By 2005, over 80 percent would have access to fast connections of 20Mbs or more.

spongebob

Thats 80% of South Koreans as it happens, article Here

80% of Irish people will not have access to grotty highly contended 512 k by 2005 will we now ? .

Even skeptics in the United States say that the South Korean government's advocacy role and intense focus can serve as a model for other countries looking to modernize their infrastructure.

Whinnnnnnnnge !

M

mike65

Ya did'nt fool me! (honest!) There is NO chance of anything within an asses roar of that for us ever, though 20mb per second is prolly faster than is strictly necessary for 99% of applications after all whats the diff betwen waiting 10 seconds and waiting 30? Apart from 20 seconds....

Mike.

spongebob

Lets send the formal surrrender terms to the Koreans and the Dutch so.

"We are not at the races, we will not make it to the races and we will never ever try to pretend that we are on our way to the races"

Elegantly put , wha ! . Lets hope they accept graciously while they laugh at the decrepit flea bitten Celtic Tiger.

M

mike65

Broadband is the new space race/arms race? Maybe it is economically, hang on thats what the other races were really about too...another page on that site you linked to shows how BB has become a feature of the US presidential race in a small way.

Mike.

spongebob

We are still trying to kickstart the Jet engine Mike. Never mind space

M

eircomtribunal

Not so, Muck. You must be talking about a different country.

From this article in siliconrepublic from February of this year, you can see that our gov will not surrender, small disturbances are all just caused by ripples in the time continuum:


"Revealed: Government moves broadband goalposts


12.02.2004 - In an apparent admission of failure, the Government has dramatically rowed back on its own broadband targets, siliconrepublic.com has learned.
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.”

P.

spongebob

Ahhh yes , the target figures. !

That was really about the number of pipes (relative to Estonia which has now been rules out as a peer for comparative purposes because we look crap ) .

I decided to mention the size of the pipe for a change. Our national target of 5Mbits for all by March 2005, announced by Mary O Rourke in March 2002 , has never been revised substantially bar when the number of pipes in Estonia was removed from the comparison figures by Ministerial order this year.

90% of BB pipes in Ireland are highly contended 512k jobbies. 80% of the population do not have 5Mbit products to hook up to yet. Only Dungarvan is compliant !

M

mike65

Muck wrote:

90% of BB pipes in Ireland are highly contended 512k jobbies. 80% of the population do not have 5Mbit products to hook up to yet. Only Dungarvan is compliant !

M

Which just happens to be a self-contained system run by a local (small) private concern...which may tell us something. I just heard Dermot Aherne on RTE radio lauding thier BB policy, citing it as an achievment of the last few years.

Delusions with Dermot Aherne (you may need to copy and paste into RP)

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0802/ff.html

Mike.

TCP/IP

Hello Lads,

Even though a 5mb or 10mb pipe would be nice in the home what bloddy use would it be. All people use broadband for on this board is for d/l warez. 512 is more than good more browsing, i admit the cap is a pain in the ass but we do not need such speeds in the home at the moment, maybe in the furure we will but at this moment in time i think we are ok with 512.

Thanks,
TCP/IP

Moriarty

TCP/IP wrote:

All people use broadband for on this board is for d/l warez.

Nice generalisation there.

TCP/IP wrote:

512 is more than good more browsing

There's more to the internet than the www, as you know.

TCP/IP wrote:

i admit the cap is a pain in the ass but we do not need such speeds in the home at the moment, maybe in the furure we will but at this moment in time i think we are ok with 512.

Quite a number of governments (never mind the ordinary person on the street) around the world would seem to disagree with you.

mayordenis

for gaming purposes 512 is just adequate, it just keeps your head above water

muffen

TCP/IP wrote:

Hello Lads,

Even though a 5mb or 10mb pipe would be nice in the home what bloddy use would it be. All people use broadband for on this board is for d/l warez. 512 is more than good more browsing, i admit the cap is a pain in the ass but we do not need such speeds in the home at the moment, maybe in the furure we will but at this moment in time i think we are ok with 512.

Thanks,
TCP/IP

Why do you need an expensive car?
Why do you need a big house?
Why do you need a big garden?

