Eir has been a waste of money to everybody – customers, gov.ie, s'holders.. planet

Impetus · 08-01-2019 10:20pm #1

Eir is just the current brand name. The lineage goes back to the Dept of P & T. And that culture largely remains in their system, AFAICS.

M. Neil (current largest shareholder in Eir) started off FREE dial-up internet which matured into FTTH company in France years ago to compete with Orange (used to be called France Telecom, until they (FT) took over the failing British company (Orange) and used the brand name – which worked in French, German and English).

M Neil bought Orange in Switzerland and promptly re-named it Salt. Two fingers to the French company (still called Orange) perhaps – his former monopoly competitor in the dim and distant past. He sprayed fiber (to the premises – not fake fibre as used by many Irish ISPs in their mis-branded services), including Virgin Media all over France. He then moved to Switzerland and bought Orange mobile CH, and promptly re-named it Salt.

Salt started out as a mobile company, and then went into 10 GB/sec broadband (and other services), after Neil’s arrival. While Swisscom is an excellent company, Neil far exceeded Swisscom in terms of FTTH (fiber to the home) – which runs at up to10 times the speed of Google Fiber’s much hyped service, in theory. I know of none of my friends in CH that get 10GB – might be the fault of the servers providing the content. Most get 2 to 4 GBits/sec – and those that do obviously have a network card in their PC to support this and don’t use WiFi. But this is a lot better than victims of the Irish telecom industry can receive.

Points arising: M Neil probably works best when he is the underdog in market share terms. Eir has a large market share because Ireland is largely an island of internet ‘ejits’ where one can get away with high charges and delivering poor services to the majority. Eir needs to be investigated from a competition perspective by the authorities… going up to EU level if necessary.

The main fiber infrastructure is done by ‘ESB networks vans’ + unbranded outsourcers (in terms of SIRO/FTTP) which vans do not carry advertising for the FTTP offering and the companies to contact to use the service – which would stick out a mile when they are installing FTTH on a road or street. Usual clueless marketing ejit stuff. An Irish specialty.

It seems to me that there is little point in laying two or more FTTP network infrastructures to the same geo area. No point in eir duplicating an existing platform.

The existing FTTP operators do not offer TV. While the cable TV monopoly ‘Virgin Media’ does, the picture quality is mediocre on a good quality TV (OLED display) and the range of channels is almost totally Anglo Saxon monocultural crap. The easiest way for children to learn other languages is watching TV programmes that relate to them (events they are interested in and understand to some extent) and hear in the news in their languages of choice. I might be over-simplifying things but Ireland needs the 12.5% corporate income tax rate because nobody speaks other than English or Irish fluently. Compare and contrast with Luxembourg where virtually all people of any age can typically speak six languages. And the GDP is 2x Ireland’s per capita.

Siro.ie needs more TV content providers and ISP choice to offer customers over a common fiber platform to their home or place of business. And it needs better marketing. This will at a minimum increase the platform's marketing effort by increasing the 'outsourcing' of this task.

Links: siro.ie
http://www.iliad.fr/en (Neil's starting point)
salt.ch (his Swiss company)

eir.ie

tsue921i8wljb3 · 08-01-2019 10:30pm

gctest50 · 08-01-2019 10:36pm

Impetus wrote: »

. I know of none of my friends in CH that get 10GB – might be the fault of the servers providing the content. Most get 2 to 4 GBits/sec – and those that do obviously have a network card in their PC to support this

If all you have if the worlds wonkiest anecdote, why bother ?

What are the make/model computers they have precisely ?

Anyway he is our Neil now and we are going to have loads of internets !

Marlow · 09-01-2019 8:22pm

Of course they don't get 10 Gbit/s ...

The technology is not there yet.

It's X-GPon or the likes ... and it's 10 GBit/s down and maybe 2.5 Gbit/s up or if they're lucky 10 Gbit/s up.

Thats then shared between all premises in the cluster. Nobody said, it's uncontended. And most PCs can't even run a speedtest at 1 Gbit/s CPU wise. Nevermind more. You need specialised test equipment both ends to gets 10 Gbit/s properly at the moment.

