The roll-out of broadband finally seems to be making some headway in the Republic with more than 150,000 homes and businesses now using the service.
Eircom remains by far the dominant provider of the service and is continuing to upgrade its telecoms exchanges across the State for digital subscriber line (DSL) technology. But for alternative telecoms providers such as Smart Telecom, Colt Telecom and BT Ireland, significant blockages remain in how they can offer broadband to customers.
Up until now, just a few thousand Eircom lines have been opened to competition through a process known as local loop unbundling, whereby rivals place their equipment in Eircom's telephone exchanges to offer a broad range of products.
Smart Telecom, which has signed up 25,000 users for its broadband product, has encountered frustrating delays in connecting those customers through local loop unbundling.
"Because of restrictions imposed by Eircom, customers have to take a new phone number when they move to Smart broadband," says Iarla Flynn, regulatory affairs director at Smart Telecom. "Eircom have refused to work with us on sorting this problem out. It looks like Eircom are simply trying to block customers from getting the new offer from Smart. It's blatantly anti-competitive."
Smart Telecom is expected to raise the issue at the National Broadband Conference later today in Galway, which will also hear speakers from Eircom, BT and the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg).
Unsurprisingly, Eircom denies that it is acting in an anti-competitive manner, and the process of transferring customers through "unbundling" is now the subject of a legal dispute between the regulator and Eircom in the courts.
The conference will also address the future for telecoms and hear international comparisons from experts such as Denis Weller, chief economist at Verizon, one of the biggest US firms. He will discuss how Verizon is beginning a massive infrastructure investment to build fibre directly into people's homes, rather than relying on its copper network. Competition from cable firms, which have already spent $90 billion (€70.5 billion) upgrading networks, forced Verizon to invest further.
"Local loop unbundling and DSL is not the main vehicle for broadband in the US - about two-thirds of the market is owned by the cable firms," says Weller.
Verizon's decision to invest was made only after US regulators confirmed it would not be forced to "unbundle" the new fibre that it lays for other operators to use, says Weller. He adds that the US broadband landscape is very different to the Republic, where there has been little cable competition, but insists that fibre to the home is the industry's future.
