Ireland in OECD top ten by 2005? Possible? Ambitious enough?

seamus

At the request of iwb..

"I would like to ask if based on the recent announcements, we are on track to meet the Government target of being in the top ten of OECD nations by 2005 and also if this target is ambitious enough."

It's been while since we saw a poll here, I'm happy to post it. Discuss please though, don't just vote

LFCFan

by 2005 we might just get to the level most countries are at now. Unfortunatly by then they will have pulled away even furthur and more than likely we'll still be way down the list.

iwb

I started this to get real feedback from people and not as a whining session. I am truly interested in others views on this subject. It think it is increasingly important for Ireland that we catch up, not keep pace or fall further behind.
I feel we are going to at best keep pace with other countries but more likely fall further behind based on the announcements and initiatives being taken. We aren't doing anything innovative or new. We aren't leading the pack in rolling anything out. Take a look at the UK, which isn't a leader in deployment or use. I see far more all encompassing programs being rolled out there across many demographics and geographical areas. We have to get more all inclusive in our initiatives. We need to have a big picture instead of many seemingly unconnected pieces.

iwb

Oh...........Thanks Seamus for posting this for me.

LFCFan

Originally posted by iwb
I started this to get real feedback from people and not as a whining session. I am truly interested in others views on this subject.

What's whiny about my reply? It's my view that we will fall furthur behind

ednwireland

considering that i want broadband (i'm close enough to an enabled exchange here in donegal) but my line only passes upto 5meg on the line (eircom fails unless the line will take 10). i doubt there will be any mass market take up until its really available and eircom has some sort of obligation to fix lines to take data.

iwb

LFCFan, my sincere apologies. I was not referring to your reply at all. In fact, I posted a few hours after I read your reply. I can see how you would read it that way and thanks for commenting so that I can correct it.

LFCFan

Originally posted by iwb
LFCFan, my sincere apologies. I was not referring to your reply at all. In fact, I posted a few hours after I read your reply. I can see how you would read it that way and thanks for commenting so that I can correct it.

No bother!

dahamsta

I think aiming to be any higher than the very low end of the top ten would be unrealistic and just plain silly. I don't think we have a hope of hitting the top ten without fundamental changes to the regulatory system, mainly massive fines actually being levied against misbehaving operators. I can't see that happening.

adam

BigEejit

IF we can get good cheap backhaul out to the regions and more importantly to places where there is no competition to €ircom (or no €ircom at all)
And get some WISPs working to get business (low installation fees and ongoing costs for the consumers) ... 3 or 4 WISPs doing business in a region would have some real competition .... its up to the gubmint to encourage this .... cheap backhaul all over the place would have WISPs sprouting like mushrooms

Some enterprising local community groups get a Wireless network going we could leapfrog a lot of the lower end of the OECD tables countries ... with community groups and companies vying for business cost will go down ...

The gubmint could spend billions throwing money at €ircom and esat and we would still be last in the oecd ... aside from taking (or buying) all the exchanges and lines back from eircom there is no way we will get anywhere using copper pairs...

iwb

IF we can get good cheap backhaul out to the regions and more importantly to places where there is no competition to €ircom (or no €ircom at all)

I guess that is going to be up to the MSE if it assumes the role. It remains to be seen if it will do more than manage dark fibre, duct and co-location space though. Kieran Duffy at the Maynooth NIRSA Seminar last week said that it still wasn't decided whether the MSE would manage bandwidth or not.
Even at that though, it will only be doing it in the 20 MAN towns for now and the other 88 as they come online, which won't be for two years or so (pure guess but the process hasn't started yet).
While I agree that it would be one giant leap, I doubt cheap backhaul is going to happen any time soon, or at least not in very many areas.

Anyone got the solution? The one that will get us up the charts to number one?

My thought is that we should be at least aiming higher and that at our present rate, we won't even reach the current target. I don't like to be negative but I just don't see it happening.

Ripwave

46.67% think that aiming for the Top Ten isn't ambitious enough?

What, they think we should be aiming for Number 1?