Cop on. It's just a willy waving product. Like who's got the fastest fanciest sportscar. Doesn't matter if you can't afford the petrol that needs to be put in the tank or the servicing.

/M

EdgeCase · 09-01-2019 8:40pm

I'm a bit baffled by this post.

First of all there isn't widespread 10GB/s internet anywhere in Europe at this stage and the technology isn't even standardised yet. Siro has trialled the technology and has future proofed for it. AFAIK so has OpenEir.

There isn't a monopoly by Virgin on TV here. Both Vodafone and Eir offer IPTV and Sky is also now on Siro which probably offers one of the most highly developed TV platforms anywhere in the world. Also over the top TV services like Netflix and so on are becoming far more relevant than ISP controlled IPTV offerings.

European TV is available by satellite and online if people want to watch it. We happen to speak the largest language in the media world and that's why we have so much content in English. You can't really compare Ireland to a Luxembourg or Switzerland which are naturally sandwiched in between multiple languages and multilingualism is the norm.

Also attacking Ireland's corporate tax rate from either a Luxembourg or Swiss perspective, both countries are quasi tax and regulatory havens, is frankly ridiculous.

The main challenges in Ireland are rural and quasi rural broadband and and low housing density. That's being addressed at present with FTTH.

The existing FTTC rollout by OpenEir isn't too bad by international standards in even small villages and FTTH is coming. Virgin also offers pretty widespread HFC cable internet which is 300mbit/s and comparable to most of the European cable operators and faster than most of what's available in the UK.

Meanwhile Siro is being rolled out quite quickly and providing a 3rd access medium.

So basically we have two fully open access networks OpenEir and Siro and a cable network. It's not exactly dismal.

Very rural areas are going to continue to be challenging to reach and the only thing that will change that is subsidies. You can't run several km of fibre to reach a couple of customers and expect it to be profitable. It's just not possible regardless of who the CEO is. It's all about very low density.

Also while I wouldn't defend Eir, they are not a monopoly anymore and they're losing their access network control quite rapidly.

As for their ownership, they're just investors. It'll be interesting to see if the new owner, who has never owned an incumbent before will be able to make any impact.

Eir aren't in the position of any of his other companies. In some ways it's like Ryanair taking over British Airways or Lidl buying out Carrefour in terms of culture and and market position.

tsue921i8wljb3 · 09-01-2019 8:43pm

You're all worse for indulging the xenophobic ranting of the OP. It deserves mocking or ignoring.

EdgeCase · 09-01-2019 8:47pm

Not only that but Free didn't roll out fibre all over France. They largely use Orange's access network lol.

They were a cheap and cheerful ISP and then mobile provider.

The big fibre pushes into homes in France were done by Orange and Numéricable, not Illiad.

Nothing wrong with that but let's try posting facts rather than rhetoric. It's a technical forum.

EdgeCase · 09-01-2019 8:57pm

Anastasia Sweet Cocaine wrote: »

You're all worse for indulging the xenophobic ranting of the OP. It deserves mocking or ignoring.

You sometimes have to write responses to stuff like this as it ends up sitting online for years and being regurgitated as non-factual fact.

I know most of us know what the reality actually is, but I'm always conscious that someone stumbling into a thread won't.

Regardless of what the topic is, I'm increasingly not ignoring stuff like this as it's how fake news starts.

Marlow · 09-01-2019 9:12pm

Mjaeh .. muppets will always be muppets ... that's a fact.

But even Waldorf and Statler had more reason that the above rant from somebody who's not even affected by what he's writing about.

/M

ED E · 09-01-2019 9:22pm

Stop

Feeding

The

Troll

Impetus · 09-01-2019 9:25pm

gctest50 wrote: »

If all you have if the worlds wonkiest anecdote, why bother ?

What are the make/model computers they have precisely ?

Anyway he is our Neil now and we are going to have loads of internets !

