Government to lease sites to mobile operators

thegills

Guys,
I read on Aertel last night that the Government have contracted Vilicom to assess the business case for leasing Government-owned property to mobile operators.

Site sharing mentioned too, and good news for operators (Meteor in particular)

I don't have mush more info so would appreciate some please.

thegills

spongebob

The government have contracted Vilicom to spend a ****load of Taxpayers money running around the country in 2 Litre+ BMW cars (as consultants do) clocking up savage mileage.

At the end of this they will deliver a report to the governnment.

The report will say.

1. The government owns a lot of buildings
2. The government has a lot of buildings on exclusive long term leases
3. Therefore the government should 'call for proposals' or something like that.

A junior civil servant could have acquired and reported the same information at a fraction of the cost. It is a waste of taxpayers money.

The bill will doubtless come in at €149,000 to avoid EU directives on proper tendering in the public service.

I bet nobody from Vilicom will bother coming in here to justify their expenses either ...... Time to mention this frivolity to the Comptroller I suspect!

M

thegills

Muck,

It depends on what info the Govt have on their sites - OSI co-ordinates etc. Any consultant worth their salt will be able to map the site data against the geographical, business cluster and population data for Ireland and come up with a coverage map for the different wireless technologies. Once that is obtained it's a matter of looking at site demand, market share etc. This can all be done without leaving the office. If this can't be done by Vilicom then we should ask why they were chosen in the first place.

thegills

Dangger

IrelandOffline have initiated contact with Minster Parlon's office to investigate if wireless operators will be considered in this consultancy process.

From the IOFFL site

Thanks to the premuim rates the likes of Vodafone and O2 can afford to pay for high sites to locate their mobile base stations, wireless Internet service providers (Wisps) are finding it increasingly difficult to find suitable locations to situate their equipment to provide coverage. For example in Dublin, the south side is swamped with coverage as a result of the shared facilities for transmitters in Three Rock mountain, yet the Northside is still a relative black spot, with operators negotiating in vain with property owners expecting rates that only the likes of multinational mobile phone operators can afford......

Mods, I'm thinking this may be a MarketPolicy thread?

spongebob

Originally posted by thegills
Muck,

It depends on what info the Govt have on their sites - OSI co-ordinates etc. Any consultant worth their salt will be able to map the site data against the geographical, business cluster and population data for Ireland and come up with a coverage map for the different wireless technologies. Once that is obtained it's a matter of looking at site demand, market share etc. This can all be done without leaving the office. If this can't be done by Vilicom then we should ask why they were chosen in the first place.

thegills

ABSOLUTELY NOT!, The mileage will still be savage, of course it can be done without leaving the office but the 'consultants' will have to check out the roof of each building....visually of course......from their Beemers.


The directors of Vilicom are

Declan Hogan
Paul Donnelly
Colin Cunningham
Oliver Farrell

They are out near Baldonnell. http://www.vilicom.com/ is their website

They will do 1800 buildings at (say ) c.€100 per assesment so thats 180,000 Euros. Why was this not tendered out?

Vilicom do this!

"Vilicom periodically compares the quality of the network coverage against each other. It does this by putting three mobile phones into the back of a car and driving it around, monitoring the quality of the signal and calls. However, because it is commissioned by one particular network, it won't reveal any of its findings. "

Full story http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2002/03/03/story315360.asp


M

sceptre

Originally posted by Dangger
Mods, I'm thinking this may be a MarketPolicy thread?

Aye.

thegills

The directors of Vilicom are Declan Hogan, Paul Donnelly, Colin Cunningham, Oliver Farrell

Mostly ex-Digifone. Very adapt at driving around the country with radio gear assessing sites. But is that the scope of work? What about assessing the site in terms of population coverage, technology that the site is suited for, should Govt modify site or lease as-is, etc.

Your right though Muck, in these hard times why wasn't this piece of work tendered for, but considering how the MAN projects were managed internally its no surprise.

thegills

Dangger

but considering how the MAN projects were managed internally its no surprise

Not sure I'm following you here. Do you mean the tenders to lay the fibre, or the MSE entity, or something else? Could you elaborate?

thegills

Sorry Dangger.

Going back 18-24 months the DCMNR hired Norcontel as advisors, but now have both Magnum Opus (Technical) and Norcontel (Financial) on their books. I don't recall seeing either of those tendered, could be wrong though!

thegills

thegills

Your right though Muck, in these hard times why wasn't this piece of work tendered for

Lads, we've been jumping the gun a bit. The OPW tendered for this on 7th July 2003. There was a piece in the Times today (our friend Jamie) quoting that Vilicom would get e55k and revenue share on future rental income.

thegills

STaN

Vilicom have their hands on radio mapping software, all they need is height information and co-ordinates and they can then propose a network and coverage topology

Something along the lines of

JTMan

Originally posted by thegills

Site sharing mentioned too, and good news for operators (Meteor in particular)

Meteor don't seem interested in building a national network anymore. There is very little change in their coverage this year.

Esat would most likely benefit from this most with the construction of the 3 network.

LFCFan

should the government not be concentrating more on Wireless companies using their land more than mobile operators? Both 02 and Vodafone say they cover 99% of the population so why would they need handouts from the government to put up more masts? Why not let the wireless operators use their land?

dahamsta

There's no reason why wireless inet and cellular can't live together in peace and harmony, eating tofu and talking about existensialism.

adam

thegills

Should the government not be concentrating more on Wireless companies

The report should tell the Govt which sites are suitable for which technology. As the majority of their buildings are in population centres where O2 and Vodafone already have 2G coverage these sites will more than likely suit wireless companies and 3G coverage. The question to ask is why the Govt. is doing this - to make money or to advance wireless technologies. The mobile operators will pay 12k a year for a good site but the Leap's of this world won't; fair enough their antenna's take up a lot less space though.

Meteor don't seem interested in building a national network anymore

I disagree, they wouldn't have built a national backbone equivalent to O2's if they didn't plan to build the sites. Being the 3rd operator they have had untold planning permission problems and neither O2 or Vodafone wil help them out with site sharing. The 2 year court battle didn't help either.

pete

it's a money making venture - nothing more, nothing less