Moriarty

In the abstract whats wrong with that?

iwb

Lifes lessons would suggest that the higher you aim, the more you achieve. I guess given the current target, we are aiming to be mediocre or middle of the bunch. That is neither motivating or ambitious imho.

Ripwave

Originally posted by Moriarty
In the abstract whats wrong with that?

Because it would be nothing more than a glib sound bite from a politician.

Ripwave

Originally posted by iwb
Lifes lessons would suggest that the higher you aim, the more you achieve. I guess given the current target, we are aiming to be mediocre or middle of the bunch. That is neither motivating or ambitious imho.

Twaddle.

Prompting a "get real!" response from the public is not the way to motivate them.

It's all very well for the winner of an egg-and-spoon race to aspire to an olympic gold medal when they grow up. But if you think that aiming for No. 1 in the OECD is the way to motivate people, then maybe you should join the Dublin International Sports Council in their campaign to bring the Olympic Games to Dublin.

Moriarty

Originally posted by Ripwave
Because it would be nothing more than a glib sound bite from a politician.

And what changes if we agree to the lowering of our aims?

iwb

Ripwave,
I am interested in a resonable discussion on the subject. Are you?

Urban Weigl

I think that the problem at the moment is that there is no vision; we aren't aiming to be in the top 10, we're aiming to be average, and not even taking into account that other countries are moving forward.

We ought to learn from others, see what other countries are doing right, and for lack of a better word "copy" that success. Let us aim for something that is achievable yet challenging.

iwb

I agree with everything you are saying Urban Weigl but I do think we could be innovative on our own too. There just isn't enough of a concerted effort put into it. Besides this forum and a few other sources, who else out there is coming up with possible innovative answers and who is taking them seriously enough to act on them?
The biggest challenge is a solid business model to get the network out there. After that, there is the supply and demand issue that is constantly being argued. After that is the technology and infrastructure.

Capt'n Midnight

What is the technology level of the current No. 10 in the OECD - so we can see just how much catching we have to do before we get started.

How are they measuring it ?
- if it's by submarine cables then we are already in the top 10, and our fibre backbone is quite good too.
- if it is broadband for the masses then I just have to ask if they are buying eircom - because I can't see how such an asset stripped outsourced overpriced company could be turned arround given it's current owners to do anything that was not immediately profitable. Eircom's credit rating may already be too low for them to borrow enought to upgrade the network or drop the price to the magic "€30pm" (actually they seem to be trying for €30 for line rental for 2005 - money for old ropey copper) . Low call volume People are begining to consider mobile phones instead of line rental - and I mean people's mum's - not just techies.

spongebob

My Ma, who gets the Social to pay her line rental is off to O2 instead as soon as she can.

My Da will keep up the landline separately , he will have to pay for it for another year until the social stumps up the line rental.....by which time he hopes to have Wireless and then he will feck off to O2 as well.

The Ma finished with Eircom after Biddy threatened her with an €50 call out fee for a repair (not covered by the social) for reporting a fault last year. Biddy could hardly hear Ma, the line was so bad. I had tested the phone itslef in my house and had tested from the junction box outside as well and still had the problem. Ma figures with O2 that if the 'line' is faulty then she can bring the thing to the shop as she walks past it.

M

M

Ripwave

Originally posted by iwb
I am interested in a resonable discussion on the subject. Are you?

Is this supposed to imply that your definition of "reasonable discussion" is one in which everyone agrees with you?

So far, your poll shows, pretty unequivocally, that people don't think we're "on target". But it's split pretty much 50-50 on the issue of how ambitious we should be. Yet there hasn't been any hard data posted at all about exactly what the "OECD Broadband Top Ten" actually means, which suggests that not many people actually know what it means. As such, it's not hard to draw the conclusion that aiming for No 1 is little more than a pious aspiration. Frankly, overseas investors aren't impressed by politicians who demonstrate that they're out of touch with reality, and I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the Government isn't targetting anything because it'd be nice for you to be able to watch a certain Janet Jackson video in the comfort of your own home.