I have several iMac Pros with 10GB cards in various countries. eg https://www.apple.com/ie/imac-pro/specs/ Vega 64 graphics and big memory. Works fine in other countries with download speeds around 990 GB/sec. My portable is a Dell workstation 7510 - which cost about six grand in terms of options and memory. Any all the premises have fiber 1 GB internet wired, aside from Ireland where one is suffering with VM 'best'. No wifi.

I divide my time between various countries and always take the best fiber service available.

Johnboy1951 · 09-01-2019 9:42pm

Works fine in other countries with download speeds around 990 GB/sec

Nice!

Where might that be?

Impetus · 09-01-2019 9:56pm

EdgeCase wrote: »

I'm a bit baffled by this post.

First of all there isn't a widespread 10GB/s internet anywhere in Europe at this stage and the technology isn't even standardised yet. Siro has trialled the technology and has future proofed for it. AFAIK so has OpenEir.

There isn't a monopoly by Virgin on TV here. Both Vodafone and Eir offer IPTV and Sky is also now on Siro which probably offers one of the most highly developed TV platforms anywhere in the world. Also over the top TV services like Netflix and so on are becoming far more relevant than ISP controlled IPTV offerings.

European TV is available by satellite and online if people want to watch it. We happen to speak the largest language in the media world and that's why we have so much content in English. You can't really compare Ireland to a Luxembourg or Switzerland which are naturally sandwiched in between multiple languages and multilingualism is the norm.

Also attacking Ireland's corporate tax rate from either a Luxembourg or Swiss perspective, both countries are quasi tax and regulatory havens, is frankly ridiculous.

The main challenges in Ireland is rural and quasi rural broadband and and low housing density. That's being addressed at present with FTTH.

The existing FTTC rollout by OpenEir isn't too bad by international standards in even small villages and FTTH is coming. Virgin also offers pretty widespread HFC cable internet which is 300mbit/s and comparable to most of the European cable operators and faster than most of what's available in the UK.

Meanwhile Siro is being rolled out quite quickly and providing a 3rd access medium.

So basically we have two fully open access networks OpenEir and Siro and a cable network. It's not exactly dismal.

Very rural areas are going to continue to be challenging to reach and the only thing that will change that is subsidies. You can't run several km of fibre to reach a couple of customers and expect it to be profitable. It's just not possible regardless of who the CEO is. It's all about very low density.

Also while I wouldn't defend Eir, they are not a monopoly anymore and they're losing their access network control quite rapidly.

As for their ownership, they're just investors. It'll be interesting to see if the new owner, who has never owned an incumbent before will be able to make any impact.

Eir aren't in the position of any of his other companies. In some ways it's like Ryanair taking over British Airways or Lidl buying out Carrefour in terms of culture and and market position.

So it appears if you are contented with the Irish status quo. You do not really wish to watch a wide spectrum (language terms) of content.

I agree with the matter of rural areas being difficult. But they are also struggling with eir old fashioned DSL. I happen to be in a city at the moment in IE, and I see ESB networks installing FTTH using ESB networks branded vans. With no advertising of where to go to buy their product. Irish dumb or what? They are complaining of the low take-up of FTTH. If you go to the siro.ie website and enter your postcode and chances are the site will say 1GB is not available in your area. It is way out of date, and has no precision on when to expect service. The people in the street think when they see ESB it has something to do with electric power. And move on. How many people can look up at an ESB pole and recognise PON fiber optic cable?

As for housing density, that is a planning appalling issue. But fiber is cheaper to install and maintain to these 'culchies' than anything else.

There is a lot of old fungal crap in the Irish telecommunications network. Which has to be maintained. eg phone line, coax cable tv, fiber, perhaps others. It is far cheaper to run a single fiber net with 10G capability, on an ongoing basis, even if the subscriber is a 90 year old person who wants a POTS phone. High time to stop maintaining 2, 3, 4 or 5 networks to the door. The system needs to be shared. Eir and every other entity need to use Siro as a platform. Fiber is far more reliable than copper. Not impacted by lightning or flooding. Andorra and Monaco have proven this. And both of these countries have some of the cheapest and fastest systems in the world. And while Monaco is dense, Andorra has one off homes 2000+ meters in the Pyrenees altitude some 10 km from the nearest 'exchange' to use Oirish lingo. The internet is as fast up as it is down there.

