When does "unlimited" cease to mean "without limits'? Two thousand of Esat Fusion's 20,000 customers could tell you - they recently each received a curt letter titled "Important news for IOL NoLimits Customers", informing them of their sins:
"Having analysed our customer usage pattern of our IOL NoLimits service, it has come to our attention that some of our customers are using this service excessively. This over-usage puts considerable pressure on service capacity and affects the overall quality of the service for all of our NoLimits customers."
The letter rolls on, warning that Esat Fusion will no longer continue to support the high level of usage, "as it is not in keeping with the spirit of the service", and that the overall quality of the service is being affected. The 2,000 recipients were informed that "their" Ireland OnLine (IOL) NoLimits service will be discontinued from May 31st.
The letter ends with a "special offer", proposing a connection to the IOL Gold service for £90 per year, instead of the usual £120. The additional costs of IOL Gold involve peak connections at 11.5p per block of 7.5 minutes and off-peak periods of 11.5p for 15 minutes.
IOL Gold, unfortunately, just doesn't have anything like the attraction of the NoLimits service. Introduced two years ago, NoLimits offered a flat-rate off-peak dial-up service for just £20 per month, and has, to date, acquired some 20,000 customers. The flat-rate charge ensured that users could use the Internet at night and weekends, without the worry of running up large phone costs. In the last few weeks, however, Esat Fusion stopped signing up any new users to the service, and all obvious references to "No-Limits" have vanished from their website.
The company had also warned that they would start disconnecting users from the service after three hours - i.e., causing the line to drop.
On Internet forums over the last month, many people suggested that three uninterrupted hours was an unlikely time for any dial-up service in Ireland, as the lines have a habit of disconnecting anyway. Whatever the reason for disconnection, if someone is in the middle of a task online, with flat-rate Internet access, of course they are going to re-connect - especially if they were never told "not to". Members of the unloved 2,000 have already spawned websites - such as the "Surf On Limit" page, uk.geocities.com/esatnolimits/.
Esat Fusion's official line, which seems to have been first divulged by telephone to irate customers, is that users are entitled to 75 hours per month (i.e. 2.5 hours a day). This new limit had not previously appeared on any documentation received by NoLimits customers. Esat Fusion have hinted that the service may be discontinued entirely.
There is a great deal of confusion on the matter, which has sent quite a ripple through the industry, and has caused an apparent closing of ranks at Esat Fusion, perhaps due to the unexpected notoriety they have achieved.
An Esat spokesperson explained that at the core of the controversy lay Eircom's claims of low interconnectivity costs, i.e. Esat Fusion are paying them on a per-minute basis - rather than on a wholesale basis, which they would find preferable. When asked why Esat Fusion didn't explain the situation to customers before taking the strange measure of cutting off some, but not all of them, it was explained that, two years ago, when the service began, Esat Fusion did not forsee the problems of over-usage. When these problems arose, they did not want to introduce new branding.
Somehow, to Esat Fusion, it seems to make better business sense to lose £480,000 revenue - 2,000 customers at £20 per month, for one year - and to gain negative media coverage (better to have people talking about you than not?) rather than to re-brand.
However, many of the questions fielded to Esat Fusion remain unanswered:
Why was the service advertised as "NoLimits" when limits did exist?
When customers were subscribing to the service, they were not requested to adhere to the "spirit of the service". The first mention of the "spirit" seems to be in the "Important news for IOL NoLimits Customers" letter.
What do Esat Fusion mean by "spirit"? We would assume that they mean spirit as in "the prevailing mental attitude or moral condition or attitude", as opposed to any kind of ghost in their machines . . .
The Esat Fusion Acceptable Usage Policy, states that Esat Fusion "reserve the right to terminate any customer at any time for any reason". Is it not a little extreme - as well as not being in the best possible public relations interests - to single out customers who are under the impression that they are merely using the service that they are paying for?
This setback to the growth of flat-rate Internet access in Ireland could be detrimental. The European Commission has, for some time now, championed the cause of flat-rate access, citing it as fundamental to the growth of e-commerce and business-to-business transactions.
Justin Mason, host of the Irish Internet Users mailing list, iiu.taint.org/, reckons that NoLimits customers are using the service because "it was the nearest thing to broadband in Ireland".
"Now, all of a sudden, it has been snatched away from them. For many people, 75 hours a month certainly isn't an unreasonable amount of time to spend online."
"The main thing is that anyone who was using the NoLimits service really had no choice when it comes to this level of connectivity, as there is no other flat-rate offering available," says Mason. "There is a general feeling of frustration around." Several IIU subscribers have received the letters from Esat Fusion, and it has been a hot topic for discussion.
Apart from IOL NoLimits, the nearest thing to flat-rate dial-up Internet access is provided by NTL. Customers who avail of NTL's telephone services have unlimited weekend Internet use, and during the week pay local call charges of 3.5p per minute peak and 1.75p per minute at off-peak times.
For NoLimits customers any spat between the telecoms operators is well near irrelevant - but there's definitely a certain bitchiness that has emerged in the industry, which now seems to be reaching new levels.
John McCormac, defines the argument, on his Hack Watch news site www.hackwatch.com: "the [NoLimits] service is a victim of its own success and this somewhat drastic and ultimately misguided tactic by Esat is making victims of those who signed up for the service. It is not their fault that Esat got its figures wrong."
McCormac believes that "ultimately it is Eircom that is to blame for reducing Ireland's infrastructure to third world status".
EIRCOM, however are nonplussed by Esat's current quandary. In an official statement, they suggest "that if Esat Fusion has made the wrong pricing decision for its Internet service, they should deal with the problem as their own business issue, rather than using Eircom as a scapegoat.
The statement goes on to say: "Eircom's interconnect rates (i.e. the rate per minute that other operators pay Eircom for the use of its infrastructure) are among the lowest in Europe. Also, since Esat originally introduced its `No Limits' product, that interconnect rate has been reduced by Eircom by approximately 33 per cent.
"Eircom cannot be expected to sell its infrastructure below cost, and will not subsidise global players like British Telecom in the Irish market."
Despite having received over 100 complaints, the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation (ODTR) is not in a position to take any action on the matter. It is, however, very concerned about the implications of the NoLimits situation.
A spokesperson for the office said that "Esat entered the flatrate market in full knowledge of the implications, and of the costs of interconnectivity . . . Ireland is the second lowest country for interconnectivity costs in Europe".
In March, the ODTR introduced an Internet access code, the prefix 1893, for the express purpose of facilitating partial or full flat-rate access. The regulator, Etain Doyle, certainly seeks to encourage flat-rate. At the launch of the 1893 number, she stated that she "would encourage the operators to capitalise on it and look forward to the development of more choice for the consumer".
So where does this leave the future of the Internet in Ireland? Back in the 1990s, it seems. Perhaps it's a sign of the times, as the Great Internet Hangover kicks in . . . even the big companies, like Esat and Eircom, are unable to maintain enthusiasm for the "bigger picture", and instead of considering flat-rate Internet access for all as a foothold to greater things, are merely content "to fumble in a greasy till, and add the halfpence to the pence" per minute (with apologies to WB Yeats).