Eircom wants to raise the line rental again. The rent is usurous already, but after this rise of 7.5 percent, the price will be EUR 24/month. Eircom claim, as they always do that line rental in Ireland is one of the lowest in Europe. As usual, this is a load of rubbish. Line rental in the UK is only around EUR 17.
This will be the third increase in thirteen months. At the same time, telephone service seems to be getting worse. Calls are more likely to fail than before, and repair times for faults are getting longer and longer.
The rise has to be approved by ComReg before it can go into effect.
And the latest news is Comreg has indeed approved it. I’m surprised Comreg hasn’t pushed the local loop unbundling aspect a bit more. This would then introduce competition into the marketplace.
Justification of a proposed rate based on another rate being higher is no justification at all. Petrol only costs a few pennies a liter in the Middle East, does that justify lowering the price in Ireland or raising the price in Kuwait? Obviously, it doesn’t. A fat monopoly needs regulation or competition. And regulation doesn’t work too well if you have rocks for bureaucrats.
This really got my goat. I had to give Eircom one in the eye and switch calls to someone else !
This is another example of Irish businesses sticking it to the little guy. Eircom is just another fat cat operation milking the Irish public for all it’s worth.
The current state of toothless or non-existant consumer protection in the various Irish business sectors is testament to the way Irish businesses (and the government) view the population – with disdain.