Fri, 05 Jan 2007

Telecoms in Ireland

It seems that ALL the service providers in this country are equally appallingly awfully bad. John O'Riordan had a terrible experience with Smart Telecom, which follows approximately two months without a phone connection in the house I share with a friend. This was due to Eircom and Esat BT not knowing their arse from their elbow. Even when Esat BT admitted that it was clearly their fault it took another 4 weeks before the connection was restored. (Some day if I calm down enough and manage to forgot the hundreds of Euro and GBP I spent to communicate with the UK during this screw-up, I may write up the details.) My family home, im Limerick, had no phone connection for over a month - the fault being either Eircom's or Perlico's. Despite repeated calls to both parties and raising a complaint with Comreg, noone admitted fault and one day (five weeks later) connectivity was restored.
All these events are from the last 6 months and are only examples of the horror stories I've either personally experienced or have had detailed from friends.
John's experience mirrors ours in that Comreg are utterly, utterly useless. They are a waste of money, time and space and should be either given the power and the mandate to do something useful, or scrapped. One or the other - their current existence is worse than meaningless. This is not a reflection on their staff, who seem to be just as demotivated and depressed at their lack of ability to do anything as the Irish telco user is.
In the interests of balance, and having working the the field of telecommunications myself, I would be quite interested in hearing a response from representatives of Comreg, Esat BT, Eircom, Smart, Perlico or any other telcos operating in Ireland. The usual mailing address ( blog-at-signal2noise.co.uk ) will get to me.
posted at: 21:44 | path: | permanent link to this entry

Link(s) of the Day

Cad a dhéanaimíd feasta gan adhmaid?...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1983434,00.html: Only in Ireland could there be so much contempt and obstruciveness towards someone making an effort to speak our native tongue. Irish is now an official language of the European Union, so b'fhéidir go mbeidh beagáinín níos mó stró déanta chun é a labhairt. Níl mo chuid Ghaeilge comh maith is a bhí, ach níl sé ach teanga eile nach bhfuil mé in ann focail a litriú (nó a chlóscríobh.) ;-)
http://www.csis.ul.ie/focloir/default.HTM: Foclóir Gaeilge atá le fáil ar an net.
http://www.crannog.ie/focloir.htm: Foclóir Béarla-Gaeilge atá le fáil saor in aisce freisin.

posted at: 21:24 | path: /lotd | permanent link to this entry