Telecom Eireann/Eircom Shares Saga.

Just watched the “Eircom Shares” saga on RTE 1, it certainly brings me back unpleasant memories of dabbling in stocks and shares.

What can would one say ? like “Ripped off” is what one can say.

Small shareholders who owned most of the company where ripped off by “fat Cats”, the company ended up being bought by Tony O’ Reilly of Heinz and the independent news and media for a billion pounds less that it was worth. Eircom  previously had demerged Eircell the jewel in the crown of the business for Vodafone paper.

The “sale” of Eircell proved to make no sense and was the grower in the company. The vultures quickly saw their chance and bid for the remaining Eircom business. O’Reillys Valentia bought Eircom at a discount and subsequently made the business give him over IR£ 700 million .  The company racked increasing debts with every change over in owner, there was little or no money to invest in new services .

The company had started off debt free and now owes in the billions

On the National Broadband Plan- Worst Deal Ever…

See the source image

 

Here something the Government announced in the last two weeks which has gone down like a lead balloon.  No wonder with the news that the Government was splurging out over €3 billion euro with its private partner investing only €220 million initially . The deal is so lopsided In the fact that the private contractor gets to own the rural broadband network after 25 years and the state/ public gets to own nothing after the same period. Basically the public has nothing to show for all the money they have  invested. The Government has sought to defend their plan but its not the vote getter they had imagined.

This Government has showed little enthusiasm for the public interest with contracts like the National Maternity Hospital to have the nuns as “sole owners” despite the public paying over €350 million to build it, also the National Children’s Hospital at record overspend at € 1.4 billion and counting upwards .

So why are we basically giving over €3 billion away?

There is loads of projects that need to be done but there is “no money” there to do them or so we are told. Everything seems to cost 3-4 times what they would cost anywhere else. The National Broadband plan is quite pricey and there is cheaper alternatives .

Another point to make is that whose job is it really to roll fibre broadband ? The answer is that its Eircom/Eir’s job to roll out broadband anyway and they have been allowed to bail out on people living in rural area’s and cherry pick by just connecting the towns only.

Its not good practice and eircom/eir shouldn’t have be allowed to “cherry pick” as they have. They (Eircom/Eir )are the national phone company and its the phone network that is being upgraded. Eircom/Eir collect the line rental and should be able to supply broadband services such as video calling, cable tv, music streaming etc … over the new fibre optic rural service to help finance the cost. The present “modus operandi” of Eircom/Eir and people in rural Ireland won’t be connected to a phone service. It shows what a disaster the Eircom privatisation really is.