I have a place in Malta, and 1 GB internet with a ping time of 4ms is EUR 25 per month. And the sun shines in more ways than one. Ireland is being ripped off not just by weather.....

Impetus · 09-01-2019 10:00pm

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Nice!

Where might that be?

Read my lips. But 1GB is also widely available in most of mainland EU. (990 GB = typo)

Impetus · 09-01-2019 10:19pm

ED E wrote: »

Stop

Feeding

The

Troll

Who do you work for? Or perhaps you are longing to back to dial-up speeds?

Ultimanemo · 09-01-2019 10:22pm

I think eir inherited the culture of "employed by the state" they didn't work hard to improve the service they provide and the result is what we see today,

turbbo · 09-01-2019 10:33pm

Coming on boards and telling people you're an Eir employee you need to be either brave or stupid. I don't think many people believe we have a state of the art fibre network in ireland, certainly not around my neck of the woods anyways. Eir have become a joke as far as i can tell but they are the only joke in a lot of areas sadly.

ED E · 09-01-2019 10:47pm

Ultimanemo wrote: »

Eir I guess

I don't work for any ISP. I'm also the first to give Eir a bollocking when they deserve it.

Every few months Impy comes along and posts a thread about how "OMFG Ireland is soo bad for broadband and [X] is so much better lololol" or something to that effect but worded in such a way as to not be instabanned.

https://www.boards.ie/search/submit/?user=662785&title=1&sort=newest&date_to=&date_from=&query=%2A%3A%2A&forum=259

^ Check out those search results.
EG:

Spain: MoviStar/Telefonica 300 Mbits/sec fiber for €26,90/mth

Which a mod had to correct with "(MOD: No really €58.50)" because it was a truckload of BS.

We know Ireland has BB issues but his little tirades are of no use to anyone. Sh1tstirring plain and simple. Meanwhile we have 4 NBP and related threads that have proactive discussion based in the real world.

EdgeCase · 09-01-2019 10:49pm

Impetus wrote: »

I have a place in Malta, and 1 GB internet with a ping time of 4ms is EUR 25 per month. And the sun shines in more ways than one. Ireland is being ripped off not just by weather.....

Care to provide a link to the ISP in question and the price plan?

I'd be curious as I know Malta very and would be delighted to subscribe to this package.

I'm also delighted to see Malta has made such remarkable progress since 2017:

https://www.timesofmalta.com/mobile/articles/view/20170808/local/malta-has-eus-third-slowest-broadband-study-finds.655191

I'd also add that about 13% of households in Ireland are multilingual (mine included) meaning they speak more than English or Irish at home and I would reckon quite a significant % of the population speak more than just English or Irish.

You can easily access non English speaking TV if you want it. If there's a demand, someone will supply it.

Marlow · 09-01-2019 11:50pm

ED E wrote: »

We know Ireland has BB issues but his little tirades are of no use to anyone. Sh1tstirring plain and simple. Meanwhile we have 4 NBP and related threads that have proactive discussion based in the real world.

Ireland may have broadband issues .. and that is, what it is.

But in regards to FTTH rollout Ireland is what in the rankings ? It's listed 6 countries behind Switzerland .. (Switzerland 8%, Ireland 1.7%) in the September 2017 European rankings of the FTTH Council .... want to check ?? .... https://www.ftthcouncil.eu/documents/FTTH%20GR%2020180212_FINAL.2.pdf

Ireland is even listed in the Global rankings .. and neither there is Switzerland very far up the list.

And then there's the fact, that between SIRO and OpenEIR, A LOT has happened since.

Currently approx 400k premises in Ireland can get FTTH. 1.1M premises can get either FTTH or FTTC, that are identified by Eircode. Supposedly another 900k+ premises can avail of FTTC, that can't be identified by precise address coding.

Look at that in the big picture, that Ireland only has what ? ... 4.7M people living in Ireland .. that's not bad at all.

Sure .. the situation for those falling outside of that scope is poor. But for those that are inside the scope, a lot are doing better than most of the world.