If you want to make the OECD Top 10 the focus of your discussion, why don't you start by telling us what you know about the OECD Top 10? You might start by telling people who's in the Top 10, and what the gap between #10 and #1 is, so that they can judge whether it really matters whether we fail to reach #1.

Frankly, Top 10 in the EU would be enough to be getting on with, as far as I'm concerned.

spongebob

Originally posted by Ripwave
Frankly, Top 10 in the EU would be enough to be getting on with, as far as I'm concerned.

Top 10 in the OIECD would imply availablilty, takeup and price of leading edge Digital Technologies delivered over copper or fibre Ripwave.

Ireland is currently only getting ADSL (1998 technical standard) and RADSL (1999 technical standard) rolled out to most by 2007 at an exorbitant price once you include Line Rental ....which you must in this country. Jeez, we nearly had better overall availability of basic rate ISDN in a shorter timeframe although that old 1985 standard is not yet available from every exchange. From that we can surmise that Eircom will probably not have ADSL available from every exchange by 2018 or 2019 . They will no doubt call it Eircom Hi-Speed 2 by then and have it wheeze along at ' up to ' 512k

A leading edge country would be rolling out Fast Hybrid Cable Internet and ADSL2 and FTTH FTTB on a large scale. These are ambitious top 10 in the OECD type technologies in urban centres. These are the knowledge delivery paths that our so called 'peer group' aspire to and are getting installed NOW.

An ambitious country would now have a Wireless policy (slower technology but heck) for Rural areas and a systemic approach to new ducting and to the provisioning of same in all new buildings. Last year we added some 67k dwellings to the housing stock of 1.4M or so......4% of all houses/flats are brand new and still have no extra ducting built into them or CAT V to the roof area or ducting to the kerb. Eircoms best long term survival policy is to pump the brown envelopes into the Dept of the Environment whose 'Building Standards' are way behind international best practise. Cullen has sat on his arse on a policy document that ....if implemented promptly 2 years ago when published...... would have already have meant that an alternative copper path would NOW be available in 7% of ALL dwellings in the state (adding 2002 and 2003 completions together) of which many are apartments.

So we are not ambitious enough at all , nor are we anywhere near out limited targets with our lower aspirations . We will not have a Top 10 takeup of our old style technology at top 10 price points by 2007 when the rollout is finished. It will be expensive and slow and priced at Number 1 in the World for Cents per Bit delivered including Line Rental, just as it is now


M

Xian

Originally posted by Ripwave
there hasn't been any hard data posted at all about exactly what the "OECD Broadband Top Ten" actually means, which suggests that not many people actually know what it means.

At the conference in Maynooth last week, it was commented that for Ireland to be in the top decile of OECD countries by 2005 there would have to be 450,000 broadband subscribers, 50 times the subscribers in July 2003.

Move on. Next gripe.

iwb

Ripwave,
To answer your question, No. But I think a constructive discussion can be had without the aggressive approach you use. Everyone to their own I guess.
You raise some good points. It is hardly fair to assume that everyone is familiar with the Governments ambition or even what the OECD is.

From the ISC's broadband working group report dated Dec. 2003 which can be found here.

"Government Targets
The Government’s primary target for the sector is to see the widespread availability of affordable, alwayson
broadband within three years. Specifically, the aim is to see Ireland within the top decile of OECD
countries for broadband connectivity by 2005."
And further down,
"To assess more accurately the task faced in meeting the Government’s target by March 2005, an EU best
broadband penetration of 12% by 2005 is projected in the Report. To achieve this target Ireland will
need over 450,000 broadband users - an almost fifty-fold increase from current levels."

Framed like this, with eircom projecting 100,000 dsl users by the end of 2004, this seems to be a hard to attain goal. The 450k is the top of the list though, not somewhere in the top 10. It is of course a guess as we don't know for sure how well other OECD countries will do between now and then.

The eircom reference is there to help people understand where the incumbent intends to be. Of course, we would like to see others be very successful also but I am not aware of targets published by other providers like IBB, Leap, Amocom etc.
Our potential for huge strides lies with all of these companies and many others which will be created hopefully.

the point of the poll/discussion is to find out what others think. I appreciate your input and hopefully this information will help others to make a more informed decision. Of course, without being aware of the details, you could still adopt the position that top ten of anything isn't good enough. We want to be number one:) Or top three or top five.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development information can be found here.