According to your logic, why don't we just build one car that is really small, uses little gas and then force everyone to buy it.
Furthermore, lets find out what the minimum amout of space a person needs is, and build all houses according to that size.
I mean, after all, you'll save the enviroment if everyone used that car, and you'll save space if you live in a small house or apartment.
Point being, people have different needs, and a lot of people are willing to pay for the extra luxury. In the end, why do you need a computer, or atleast the internet, at all?

I just got back to Sweden, and I was chocked when I came to my dad's house. He lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere, with a population of 20 000, and he has 8MBit. Apperantly, 72% of the population in this country is covered with 8MBit ADSL.

Personally, I just bought an apartment in central Stockholm, and just found out that I can get 26MBit ADSL.
As for prices, both the 8MBit and the 26MBit is below 50euros a month, with no DL cap.

Now, about that whole "don't need more" thing, well, its one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

5 years ago, was there any need to have 512kbit directly to your home?
However, would you not have been happy if the expansion had actually begun 5 years ago, and not as it happens in Ireland, about 2 years too late?

Secondly, there are actually tons of reasons to have more than 512 in your house.
It's nice to have internet radio running all the time. in Sweden you can rent movies and TV shows off the web (www.sf-anytime.com). No advertisements, and you watch it when you want to.

With services such as skype and the fact that they DO have a lot of bandwidth, a lot of people make their normal phonecalls using the Internet.

This is what my computer is like right at this moment:
I am listening to a 96Kbit stream from www.di.fm.
I am writing this message on boards.ie.
I have a small window with my sisters webcam open.
StarWars Galaxies is running in the background.
I am downloading some stuff from windows update (patches and windows media player series 9).
Currently, I am using about 6MBit ... had I been on 512, both my sisters webcam and my radio would have broken off while downloading.

I still cannot believe that people actually say things like: "4gig is enough and who needs more that 512".
If you had ever experienced 10 - 20MBit connections without a cap, you would completly understand what I am trying to tell you ... but right now it feels like trying to explain how a car-engine works to my mum.

The best you can get in Ireland right now (resonably) is 2MBit, and that will cost you about 200euros a month.
I will have 26MBit to my house, and I'll pay less than 45euros a month for it.
I, like many others, like having it alot. 10 - 20 in ping when playing Quake3 is amazing (I was happy if I got below 60 when I was in Ireland).

Anyways, you stay there with your 512Kbit and your 4gig DL cap, and I'll stay here with my 26MBit and no DL cap.

seamus

TCP/IP wrote:

Hello Lads,

Even though a 5mb or 10mb pipe would be nice in the home what bloddy use would it be. All people use broadband for on this board is for d/l warez. 512 is more than good more browsing, i admit the cap is a pain in the ass but we do not need such speeds in the home at the moment, maybe in the furure we will but at this moment in time i think we are ok with 512.

Thanks,
TCP/IP

It's all purely speculation, but for the most part, the quicker joe on the street adopts a technology, the quicker we can begin to press on and build on that technology. 512 is about enough for standard web browsing, for one person. But once you get into getting an entire household connected, with more than one machine, or a small business, or hobbyist graphic designers and webdevelopers, all of whom 512 is aimed at, its limitation become painfully clear.

In 5 years time, 512k will be regarded with the same sighing and slowness that 56K gets now. That means it's definitely not "grand for the moment".

Future-proofing, or future-planning when introducing any new technology should be key - the speed at which computing technology moves is staggering - yet many big businesses still haven't copped on yet. There has never been any technolog introduced that hasn't been changed and expanded. There will never be enough Disk Space, enough RAM, enough bandwidth - demand will continue to grow.

In 1981, Bill Gates said; "640k ought to be enough for anybody." 23 years later and the average home computer comes with 1000 times that amount of memory. Does a 500Mbit line into every home in 30 years time sound completely off-the-wall?

Moriarty

500mbit sounds pretty small tbh seamus. Convergence will be well along the road by then, and with a single uncompressed HDTV stream requiring 1.5gigabit/s you can get an idea of the sort of connections people will be using

Wassabi

Muck wrote:

Ahhh yes , the target figures. !