So feck off with headline speeds that nobody needs .... I'm looking forward to the next FTTH Council stats, when Switzerland suddenly has been left behind.

Oh .. and Luxembourg is also not even half way up the list. Latvia or Norway would be something to talk about. But that's about it.

/M

Ultimanemo · 10-01-2019 6:46am

Marlow wrote: »

Ireland may have broadband issues .. and that is, what it is.

But in regards to FTTH rollout Ireland is what in the rankings ? It's listed 6 countries behind Switzerland .. (Switzerland 8%, Ireland 1.7%) in the September 2017 European rankings of the FTTH Council .... want to check ?? .... https://www.ftthcouncil.eu/documents/FTTH%20GR%2020180212_FINAL.2.pdf

Ireland is even listed in the Global rankings .. and neither there is Switzerland very far up the list.

And then there's the fact, that between SIRO and OpenEIR, A LOT has happened since.

Currently approx 400k premises in Ireland can get FTTH. 1.1M premises can get either FTTH or FTTC, that are identified by Eircode. Supposedly another 900k+ premises can avail of FTTC, that can't be identified by precise address coding.

Look at that in the big picture, that Ireland only has what ? ... 4.7M people living in Ireland .. that's not bad at all.

Sure .. the situation for those falling outside of that scope is poor. But for those that are inside the scope, a lot are doing better than most of the world.

So feck off with headline speeds that nobody needs .... I'm looking forward to the next FTTH Council stats, when Switzerland suddenly has been left behind.

Oh .. and Luxembourg is also not even half way up the list. Latvia or Norway would be something to talk about. But that's about it.

/M

Hopefully one day Ireland will be as good as Mauritius, Romania or Vietnam,6 months ago I was using 4G, Now I am using 3G as Three told me to do so because 4G became so congested, getting there, looking forward to 2G.

Wanderer78 · 10-01-2019 6:54am

Ultimanemo wrote:

I think eir inherited the culture of "employed by the state" they didn't work hard to improve the service they provide and the result is what we see today,

Or has it become a wealth extractor since privitisation?

turbbo · 10-01-2019 11:04am

Marlow wrote: »

Ireland may have broadband issues .. and that is, what it is.

But in regards to FTTH rollout Ireland is what in the rankings ? It's listed 6 countries behind Switzerland .. (Switzerland 8%, Ireland 1.7%) in the September 2017 European rankings of the FTTH Council .... want to check ?? .... https://www.ftthcouncil.eu/documents/FTTH%20GR%2020180212_FINAL.2.pdf

Ireland is even listed in the Global rankings .. and neither there is Switzerland very far up the list.

And then there's the fact, that between SIRO and OpenEIR, A LOT has happened since.

Currently approx 400k premises in Ireland can get FTTH. 1.1M premises can get either FTTH or FTTC, that are identified by Eircode. Supposedly another 900k+ premises can avail of FTTC, that can't be identified by precise address coding.

Look at that in the big picture, that Ireland only has what ? ... 4.7M people living in Ireland .. that's not bad at all.

Sure .. the situation for those falling outside of that scope is poor. But for those that are inside the scope, a lot are doing better than most of the world.

So feck off with headline speeds that nobody needs .... I'm looking forward to the next FTTH Council stats, when Switzerland suddenly has been left behind.

Oh .. and Luxembourg is also not even half way up the list. Latvia or Norway would be something to talk about. But that's about it.

/M

Marlow - I remember a post where you said you moved to an area that you ensured was already fibre enabled - it's very easy to say everything is rosy when you are covered.
Meanwhile there is a whole swarth of this country still not covered. Who is too blame? - I believe the problem was created when that genius Mary O'Rourke sold TE.

Eircom milked dsl for all it could as the infrastructure crumbled around them - the only reason they're spending a penny now is because if they don't they will have no reason to exist.
Mobile/wireless has killed any need for landline and rubbish dsl.
I believe Eir are already being pushed out of urban areas with Virgin and Siro.

