Trumpy,
In Ireland we've had a lot of problems since deregulation because the incumbant operator, Eircom (formerly Telecom Eireann, formerly P&T) was very slow to release its death grip on the physical local access infrastructure it inherited.
We've had "CPS" Carrier Pre-Select for a long time now and it's had a big impact on the price of calls. [CPS is where eircom must route your voice/isdn traffic over another carrier and has 3 levels 1) Local 2) National and 3)International.. you can choose 1 for all calls, or use a different operator for each type]
Then when DSL arrived, eircom charged an absolute fortune for it and local loop unbundling prices were so high that most of their compeditors were forced into a situation where they could only offer "bit stream" access. This meant that effectively they were reselling eircom's DSL products under their own brand and buying them at a wholesale rate.
Eircom was making enormous profits out of dial up (modem and ISDN) internet access that was all charged at a very steep per min rate so they were loathed to roll out DSL too quickly as it would canabalise not only the dial up access market but also their completely over priced leased line, primary rate ISDN and atm business products.
DSL launched far later than it should have been, was completely and totally over priced and only available in a select few areas. Eircom then concluded that at 129 euro / month for 512Kbps access there was no demand and thus justified postponing the roll out!
Anyway, the regulator, ComReg, forced the introduction of flat-rate dial up products and signifitantly blew the dial up market wide open. Suddenly the profit that eircom were getting from dial up connections plummeted and DSL started to see the light of day for the first time.
DSL became affordable, but prices remained amongst the highest in western europe and penitration was way way too low considering that this is one of the most computer literate countries in Europe and has more spending power per capita than practically anywhere else. Many people simply didn't see the point of paying a fortune for 512K access. All sorts of crazy technical excuses for not installing it were often given too.
Anyway, in recent times local loop unbundling has been forced through and all of a sudden we've seen an absolutely massive improvement in DSL pricing, availaiblity and speed.
Suddenly eircom and other operator's offerings quadrupled in speed, the download caps were dropped / increased massively and the prices reduced / remained the same for the faster product.
All this because one comany came into the market offering a bundled DSL/Phone product where they'd provide you with dsl and dial tone for less than half the current price of a phone line + DSL.. they were also offering 4 mbit/sec as standard!
Amazing what a bit of a market shake up can do!
Oh yeah, btw : a phone line (standard PSTN with free call fowarding / caller ID / call waiting)
comes in at : €24.18 per month
In other major currencies used on this board for comparison:
€24.18 (Euro)
UK£16.50 per month
US$31.61 per month
NS$43.23
Can$ 38.98
I'm guessing this is a lot steeper than elsewhere?
(Btw: If you're >65 or in reciept of certain welfare allowances the state pays your line rental fee + a little extra for a few free calls, so it's not impacting on the vunerable, BUT the rip off is costing the tax payer directly!) (OAPs also get free standing charge payment on power / gas bills and some free KWHs..)
You have to pay this fee to eircom at the moment, regardless of which carrier you use and you pay DSL fees on top of it. If you have a second line, it's 24.18 per month extra. (2 channel ISDN is slightly cheaper than 2 lines)
full LLU (at a reasonable price) means that other telcos can actually provide the dial tone etc.
also please note Eircom PLC is not state owned in anyway. It was floated on the stock exchange when it was privatised. Remained a publicly quoted company for a while and was then bought-out by a group of private investors (the valentia group).. then subsequently had another IPO on the stock market to raise capital.
[This message has been edited by djk (edited 04-23-2005).]
