how the number of suscribers has fallen in the past

Eoin · 30-03-2012 10:04PM

squod wrote: »

Absolute cnuts. Glad they're fuhked. Karma coming back to them.

Who's "them"? The thousands of staff who have nothing to do with setting policy or prices? How ignorant.

There are lots of people there who joined after all the old P&T privileges were taken off the table and after the ESOP scheme closed.

It was a frustrating place to work, but there are lots of good people there who don't deserve those types of keyboard-warrior comments.

UglyBolloxFace · 30-03-2012 10:14PM

Obviously I feel bad for the staff who will possibly be out of jobs, but to Eircom - they can go **** themselves.

musohead · 31-03-2012 01:12AM

UglyBolloxFace wrote: »

Obviously I feel bad for the staff who will possibly be out of jobs, but to Eircom - they can go **** themselves.

Just who is 'eircom'?
Hardly the successive sets of greedy venture capitalists who creamed off its assets and loaded it with debt? The guilty parties have mostly left the building, and that includes our own government who gave up control and turned a blind eye. Not to say ESOT comes out much better but they never had any real control.

So the 'eircom' that's the target of ignorant comments like those above is the staff and its customers.

It's a shame to see a debt-free company raped like that. And a shame Ireland lost out on a decent communications infrastructure as the money went into the pockets of the already rich. Imagine what a €4bn network would look like!

31-03-2012 01:42AM

plasmaguy wrote: »

I know many people won't sympathise with this, but there are thousands of people working for Eircom, and anyone who'd like to see them put on the dole, really should be ashamed of themselves.

I hope Eircom can sort this out and save all or most of these jobs. Very difficult to find any kind of job these days.

As Eircom (or whatever it becomes) has almost all of the "last mile" infrastructure, i don't expect too many (engineers) will lose their jobs.

Their network is huge and like all the other national telecom providers needs constant maintenance, especially when you have skangers stealing lengths of cable and cutting off whole suburbs at a time.

All the other telco's in Ireland are dependent on Eircom to carry their services.

31-03-2012 01:43AM

musohead wrote: »

Just who is 'eircom'?
Hardly the successive sets of greedy venture capitalists who creamed off its assets and loaded it with debt? The guilty parties have mostly left the building, and that includes our own government who gave up control and turned a blind eye. Not to say ESOT comes out much better but they never had any real control.

So the 'eircom' that's the target of ignorant comments like those above is the staff and its customers.

It's a shame to see a debt-free company raped like that. And a shame Ireland lost out on a decent communications infrastructure as the money went into the pockets of the already rich. Imagine what a €4bn network would look like!

Asset stripping, Eircom today - Ireland tomorrow!

Eoin · 31-03-2012 01:49AM

I wonder what will happen with the USO. Comreg will have to find a new punching bag too.

squod · 31-03-2012 01:57AM

Eoin wrote: »

Who's "them"? The thousands of staff who have nothing to do with setting policy or prices? How ignorant.

There are lots of people there who joined after all the old P&T privileges were taken off the table and after the ESOP scheme closed.

It was a frustrating place to work, but there are lots of good people there who don't deserve those types of keyboard-warrior comments.

I'm no keyboard warrior. Slagging me off won't get them sympathy from me. I was done over by ''them'', not their fuhken policies. As I said, it's a karma thing.

How ignorant of me for calling it like it is? They're fuhked, I'm glad. The end.

Jimbob 83 · 31-03-2012 02:22AM

I type this in 2012 on mobile internet when in 2002 i was told i would have ADSL the following year .....

Yea Eircom wooooooo, nice one

gurramok · 31-03-2012 03:08AM

Good riddance to a company that deliberately set to delay the introduction of DSL in Ireland by perhaps up to 10 years.

Sympathy for the staff but they knew they were working for a company whose onus was to screw the consumer. Remember "timed broadband", "ISDN", "dialup ripoff charges", those of us old enough remember how Eircom(Telecom Eireann) aka Eircon set out to bleed us dry by having a monopoly on the only means of internet access for a period of time in the past.
NTL paused their broadband rollout back then due to the Dotcom crash hence giving Eircon a lifeline but the new UPC has hurt them badly recently.

dublinman1990 · 31-03-2012 03:20AM

musohead wrote: »

Just who is 'eircom'?
Hardly the successive sets of greedy venture capitalists who creamed off its assets and loaded it with debt? The guilty parties have mostly left the building, and that includes our own government who gave up control and turned a blind eye. Not to say ESOT comes out much better but they never had any real control.

So the 'eircom' that's the target of ignorant comments like those above is the staff and its customers.

It's a shame to see a debt-free company raped like that. And a shame Ireland lost out on a decent communications infrastructure as the money went into the pockets of the already rich. Imagine what a €4bn network would look like!

Well it is the ordinary and preference shareholders too who own the company who have a say in the running of the company. It is primarily their own responsibility to make the financial decisions regarding the company.

I don't know how many shareholders they have; but, their (albeit possibly many) heads would roll so many times when they have created a possible further disaster.

However; if the directors were caught to be found lying to the public about this; they would once again be fuming with anger at the prospect of the company's financial position.

There is another bit I can tell you though; I had passed a new emobile and Meteor store just opened in Blackrock in Dublin just over a week and half ago. The shop is located at the former William Hill Bookmakers. IMO; I am sure that the new employees there will be gutted for having gained a job to earn themselves a living and to see it snuffed out later on.

I am a meteor customer for the past 4 years and I see that my future is uncertain as I to the next company I'll choose later on to use mobile and broadband services. I find out of the all the companies in the telecommunications sector; I feel that Vodafone is the more expensive choice to go for.

A pricing comparison of the other companies would be good to look at, If the company goes bust in the end.

Capt'n Midnight · 31-03-2012 12:29PM

musohead wrote: »

It's a shame to see a debt-free company raped like that. And a shame Ireland lost out on a decent communications infrastructure as the money went into the pockets of the already rich. Imagine what a €4bn network would look like!

I remember seeing a costing of 2 billion to provide fibre to the home

we might have been the ehub of europe

instead we got delegates from Addis Abba wondering why we didn't have BB like they did back home

NTL paused their broadband rollout back then due to the Dotcom crash hence giving Eircon a lifeline but the new UPC has hurt them badly recently.

There was also the issue of the regulator forcing them to roll out digital TV first, even though the bulk of income from that was handed over to the rights holders.

All in all Eircom/government lack of vision set us back a decade

and now they install meters so they can sell off water :mad:

Eircom 'technically in default'

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