Malta has ADSL. New Zealand, which is very comparable to us in terms of
population and distribution has ADSL. The OECD report that was discussed a
couple of days ago on this list had us down with Greece and I think two
rundown ex communist states as ommitted from their survey because we didn't
have decent internet access. There is no justification for not being able to
rollout ADSL in major cities at a price comparable to the rest of the world.
Dublin has about two and a half times the population of Glasgow and a trip
to google turns up 4 companies selling ADSL connections in the first 6
links.
The problem with the pricing is that the Eircom are trying to subsidise
their retail arm from their wholesale arm. They are doing the equivalent of
(wrong figures)
60 (wholesale) + 20 (retail) = 80 (final price)
when they really should be doing
40 (wholesale) + 40 (retail) = 80 (final price)
Eircom gets the same amount of money in either case but competitors get
shafted by the first one and if the ODTR lets them do that then it's goodbye
to any hope of it ever getting any cheaper, faster, more reliable or less
restricted.
If obeying national and EU regulations makes Eircom unprofitable then they
need to change how they do busines because every other incumbent telco in
Europe seems to be able to cope with them.
Fergal
On Wed, Nov 07, 2001 at 04:11:49PM +0000, Gavin Henrick wrote:
> Perhaps, but you cant exactly change the past. The telco system here sucks, cest
> la vie. The population numbers dont work in our favour for low cost solutions
> (see other sectors for comparisons) The population "spread" doesnt help either,
> so we are stuck in the reality of a 2nd class system without the huge government
> expenditure which should have happened years ago on the infrastructure, be it
> telco or roads - maybe "toll" optics would work ;)
>> In the current state of the "downturn" this government would be mad to do
> anything which would mean more layoffs. Pressurising Eircom into making bad
> business decisions would not be clever in this regard.
>> --
> Gavin
>> --
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