Comreg: Eircom repairs its whole sale customers faults slower than its own

Eircom controls much of the phone line infrastructure around the country and sells access to it to other networks such as Vodafone, Digiweb and Magnet. Under its service agreements it is also required to repairs faults for it’s retail customers (Eircom Retail) and its wholesale customers (Vodafone etc…) and in a reasonable period of time. In other words it should not show bias to it’s own Eircom customers ahead of its wholesale customers, in an ideal world. But in December 2012 Comreg found that between the period August 2011 to August 2012  Eircom was, on average, repairing a higher percentage of Eircom retail faults within 4 days of the fault being reported to Eircom then it was repairing its wholesale customers reported faults.

In other words Comreg found that Eircom were giving preferential repair times to Eircom retail ahead of other companies which it is not permitted to do under its non discrimination obligations. Comreg allowed Eircom to reply to the finding and while it hasn’t published Eircom’s reponse it has said the following about that response:

ComReg has formed the opinion that Eircom has not complied with its non-discrimination obligations as provided in Section 6.5 of Decision D07/61 during the period of August 2011 to August 2012.

We now wait to see what Comreg will now do.

http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg1335.pdf