4Basra

Airtalk and Telestunt, your service does not work from either my Meteor prepay or my O2 contract mobile.

When I expected to be connected to a couple of international numbers, I was told ‘calls to this number are not allowed,’ or words to that effect.

Perhaps the good people at Comreg and the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland might look into the matter.

This is particularly timely given the government are currently drawing up new consumer protection legislation and establishing a National Consumer Protection Agency.

If these small companies want anyone to use their service, they might begin by making sure the service which they claim to offer actually works.

Given the fact that they still have a monopoly on new line connections, and that they cannot exactly make the excuse that ‘we are only a small company,’ Eircom are no better.

Our new office line, which we had been told was activated, has a fault on it. Secondly, they made a mistake when they notified me of our new number, getting a digit wrong.

What if I had spent hundreds or even thousands of euros on advertising and getting new business cards printed featuring the incorrect number?

While I wait for the landline fault to be fixed, and the broadband to be activated, I will be putting my complaint to Eircom in writing and looking forward to using VOIP. 

I have a quick scan of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland – I will need to try and meet some of the people there to discuss my project, to see if they can offer any advice or assistance. It would be interesting to find out if they have a mentoring scheme and whether I could apply for any funding – anything to help with the overheads would be helpful. 

The phone line for the office has been booked with Pure Telecom, so we have to wait 10 days now, and perhaps another ten days to get the broadband connected. There is no difference in the line rental rates, thanks to Eircom’s monolpoly ownership of the physical telecoms infrastructure. 

Contrast this with being able to buy a mobile phone and make calls within minutes of handing over the cash for it. If Dublin had its own city-wide wi-fi network, that worked in buildings everywhere as well as the outdoors, we would be able to use that, and save a few quid as well. 

Meanwhile, all I can do is mull over the ideas I have in mind and wait patiently. Perhaps by the time we can move in, I will have found someone to design the blog.