22 Jan 2004

Eircomtribunal.com is dead.
Long live the new Commission for Communications Wreckulation!

Web site address: www.comwreck.com
If you have difficulties to enter the protected site, remember, it is created from the perspective of Irish Communications Regulator John Doherty, as a means of communicating with Communications Minister Dermot Ahern.



Background information

The American vulture capitalist owners of Eircom are tightening the screws on Paddy even further. Cranking up line rental pricing to EUR 24.18 per month, a 25% increase within one year to Europe's highest, is the kiss of death to any meaningful competition to Ireland's de-facto monopoly Telecom.
After asset stripping the company, savagely cutting back on essential infra-structural investment, taking a loot of half a billion euros out in dividends and loading the investors' depth onto the company, Eircom – by now degraded to a UK shell company – will be sold off shortly on the stock-market, for the next group of fat cats to take their bite. Thievery and destruction of public utility assets, hitherto at this level only experienced by developing countries, is happening right before our eyes.

All this could only happen, because too many screws are loose in the heads of the Irish Communications regulators. They have spectacularly failed to curtail Eircom's monopolistic anticompetitive strangle-hold on the market; in parts they have aided and abetted this development, deliberately or unintentionally; if they lacked powers, they have at least failed to cry stop.
They have continuously, deliberately and skilfully misinformed the Irish public, the Irish media and the Irish politicians about the real state of affairs in the areas of Internet access and Internet usage.
Under the direction of its regulatory regime Ireland has not only got Europe's highest line rental, but also Europe's highest dsl whole sale pricing (EUR 27/month, back-haul not included); Ireland ranks at the low end when it comes to dsl availability (below 50% of lines), dsl uptake (only recently reached 1%), Internet penetration (34%) and real actual home Internet usage (17%) [1].

With www.ComWreck.com you can get inside the head of the new Irish Communications Wreckulator. His views, delivered in his sarcastic, humorous blogs are frank and revealing, but always factual.
From now on the public eye will be on Europe's most over-funded and mostly underachieving regulator, the Irish "Commission for Communications Regulation" (ComReg).

If you like ComWreck.com, please recommend the site to friends, collegues, journalists and TDs.
Feel free to use material from ComWreck.com in other publications, as long a reference to the source is given.
If you need higher resolution files of images for print purposes, email us on johndoherty@comwreck.com.


Regards

The crew of the "Commission for Communications Wreckulation"



[1] Typically ComReg published the results of their own last 2003 survey, which show the meaningful (as in: adults who use the Internet from home at least more than once a week) percentage of Irish Home Internet users to be at a mere 17 % (for comparison: Switzerland: 45%), as follows: "Irish Home Internet penetration rose by 5% to 44% in the last Quarter", using manipulative statistical trickery, correctly assuming none of the journalists reporting the story would question their misleading summary.

< Back Home