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    Wednesday, July 02, 2008

    Eircom delay 8MB speed upgrade and piss off their customers!


    Back in January 2008 Eircom announced they'd be upgrading many exchanges in Ireland to upto 8MB speeds:

    Retail broadband customers will continue to pay the same monthly fee and will receive the speed upgrades free of charge, while today’s announcement will provide lower wholesale broadband prices.

    eircom will now offer broadband products with download speeds that range from 1Mb up to 12Mb per second. The speed upgrades and new products will be introduced on a phased basis over the coming months.
    They also advised that final dates for each exchange would be finalized between January and June 2008, well at the end of June 2008 they announced these would be delayed until a as of yet unconfirmed date.

    For all those people on Eircom and stuck using Eircom Wholesale Bit-Stream resellers (UTV, Perlico, BT (for the most part), Vodafone etc this is yet another reason why Eircom sucks!

    On the other scale of things UPC (NTL/Chorus) recently announced packages of upto 20MB speeds which they've already began rolling out to customers....no set cap either (includes a Fair Usage Policy I'd imagine though).

    Perhaps this will force Eircom into spending money on ADSL2+ who knows, I guess time will tell.

    Any further comments on this delay from Eircom customers or employee's are welcome.

    1 comment:

    Unknown said...

    I emailed Eircom's press office in relation to the upgrades yesterday evening, and received a prompt bog standard response today. It basically confirms that all the residential packages won't be utilizing ADSL2+, no matter whether your exchange is ADSL2+ enabled or not. Only the business packages that exceed 8Mb shall make use of it.

    Here's the reply they sent, for your reference.

    "Hi Dave

    Thank you for your email.

    The speed upgrades have been taking place on a phased basis over the last number of months and will continue throughout the next 6 to 8 weeks. We have extended the list of exchanges that will be upgraded which has naturally had an impact on our date for completion of all upgrades.

    If your telephone line is connected to the Tralee exchange, then speed increases on the eircom 2Mb broadband product and the eircom 3Mb broadband product will come into effect in this exchange in the next 6 to 8 weeks. The speed upgrades for these specific products will apply to all telephone exchanges nationwide for customers whose telephone line qualifies for these speeds. The 2Mb product will be upgraded to 3Mb and the 3Mb product will be upgraded to 7.6Mb. The 3Mb broadband product upgrade to 7.6Mb will not utilise ADSL2+ technology.

    The Tralee exchange was ADSL2+ enabled last month. Customers served on this exchange who wish to avail of our 12Mb product, and whose telephone line qualifies, can contact our broadband customer service team on 1800 242 558 to place an order.

    Best Regards

    Sylda Langford
    Press Officer"