Marlow · 10-01-2019 11:19am

turbbo wrote: »

Marlow - I remember a post where you said you moved to an area that you ensured was already fibre enabled - it's very easy to say everything is rosy when you are covered.
Meanwhile there is a whole swarth of this country still not covered. Who is too blame? - I believe the problem was created when that genius Mary O'Rourke sold TE.

I moved to an area, where I ensured, I was covered yes. But I had fibre before that. Just at a premium of over 400 EUR+VAT per month for 10 Mbit/s. OpenEIR can deliver fibre pretty much everywhere in Ireland .. if you're prepared to pay NGN / Carrier pricing.

/M

turbbo · 10-01-2019 11:29am

Marlow wrote: »

I moved to an area, where I ensured, I was covered yes. But I had fibre before that. Just at a premium of over 400 EUR+VAT per month for 10 Mbit/s. OpenEIR can deliver fibre pretty much everywhere in Ireland .. if you're prepared to pay NGN / Carrier pricing.

/M

Not where I am in Limerick. And I'm about 4 miles from the city centre.

Marlow · 10-01-2019 11:36am

turbbo wrote: »

Not where I am in Limerick. And I'm about 4 miles from the city centre.

Yes you can .. guaranteed. But you won't like the pricing. Read my post again.

/M

turbbo · 10-01-2019 11:59am

Marlow wrote: »

Yes you can .. guaranteed. But you won't like the pricing. Read my post again.

/M

Okay - I trust you're telling the truth - haven't seen any dodgy post from you before! :-)
I wasn't aware that it was available like that(it ain't advertised at all) - also if it was fibre why was it 10mbit/s seems a bit throttled to say the least.
Also €400 - you would need to be pretty desperate to have to fork out that much for what seems like a still crap service.

Johnboy1951 · 10-01-2019 12:02pm

Marlow wrote: »

Yes you can .. guaranteed. But you won't like the pricing. Read my post again.

/M

Do they provide this to individuals rather than registered companies?
I had the impression that this was a 'commercial-only' service.

Marlow · 10-01-2019 12:02pm

turbbo wrote: »

Okay - I trust you're telling the truth - haven't seen any dodgy post from you before! :-)
I wasn't aware that it was available like that(it ain't advertised at all) - also if it was fibre why was it 10mbit/s seems a bit throttled to say the least.
Also €400 - you would need to be pretty desperate to have to fork out that much for what seems like a still crap service.

It's a business product. It's build and priced to order.

And 100 Mbit/s would have been 3 times that.

It's not about speed. It never is. Its about service level, latency and upload speed. And those 10 Mbit/s were symmetric and full duplex. 10 Mbit/s down, 10 Mbit/s up. It's basically a fast leased line.

And of course an individual can buy it .. if you want to pay the money. 3-5k+ to install and a premium per month. Oh .. and it's uncontended.

/M

turbbo · 10-01-2019 12:13pm

Marlow wrote: »

It's a business product. It's build and priced to order.

And 100 Mbit/s would have been 3 times that.

It's not about speed. It never is. Its about service level, latency and upload speed. And those 10 Mbit/s were symmetric and full duplex. 10 Mbit/s down, 10 Mbit/s up. It's basically a fast leased line.

And of course an individual can buy it .. if you want to pay the money. 3-5k+ to install and a premium per month. Oh .. and it's uncontended.

/M

Okay it's "fibre" technically. But you chose to avoid having to sign up to that nonsense again - it's hardly an argument that we're onto something great here with Eir?

Marlow · 10-01-2019 12:17pm

turbbo wrote: »

Okay it's "fibre" technically. But you chose to avoid having to sign up to that nonsense again - it's hardly an argument that we're onto something great here with Eir?

I'm just saying fibre connectivity is available. It will cost you. And of course, it's mostly businesses that can afford it.

So in my case, I needed to be able to do my work. You have to spend some money to make some money. And this was also in an Urban area.

However .. since I was moving anyhow, I sure made it a requirement that I would be able to get FTTH at the new place. Alone for the fact of greater speeds and less cost.

I'm just saying ... it's available and it can be done. But it's not an off the shelf product.

/M

Eir has been a waste of money to everybody – customers, gov.ie, s'holders.. planet

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