From: Vincent Cunniffe (vincent at domain beacon.ie)
Date: Tue 04 May 1999 - 13:22:41 IST
> If TE would reduce the cost of phone calls and line rental I might even
> buy Q3..
<rant>
They've been promising this for ages now, and there's no sign of it
happening. Line rental hasn't moved for many years, and while they've
changed the peak internet access charges quite a bit, the offpeak
charges have remained static for years also.
Given that most home users operated during these times (after 18:00
and at weekends) they're doing an appalling job in this area.
They have been handwaving about flat rates since they were nudged
(by Mary Harney, I think) near the end of last year. However, we're
already into May, and there's a deafening silence on the subject.
Even when 'flat rates' do get introduced, they're not actually going
to be flat : the only solution they've proposed for official
consideration is a block-of-time one, which would work out slightly
cheaper but only if you're willing to commit to a significant chunk
of time for the month (100 hours was mentioned).
Furthermore, the quality of the lines and connections that is
available is frequently abysmal. Speaking as someone who spends a
lot of time online via modem, and has for some time, the quality of
connections in this country is terrible. I have used several
different phone lines and 4 different modems, and I have talked to
a large number of other people (gamers, mainly) in the same
situation, and the general experience is one of disconnections and
frequent incidents of noise on the line.
This is not just with a single ISP (Tinet, in my case). It also
holds for users of many other ISP's that I have talked to. The only
thing that they all have in common is tha phone lines that they
use to connect.
</rant>
Vin
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