After I had admired my new EUR60 sweater I took a look at the label. On a beautifully printed card, resplendent with national flags and three letter acronyms, you could find the price of the sweater in every country and currency imaginable, from dinars to dollars. It was only by chance that I noticed the Euro zone amount, with its green white and orange and IRL, was a sticker; I peeled it back to discover the sweater started life in the Euro zone in Spain and cost twenty Euro less. Gouged again!
It’s a national pastime gouging, up there with GAA and Guinness as a cultural imperative. A pint in Dublin, EUR4.50; the average price of a pint in England, EUR3; a two bedroom apartment, here EUR325K, Paris EUR275K; the CD-RW/DVDROM drive I bought in Dublin, EUR129, in a German on-line store, EUR99.
And then there’s broadband. Of course we are lucky to have broadband at all. Wasn’t it only last September that Ireland was rated alongside Russia, Turkey and Romania in our broadband competitiveness, with telecom pathfinders Venezuela and Peru above us. Today if you are within 4.5km of an ADSL exchange, and that is 700,000 of us, you should be able to access Eircom’s DSL service, I-Stream. The heady days of the new millennium when Minister O’Rourke forecast we would be the e-hub of Europe are upon us, as the current panjandrum with responsibility for Communications, Marine, and Natural Resources (natural bedfellows all three) Dermot Ahern beseeches telcos to cut prices to stimulate demand.
Cut prices! Surely some mistake minister. It is not in the national psyche. Go broadband in Belfast and BT will install it for EUR42, sell you a DSL modem for EUR50 and charge you EUR40 a month rental. Here Eircom ask EUR99 for the connection, EUR145 for the modem and a monthly rental of EUR54.45. And God forbid if you can’t install it yourself, to have someone come out to you is EUR200. What about those nice people at Esat BT? Well they’ll give you the modem, charge you a EUR190 connection fee, and a monthly EUR49. To which you add your standard monthly phone rental and voice call charges.
Choked? You bet I’m choked. So when the nice woman from Eircom cold called me to gauge my interest in broadband I needed a Zen exercise of breathing in threes before speaking. Six hundred a year to rent my business mobile; six hundred a year to rent my broadband line; and four hundred a year to rent my voice and fax lines. Whatever you say, say nothing. Sixteen hundred Euro on comms without uttering a word, or sending a kilobyte. ‘You might like to shop around, compare prices,’ said the nice woman. I might, nice woman, I might.
I cannot remember the last time I went into a room and fumbled around in the dark for fear of my electricity charges. I pay the ESB one rental charge and they provide electricity that powers all my needs. I want commoditised communications and a relationship with one utility. One utility, one rental fee for all my voice and data. Likely? Not any time soon. But I am a patient man. And like the septuagenarian I met last evening while door to door collecting for my children’s soccer team, I have a long memory. ‘I gave last time,’ she complained. ‘But our club has not had a collection since 1964,’ I replied. She fixed me with a cold stare, ‘that’s the time I mean’.
So I am going to wait, and contemplate the Zen of Irish pricing, while chanting the mantra, ‘nothing for nothing’, while the broadband revolution passes me by. Is there nothing in this country that is cheaper than anywhere else? Oh yes, I forgot…wages.
12/09/2003
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