Some of you may be aware of my history with eircom, and the wonderful services they provide. If you are not from Ireland, you may not be aware that everytime you need to connect to a DSL or phone service, you must (MUST) connect with eircom first, and then move services. Eircom have 100% control of all telecommunication switches in Ireland, and because of this, they feel they can treat their customers like shit.

I have just returned from travelling and have acquired an nice apartment in dublin city. I like the internet, so I've decided to get broadband from eircom. When I moved in, there was a phone, and eircom broadband router in the apartment, so I knew that it was going to be a straight forward process, and there would be no need to connect the line, so no upfront costs. Boy was I wrong.

I called eircom, and told the lady my address. After spelling it out (metropolitan is a tough word to understand), she informed me that there is no line on their accounts at that address and apartment number. I said, "I find that very unlikely, as there is a phone and broadband router in the apartment.". She said, "I may not have been active in the last eight months, you will have to pay €110, and wait 2 weeks for a technician to call out to connect". "If you want, you can try plugging in a phone, and if you get a dialtone, call 199000 to find out your number".

This left me peeved. But, it's not like I have experienced a smooth conversation ever with this company.

Last night I got a phone from conor, and plugged it in. DIALTONE. Dialed 199000, and boom, a phone number was called back to me.

Lesson: Never trust eircom. If I was a normal punter, I would have been duped and paid €110 to eircom for doing absolutely nothing.

Don't worry, this isn't over yet. I'll keep you posted.

I say "on it's way", because I have been hurt before and am still finding it hard to trust any broadband provider.

You will remember an earlier post about getting broadband from eircom. This is the second stage of that.

After my raging rant from before, Luke put me in touch with a nice gentleman in eircom. He will remain unnamed as if I were to name him, he may get barraged with emails. He checked out my line with a little more conviction than [mary] on the phone last time. He said that it was capable and forced the line to pass. Yay! One question tho. Refer back to the earlier conversation with [mary].

"I SEE, AND WILL I EVER GET IT?", "NO".

"EVER?", "NO".

"LIKE, FOREVER?" "NO, BUT YOU CAN RING PEOPLE, AND ASK THEM TO DOWNLOAD YOUR PORN FOR YOU!".

So, what's going on then? Well, I'm not sure. But it would be nice to have this service on a public front, like an escalation system. If I'm not happy with the first line service i'm getting from the sales rep, I should be able to talk to a more senior technical person and they can look into the issue in more detail. Just a thought. Eircom, I hope you're listening.

Anyway, moving on from that, eircom are pretty much the worst value for broadband and phone services in Ireland at the moment, and my original plan was to move to EsatBT who provide a much better service at a cheaper price. But as mentioned before you still have to connect to eircom first before going to any other provider. This intial connection cost a total of €145 (€110 connection charge + 1 Month line rental).

I called EsatBT today and have ordered 1Mb Broadband and Talk. Blackie has 2Mb and says that it is more than he needs so I'm going with 1Mb for €35/month incl. tax. There is a €45 charge for the Wireless Modem and free connection, so it's a pretty sweet deal.

But the total cost so far for Broadband in ireland for is €145 + €70 = €215 just to get connected. And timewise, at least 2 months. I'm still trying to find where the government is getting off saying we are a broadband enabled nation.

Some Related news on Broadband penetration in ireland: Ireland Lags in broadband league, Govt. urged to fund broadband, Eircom on target in 2004 (I think not), Broadband Initiative for Rural Areas, Ireland drops one place in broadband league.

BTW there are people to go to if you are not happy with what you're get from a tech provider. ComReg will listen to all of these kind of issues and you can get all your money back from some providers just by mentioning comreg in a letter/email.