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As of July 2002, Eircom must amend its so-called service level agreement regime and provide other licensed telecom operators (OLOs) with leased lines, 95 percent of the time, by the day they are promised. Previously Eircom was required to meet these targets only 80 percent of the time, a target that the company received in December 2001.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) set out the minimum service quality standards which Eircom must adhere to when providing services to other operators. Standards include committed delivery and fault repair timeframes along with penalties for failure to meet the targets.
A spokesperson for the Eircom said that the company expected to have no difficulty meeting the new targets and pointed out that Eircom was consistently delivering the leased lines on time over 90 percent of the time.
"Leased lines are a critical business enabler for the Irish economy and, customers must have certainty around delivery timeframes along with guaranteed levels of service availability," said Etain Doyle the telecommunications regulator. Doyle praised Eircom for its performance in the area over the past year, pointing out that the former state owned telecom has improved delivery timeframes for leased lines, falling from 54 days in February 2001 to between 16 and 20 days currently.
"This amended regime continues the focus on meeting evolving market needs and an increased emphasis has been placed on fault management which is hugely important in an increasingly customer focused market."
If Eircom fails to deliver lines on time, the company faces a potential maximum penalty of EUR1270 penalty per order. However the ODTR admitted that telecoms who responded to the consultation on the issue felt that that the capped figure for penalties should either be removed or increased to EUR1900. "One respondent felt that while the capped figure remains at EUR1270 adding a penalty but keeping the capped figure is not going to give Eircom much encouragement to comply and improve what they believe is already poor implementation of processes," the ODTR said in its decision document.
The decision by the regulator comes just two weeks after the ODTR published other performance indicators which said that Eircom failed to deliver service to around 26 percent of its new business customers by the date required.
That report, called "Measuring Licensed Operator Performance Programme: July - September 2001," compared service levels of most of the major telecoms in Ireland and said that Esat's completion rate was as high as 94 percent. However Eircom customers reported less faults with their service, around 6.25 per 100 customers, compared to Esat's 22.
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