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Moriarty

About IrelandOffline

IrelandOffline was formed in May 2001, and is dedicated to bringing about the next step in Internet access for Ireland. Our goal is to drive forward the development of the Irish Internet infrastructure for the consumer. In particular we want to achieve the following objectives:

• Affordable Internet access for all

Affordable - comparable with other countries for comparable services.
Internet - functional narrowband access (i.e not at rates as low as 14kbps that a substantial number of households currently connect at), proper broadband access.
Access - accessible to every household in the country.

Strategy
We believe that the most effective use of the limited resources available to a voluntary organization is to focus on one issue that we think will result in progress across the board. That the introduction of FRIACO (flat rate dial-up Internet access) led to the reduction of the price of DSL and to more exchanges being proves this strategy's value.

Focus

Universal flat rate (unmetered) access to the internet for all users.
The introduction of FRIACO makes a limited form of flat rate now available to all. Once heavy users of the internet have affordable, available broadband services to migrate to, we believe this will result in true flat rate services.

Fixed Wireless Access
Promoting the use of Fixed Wireless for connecting to the Internet, using both licensed and unlicensed spectrum.
For this to happen there needs to be made available convenient, affordable and accessible fibre for community and commercial Wireless Service Providers (WISPs) to connect users to the internet. It should be noted that Fixed Wireless does not include wireless hotspots, satellite, mobile or balloons! It's fixed, like your TV aerial.

Universal access to broadband services for all users
Working to bring real competition to a market characterized by resellers of the services Eircom choose to offer and enabling rural communities to provide for their own connectivity needs where it is not commercially viable for a third party to do so.

We welcome support from anyone interested in the development of internet access in Ireland, be they student, home user, IT professional, business person - anyone who is frustrated with the current lack of affordable Internet access. All are welcome to join.


For more information on IrelandOffline, see the website.


IrelandOffline Website

IrelandOfflines offical website can be found at www.irelandoffline.org. You will find plenty of information on our history, aims and achievements there.


This Forum

Basic Rules:
Don’t flame.
Don’t troll.

If you have a question or questions, we would very much appreciate it if you searched this forum before you asked, because it's very likely anything you have to ask has been asked before. To search the forum, simply scroll to the bottom of the main forum page and enter your search into the 'Search This Forum' box provided.

Although it may seem so to many, the forum is not specifically an arena for bashing the likes of eircom or other companies or authorities just for the sake of it. This is a discussion forum, not a propoganda page. Any such unconstructive message threads which go in such a direction will be removed without discussion. Complaints about these deletions will not be entertained.

Concerns with the policy or actions of the moderators should be discussed in the first instance by PM (private message) with the moderators themselves or on the Admin board.

By posting here, you agree to abide by the decisions of the moderators in addition to the guidelines above. The general boards.ie rules naturally apply here too ie; "...you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-orientated, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws."


Information to companies

Although IrelandOffline is a consumer organisation, Telecoms companies and ISPs are welcome to participate on the Ireland Offline boards as long as they intend to answer valid and legitimate questions that members of this community have asked.

Any attempt to ’market’ or ’promote’ your products will not be tolerated. If you intend to do this, we recommend you purchase a Commercial Interaction board. (Find examples of this at the boards.ie Commercial Interaction area).

We also draw your attention to the general boards.ie rule: If you are planning to post advertisments on boards, just don’t do it. We will remove them immediately, and then ban you. If you wish to purchase advertising from boards.ie, please contact adverts@boards.ie.


Note to members about media contact

When making contact with the media, it is suggested that people mention the existance of the organsiation IrelandOffline and include the url of the official web site which is www.irelandoffline.org. There are contact details for the committee and we do our best to keep the site as up to date as we can. It also contains a lot of details on our lobbying efforts and gives insight into our work.

There is a separation between the official site and this forum on boards.ie due to the possibility of comments being taken out of context on the forum and the fact that the committee themselves do not moderate this forum.

This isn't a rail against any contact people may make with people they know in the media. The one piece of advice tacked on here is to be fairly clear that you're not actually representing IrelandOffline as anything other than an ordinary member (just like me). You don't have to mention it explicitly - just don't close any mails you send with <name>, IrelandOffline. That can be fairly easily misinterpreted. That's just a note, it's not as a result of anything that anyone's done. Don't forget, we like people to make an effort to get the media interested in the issue.


Committee Members
These are the present Ireland Offline Committee members:

• Damien Mulley (Chairman)
• Gareth Pelly
• John Timmons
• Martin Harran
• Eamonn Wallace
• Seamus Ryan
• Brian Kidney
• Aidan Whyte
• John Hackett

Other Forums

There are a few other forums on boards.ie that you should be aware of. The Broadband forum is for general tech support etc for broadband connections. The Nets/Comms forum is for network and communications specific support and chat.

The mods here have no problem moving a thread to another forum if its deemed to be off topic, some people just may not be aware of these forums. So please dont take this as a dire warning never to start a topic which might be off-topic, if you're not sure go ahead and post here and we can move it if it belongs elsewhere