BB coverage in the IT Business Section

Mr_Man

There is quite a few articles in the Business Section of to-day's Irish Times. One looks at BT and compates how innovative it is with Eircom's foot dragging.

Another looks at the various BB offerings, yet another looks at the company providing wireless access to apartments in the Custom Hose complex. Karlin also has a go about Wireless Hotspots and their cost, while yet another article highlights the problem with Eircom's network.

To cap it all the cartoon in Business Sections shows a robber, with an Eircom logo on his back, stealing money from a housewife's purse while she is on the phone.

All in all a lot of decent coverage on an important topic,

M.

SkepticOne

Mr_Man wrote:

yet another looks at the company providing wireless access to apartments in the Custom Hose complex.

This one is about the 2 mbit/sec service offered by Allan Brennan and based on his involvement with Dublin WAN. It seems like the higher speeds are being offered by the smaller companies rather than the large ones.

viking

Thought this article was well written and explained the current situation concisely and clearly:

New technologies may help to close the State's digital divide

The wireless broadband revolution may assist those who require high-speed access to the internet but do not live in a DSL-suitable area, writes Jamie Smyth, Technology Reporter

Despite living in Arbour Hill, less than two miles from Dublin city centre, Mr Kiernan Gildea remains an internet dinosaur.

Every time he wants to look at the internet he has to dial up for a connection and listen to the screech of his 56 kilobit modem.

After calling Eircom customer care on a number of occasions, he has been told he cannot yet be connected to DSL - digital subscriber line (a type of broadband that enables people to connect to the web at high speed).

And Mr Gildea is not alone.

Forget the hype in all the television adverts about "free summer surfing" - more than half the Irish population cannot sign up for a DSL service from Eircom or its fixed-line telecoms rivals.

The roll out of broadband has been notoriously slow in the Republic and, even though Eircom is now forcing the pace, many areas face technical problems when it comes to accessing DSL services.

The critical issue for DSL coverage is the length of the copper wire that runs between a telephone exchange and the customer's home. Eircom's current technology - which most rival operators are choosing to use to offer a consumer service - only allows a signal to travel up to four kilometres along the copper wire.

This is the main reason rural areas are unlikely ever to be offered DSL services by these firms.

In theory, this should enable most of Dublin to get a DSL service, but the four-kilometre distances are not measured as the crow flies but, rather, the length of copper needed to traverse various housing estates and roads.

For some customers within the magical four-kilometre mark, a poor-quality copper line can also scupper their dreams of broadband access.

Some copper wires used by Eircom can be up to 50 years old and have suffered attack by rats or water damage. This can make them unsuitable for broadband.

Another problem encountered in some housing estates is a practice known as "splitting the line". This is a situation where 150 customers may be served by only 100 lines. That is fine for voice services because there is never a situation when all 150 people use the phone at the same time. But for broadband, which is an "always on" technology, it reduces the amount of homes that can be connected to DSL.

All of these problems can cause disappointment when customers ring Eircom, Esat BT or another DSL provider to undergo a line test to see if they can actually get a service.

One tip for consumers undertaking the dreaded "DSL test" is to unplug other devices that may be using the telephone line in the month that they are being tested.

There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that Sky Digiboxes or fax machines may interfere with the test and produce a negative response unnecessarily.

If this fails, then consumers can consider themselves to be on the wrong side of the digital divide.

But there is still hope for those "internet dinosaurs" who are willing to tap into the fast-growing wireless broadband revolution.

Forget third-generation mobile technology; for a low-cost broadband connection into the home or office, fixed-wireless technology is a real alternative.

Firms such as Leap Broadband and Irish Broadband are offering wireless broadband services at similar prices to DSL.

Initial coverage problems caused by the need to have a line-of-sight connection between a company's wireless transmitter and the consumer's receiver have more or less been solved. And a new generation of wireless technologies - based on a technology standard called Wimax - are currently being developed by big technology firms such as Intel.

Leap and Irish Broadband are setting up base stations in the major urban centres and there are signs that local communities may be able to tap into this type of resource.

The Government is running a group broadband scheme to encourage communities to pull together to aggregate demand for broadband in small villages.

This may go some way towards plugging the urban-rural digital divide, which threatens to marginalise the very communities that, ironically, could probably make the best use of broadband.
© The Irish Times

Tom Dunne

Excellent article, nice to see the mainstream media are finally waking up to the fact that a lot of people still can't get broadband. I especially like the line:

Forget the hype in all the television adverts about "free summer surfing" - more than half the Irish population cannot sign up for a DSL service from Eircom or its fixed-line telecoms rivals.

That, for me, sums it up. There have been too many articles about the beauty of broadband and what it can do for you. These articles are little more than Eircom propaganda.

eircomtribunal

tom dunne wrote:

Forget the hype in all the television adverts about "free summer surfing" - more than half the Irish population cannot sign up for a DSL service from Eircom or its fixed-line telecoms rivals.

Mr Redmond claimed in last weeks Digital Ireland/Indo that "over 70 percent" can get ADSL.

In ads Eircom claim that they have bb enabled "over 1 million" of lines, which would make it a theoretical 60 %.

I think these figure games should get investigated and ComReg and the DCMNR should be asked to release correct figures.

P.

Paddy20

The truth will out

ednwireland

i guess that eircom count all the lines on an enabled exchange which as we know is far from the truth i doubt anyone has real figures unless eircom looked at the people doing line tests and then looked at the failure rate there otherwise no-one really knows how many lines are really enabled to take broadband. the politicians will always ignore the failure rate as it suits them to have higher allegedly enabled line figures it's all b*****it really. until i can get briadband on an enabled exchange

eircomtribunal

Some healthy food for thought not only for John Doherty and Dermot Ahern in Fergus Cassidy's ETHOS column.
He concludes his thoughts:


"......Yet soon enough, this country is going to have to bite the bullet on universal service.

The gap to be bridged is enormous. On the one hand there's the much-touted 'knowledge society' as the key economic propellant. On the other, though, is how much it's going to cost to make that a reality.

The great danger is that we're going to get a type of universal service that is based on what can be afforded and not on what is necessary for social and economic well-being.

We'll hear the familiar refrain of cost being put forward similiar to when universal health care or education were first proposed. What was the cost of universal suffrage?

The right thing to do is to decide what universal service means first and foremost and only then move on to the issue of obligation and costs. Define internet access speeds and entitlements on the basis of what is required for the future, not by what is achieveable or acceptable to 'market forces'.

Universal service should still mean access for all to affordable communications. Any other outcome is something we can't afford right now."

P.