Dublin, Friday, August 15, 2008--MinuteBuyer, the wholly Irish owned company offering independent telecom services, today said that Eircom’s recent announcement of a change to its pricing structures is bucking telecoms industry trends by adding costs, radically affecting the bottom line for many businesses using their services.

 

According to MinuteBuyer’s Shaun Hayden, “Eircom is, in effect, introducing a penal surcharge on businesses throughout the country. This is a significant negative development in the Irish telecoms market and is certainly not in line with prevailing industry trends, as was claimed by Eircom in the their recent statement. . MinuteBuyer, like many other providers in the market place today, is striving to reduce costs and charges for their clients, as opposed to increasing them. The effect on an annual Eircom bill for thousands of business owners will be substantial.”

 

“The new set up charge of 4.92c will apply to all calls, no matter the duration,” added Hayden. And businesses making calls of a short duration are going to be disproportionately penalised for making these calls. Our research highlights how the change will impact. For example prior to the new set-up charges, a local call during normal business hours (9am -6 pm) of 2.19 minutes duration (the average duration of a business call) would cost an Eircom customer 9.35 cents. Come September 1^st, this same customer, making the same call for the same average duration can now expect to see an additional 4.92 cents on their phone bill, bringing the total call cost to 14.27 cents. That’s more than a 50% increase. This is asubstantial cost increase for any business to absorb, but especially in current market conditions, and remember that there is zero added value for the customer, Babcock & Brown are the real winners here.”

 

Research conducted by MinuteBuyer shows that the average duration of a business call, across local, national, mobile, UK and international, is approximately 2.19 minutes. The market is currently offering local and national calls below 2.5 cents a minute (ex-VAT), as opposed to the 4.27 cents a minute (ex-VAT) from Eircom, not including the recently introduced charge.

 

Hayden advises all business owners to review their current Eircom bills and see exactly what they are paying for and what special packages they are on. He also advocates conducting an analysis on the impact of the new pricing structures on monthly bills. “Although Eircom claim that 500,000 of their customers won’t be affected by the new pricing structures because they are on ‘special packages’ or bundles such as TalkTime, what about the other 1 million or so Eircom customers not on these special packages? Even customers using these “special packages” may be affected by the changes – any calls falling outside their committed usage each month will be subject to this unjust extra charge.

 

I strongly urge businesses to look at the market place offerings and see what the differences are. At the very least, you should know the price of your loyalty to Eircom and how much you are losing to the bottom line by staying with them.

 

As an independent telecoms player, MinuteBuyer has never applied a minimum call charges and we certainly don’t intend to introduce so called ‘set-up charges’. Along with constantly reviewing the best market rates for our clients, we believe in providing our customers with added value services that help reduce costs, not increase them; we provide competitive and easy to manage telecoms services. We can, in many cases, reduce the cost a company’s telecoms portfolio by approximately 25-30% across fixed line, mobile and data services using our relationships and experience in the telecoms market both at home and abroad.”

 

-ENDS-

 

Ronan Roche, 01 661 8915/ 086 046 0326, ronan@corporatereputations.ie

For further details on MinuteBuyer’s offerings, please contact Shaun Hayden, shaun@minutebuyer.com, 01-661-4697/ 086 8369900or go to www.minutebuyer.com

 

Established in 1999, MinuteBuyer is a leading provider of telecoms solutions to the corporate market in Ireland. A wholly owned Irish company, based in Dublin, the company’s solutions give clients greater control over their telecoms portfolio. MinuteBuyer’s consultancy services include telecoms audits, advising on telecoms solutions, invoice verification, tender facilitation, mobile procurement, provision of management information on telecoms usage, capacities and efficiencies, and counseling on industry trends. Clients include Deloitte, Musgrave Group, Toyota, United Drug and Anglo Irish Bank. Visit www.minutebuyer.com for more details.