That was really about the number of pipes (relative to Estonia which has now been rules out as a peer for comparative purposes because we look crap ) .

I decided to mention the size of the pipe for a change. Our national target of 5Mbits for all by March 2005, announced by Mary O Rourke in March 2002 , has never been revised substantially bar when the number of pipes in Estonia was removed from the comparison figures by Ministerial order this year.

90% of BB pipes in Ireland are highly contended 512k jobbies. 80% of the population do not have 5Mbit products to hook up to yet. Only Dungarvan is compliant !

M

We need to get ahold of the figures for estonia and do the comparison ourselves and make sure the new outlets get ahold of that info too.

- Was

spongebob

Wassabi wrote:

We need to get ahold of the figures for estonia and do the comparison ourselves and make sure the new outlets get ahold of that info too.

- Was

Link to the full data including line numbers per person etc is
Here

In 2003 Estonia had the Equivalent (relating its population of 1.3m to Irelands 3.9m) of over 100,000 DSL connections and 75,000 Cable Modems too.

Estonia has 120 ISPs or about 1 per 100,000 people or so .

No wonder they are not supposed to be mentioned in policy documents. They make Ireland look retarded

M

jwt

Muck wrote:

Link to the full data including line numbers per person etc is
Here

M

Nice one, any idea where to look for official comparative data?

Not doubting the data presented, but some corroborative data to present alongside would strengthen the argument.

John

eircomtribunal

Muck wrote:

No wonder they are not supposed to be mentioned in policy documents. They make Ireland look retarded
M

Estonia (and Slovenia) are really the exceptions amongst the 10 accession countries. If Ahern had included the full ten accession countries for the broadband comparison by mid 2005, Ireland would have sparkled like the one-eyed king amongst the blind.

P.

spongebob

eircomtribunal wrote:

Estonia (and Slovenia) are really the exceptions amongst the 10 accession countries. If Ahern had included the full ten accession countries for the broadband comparison by mid 2005, Ireland would have sparkled like the one-eyed king amongst the blind.

We did not sparkle, except by Greek standards maybe. In Q4 2003 we had maybe 17000 DSL connections for 1.7 M lines or 1 BB connection per 100 lines.

Hungary Latvia Estonia Lithuania and Poland were all well ahead of us.

More info http://www.polishmarket.com/next.php?id=6634

M

eircomtribunal

Muck wrote:

We did not sparkle, except by Greek standards maybe. In Q4 2003 we had maybe 17000 DSL connections for 1.7 M lines or 1 BB connection per 100 lines.

Hungary Latvia Estonia Lithuania and Poland were all well ahead of us.

More info http://www.polishmarket.com/next.php?id=6634

M

Interesting table there.
Still, there are other factors to be taken into account. Most of these countries have very low Internet usage figures, in the 20 percent region, see http://www.etcnewmedia.com/review/default.asp?SectionID=11 and also low telephone line figures.
While the dsl density per telephone lines is exceptionally bad in Ireland, we are probably still ahead with the relative bb figures.
For example Poland: it has about the tenfold population of Ireland with nearly 39 million, but not the tenfold number of dsl lines with 144 000

P.

shoegirl

TCP/IP wrote:

Hello Lads,

Even though a 5mb or 10mb pipe would be nice in the home what bloddy use would it be. All people use broadband for on this board is for d/l warez. 512 is more than good more browsing, i admit the cap is a pain in the ass but we do not need such speeds in the home at the moment, maybe in the furure we will but at this moment in time i think we are ok with 512.

Thanks,
TCP/IP

I don't disagree with the post considering the number of lines in the country that are either not broadband enabled, too far from the exchange, or just too plain dodgy (pairgains etc) to get broadband at all, never mind a 5MB or 20MB line. I would prefer to see 98% penetration of BB at 1MB, with 512k-1MB access for the vast majority, than 80% at 20MB, while the minority lag behind at 9.6k on an analogue line. Its extremely frustrating especially for people in BB-enabled areas who cannot get lines due to eircom's incompetence, who have no comeback or redress. Shifting the service levels to offer basic services for a bigger population would at least elimination people who at the moment are facing a prospect of NEVER getting BB at all, not to mention those who cannot even get a decent hi speed connection.