Residents wait over a year for phonelines!

It would appear that Eircom are doing a great job providing services to new customers just outside Cork City......see the story below.

Its worth noting that because eircom is installing an RSU (Remote Subscriber Unit) in order to provide these people with a phone service, these people won't be able to receive ADSL over their phone line anytime soon as eircom don't enable RSU's for Broadband.

"RESIDENTS of a luxury housing development have put out a distress call after being left hanging on the line for a year for their Eircom telephones.

The hi-spec homes in an upmarket estate outside Cork City have five bedrooms, landscaped gardens, CCTV security, central vacuum systems, whirlpool baths and satellite and internet capability, but all their owners want is a humble land line.

Despite repeated queries and pleas to Eircom to get them connected, however, all they have heard from the phone company is “we’re busy, please hold”.

To make matters more frustrating, neighbours who moved in to the first 40 homes in the Heatherfield estate at Waterfall, which went on sale two years ago at €630,000 each, were hooked up without delay, leaving the final phase of 16 houses in a communications wilderness.

“It’s like Eircom have gone away and forgotten about us only we know they can’t have forgotten because we keep reminding them,” said Celine O’Donoghue, who moved in last December.

“The irony is, Eircom said I could keep my old number when I moved, which I thought would be very handy but a number’s not much good to me without a phone.”

Eircom claims to be able to connect up new owners of existing homes in as little as one day where a phone line is already in place. Its promotional literature continues: “If your new home doesn’t have a working telephone line, your connection will take approximately up to 20 working days (or longer in some cases during promotional periods) for your Eircom phone line to be fully activated.”

Company spokesman Paul Bradley said that in practice, about 70% of phone lines requiring field work were completed within 28 days. He said of Heatherfield: “It’s an unusual case.

“The first part of the estate was provided by telephone lines that came from the original exchange. As the next phase of the estate was built, it required more lines which necessitated the installation of an RSU, a small local exchange,” he said. “This is in the process of being built. We’re looking at September at this stage.”

Residents rejected the explanation given the small scale of the work involved and said they had already been given different timelines ranging from next October to another six months."