Ripwave

Originally posted by iwb
Framed like this, with eircom projecting 100,000 dsl users by the end of 2004,

oreillycom are projecting 100,00 dsl enabled "premises" by the end of 2004. If that was mainly homes, then it would probably bring the number of "users" up to the 250K-300K mark. (450K is 12% of the total population, not just the adults). If the 3.5GHz licenses issued last November ever lead to actual deployments by the licensees, then reaching 450,000 users is certainly within the bounds of possibility over the next 24 months.

(Note that "top decile" doesn't mean "Top 10". It means top 10%. And there are only 30 member countries in the OECD. But there's relatively little difference between number 3 to 10, so getting from 10th to 3rd would only require an improvement of 15% or so, and there's far more slack in the survey data than that anyway. But you'd still only be at 50% of the level of Korea, with 23 "broadband subscribers" per 100 inhabitants).

spongebob

Originally posted by Ripwave
(Note that "top decile" doesn't mean "Top 10". It means top 10%. And there are only 30 member countries in the OECD. But there's relatively little difference between number 3 to 10, so getting from 10th to 3rd would only require an improvement of 15% or so, and there's far more slack in the survey data than that anyway. But you'd still only be at 50% of the level of Korea, with 23 "broadband subscribers" per 100 inhabitants).

First bit correct. We would have to be 3rd or 4th to get into The top decile by 2005.

Other than numbers of subscribers there is the issue of QoS, the Japanese and Korean entry level nowadays is about ..... 10Mbits i should think. Having a shedload of highly contended 512k connections will not get us anywhere.

M

Ripwave

Originally posted by Muck
Other than numbers of subscribers there is the issue of QoS, the Japanese and Korean entry level nowadays is about

I hate to tell you this, Muck, but Japan is only 9th in the OECD (out of 30). Apparently they're not quite as impressed with the numbers as you are.

iwb

Thanks for the clarification Ripwave, you are a fount of useful information. I guess that changes my perception of the ambition somewhat also. I still want Ireland to be top of any table though and not only in March 2005.
Muck as always has a good point. The metric is broadband users. I guess that begs the question as to what broadband is and if their definition is reasonable. I believe that in short order, we will have many of the early adopters looking for less contended bandwidth and QoS, CoS networks.
Hey, then I could watch my Janet Jackson video with no problems at all:)

iwb

I guess we can scratch that top decile OECD thing anyway. I'm sure someone must have mentioned this here already but I couldn't find it and anyway, it directly relates to this thread. So, the Government has gone for a more realistic target than that.
As reported by Silicon Republic,

In his recent Policy Directions to ComReg, Communications Minister Dermot Ahern defined the Government’s main broadband goal as “to be at, or better than, the EU average for end-user access to and usage of broadband by mid 2005.” Previously, however, the Government’s primary broadband target has been that Ireland be ‘within the top decile [ie, 10pc] of OECD countries for broadband connectivity by 2005’ (Information Society Commission: Ireland’s Broadband Future, Dec 2003).

This would put it on a par with countries like Korea (21.3pc broadband penetration), Canada (11.2pc), Sweden (7.8pc) and the US (6.9pc) (International Telecommmunication Union, Birth of Broadband report, Sept 2003). In fact, broadband penetration in Ireland stands at just 0.25pc.

A spokesperson for the Department for Communications said the Government stood by its objective of putting Ireland among the top ten OECD countries for broadband penetration but conceded that the timeframe had proven “unrealistic”. He commented: “Instead of setting a goal that we might not have be able to achieve, we’re setting a goal that we can achieve. The timeframe has changed but the goal is the same: we want to be among the top ten OECD countries.”

It is very disappointing that we have let go of that goal now. What he is saying is that we will catch up but more slowly than we originally planned. I still think that the higher we aim, the higher we will go, although we might not reach the target. I have found this many times in many areas of life.