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"Unfortunately, we are unable to release client spend/revenue information, however, I can tell you that Eircom were among our Top 10 spenders for the year 2001. I am sorry we cannot be more specific." That's RTEs answer when asked about their revenue from EIRCOM's advertising and sponsoring in absolute and percentage terms. We are not happy with that answer. Why? A scandal with catastrophic consequences is happening before our eyes and RTE does not (want to ?) see it: 1.Ireland, the wannabe ehub of Europe, is now solidly on last place when it comes to home Internet usage. The latest Nielsen Internet figures show that only under 15% of the Irish population are actively using the Internet from home – that's as low as the none English speaking Spanish and French. These Irish home Internet users are on average only 3 hours 37 minutes online per month – that is much lower than any of the other countries (Spain for example 8 hours and 9 minutes). The average monthly online time of the Irish citizen is 32 minutes – that's almost down to the level of third world countries. You can view the comparative charts on www.EircomTribunal.com/dossier_facts.html In broadband comparisons of countries Ireland simply does not appear. 2.The sole cause of this is EIRCOM's misuse of their de facto monopoly satus. EIRCOM have effectively priced out the Irish citizen from using the net. They are selling one months slow dial up modem access, a product worth less than € 10, for a staggering € 775 and more than twice for still slow ISDN (manipulatively marketed as "high speed") access. And EIRCOM have the cheek to deride the helpless Irish citizen by advertising this with a deceiving per minute price. EIRCOM have stalled the vital roll out of broadband for three years, solely in order to prolong their grotesque profits from enforced dial up. To hell with the future of this country, is their attitude. Publicly this stalling ran under the pretence of trialling ADSL. And RTE has collaborated with this scam as a partner and probably still is. Now EIRCOM have blackmailed the ODTR into accepting a grotesquely overpriced whole sale price for ADSL, ensuring that, with a retail price of over € 100, it will not roll. All independent experts agree, all experience of other countries shows and all advice from the European Commission says that a retail pricing of around € 30 for ADSL is necessary for it to be adapted. The Irish Internet user is forced to pay € 41 for one day slow modem access. The UK user will get two month of Internet modem access or one month of broadband ADSL access for that same amount . 3. The ODTR is intentionally deceiving the public about the catastrophic state of the Internet in Ireland in its latest quarterly report. It is classic tribunal stuff: again a state body in its incompetence allows a big private player to make huge profits through misuse of its dominant position, which causes monumental damage to the public and then tries to conceal the dire consequences to save its face. In the quarterly report the ODTR uses the Nielsen figures in an obviously manipulative way and intentionally deceives the public about the state of the Internet in Ireland. We have detailed this in our dossier about this report (www.EircomTribunal.com/dossier_facts.html) Is there any other way than to interpret these parts of the ODTR report as direct and intended misinformation of the public? Where does RTE stand on this matter? The ODTR is publishing such dangerous nonsense to deceive the public about their failure to regulate the telecoms market in a meaningful way: they basically try to save their face. That’s bad enough. But why do they seem to get away with it? Where is the critical press? Clearly, parts of the print press are not as independent from the main profiteer EIRCOM as their name would suggest. But coming back to the beginning of this letter. RTEs refusal to be open about its financial state of dependency or otherwise on EIRCOMs advertising: Where does RTE stand in this matter? For one they went to bed with EIRCOM on their lets-not-roll-out-ADSL-in-order-to-make-huge-profits-from-dial-up-scheme. Furthermore we suspect that RTEs revenue from EIRCOMs advertising and sponsoring are so substantial, that it is hindering them to report and analyse the situation independently. We'd like to get an answer to the points raised in this letter and we'd be happy to publish your response on the web site. |
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