And this is a picture of balls. Two pairs. If you come from a Comreg IP address they spin, so you know what they look like:
Photo owned by jeffisageek (cc)
So we see that eircom are going to court against the telecoms poddle again. Once again this is about something called Local Loop Unbundlin which is all about who has full control of your phone line from the exchange to your house. In the UK unbundling is a massive success and we see dirt cheap, high speed broadband and lots of choice. The opposite to here. LLU has never worked here and companies that thought they could get it to work like Smart got walloped. BT Ireland probably wouldn’t have moved out of consumer if LLU worked well. This latest court trouble is deja vu.
In 2005, Comreg proposed a Line Share Price of 39 cent which was successfully challenged by Eircom
In July 2008 eircom appealed ComReg’s direction to set Line Share price at €2.94. ComReg subsequently withdrew their direction.
And now we have the latest court challenge to a regulator that never goes to Court but jacks it in on the steps.
The hope on the horizon is that we seem now to have a Department of Communications that despises eircom when once it wouldn’t really challenge them. And whatever the sentiment of the Department, we get the same from the “independent” regulator. Interesting times. I’d like to see a day in Court as some kind of precedent might finally be set.
The problem is that Eircom are their own worst enemy. They have tried to protect their market share by doing everything apart from competing and ultimately that strategy has failed. They are a shell of what they were in Telecom Eireann days and I believe that if Comreg do show their balls to Eircom the result will be the collapse of that company.
That in my opinion won’t be a bad thing as bigger (or smaller) and better companies will pick up the pieces and bring us all forward.
I’d personally be more interested in ComReg or the Department dealt with the issue of net neutrality, which Eircom seems to have scant regard for.
Mentioning Comreg and balls in the same sentence seems a contradiction in terms.
It would be nice to think the Dept might stand up to Eircom but I fear Minister Ryan is too upset at the potential embarrassment of not having postal codes when shopping online to actually worry about the fact that many people cant get online to shop.
@Declan: I know. I was embarrassed myself yesterday when I went to Amazon and tried to order some new pants. When the time came to completing my address, I had to walk away in shame.
Third time lucky I hope. So late though, what a difference it would make to have a regulator with teeth. *sigh*