IrelandOffline to appear on Morning Ireland on Tue 14th

damien

IrelandOffline did an interview with Morning Ireland which will go out tomorrow tuesday the 14th. The segment is about broadband and business. Not sure what time exactly it'll be on at. Will get more information later.

fletch

damien.m wrote:

IrelandOffline did an interview with Morning Ireland which will go out tomorrow tuesday the 13th...

I presume you mean Tuesday the 14th as the next Tuesday the 13th is September 2005

Paddy20

Well, Here we go, here we go, here we go.

Poor Eircom, Oh I am soooooooo sad for you :rolleyes:

damien

Changed the date.

mike65

The business news is broadcast at about 7.20 and 7.50 I think (open to correction)

Mike.

vinnyfitz

"In the can" pre recorded business pieces are normally broadcast immediately after "what it says in the papers" - about 7.12 or 7.15. Just when Dermot Aherne is tucking into his weetabix.

Mike's right the 2nd chunk of business news comes at about 7.50.

(Of course if some major business story breaks this evening the whole piece may be deferred - you just never know.)

damien

Hmmm. It may get moved to Wedn now as they were interviewing an IrelandOffline member today and said something to that effect. I'll have more news this evening.


Damien.

damien

It looks like it will go out between 7.30am and 8am tomorrow the 14th.

dahamsta

Sure only freaks get up at that time.

sceptre

There's a 7am now?

maxheadroom

Very interesting piece this morning - congrats to Damien, Andrew (I think that was his name) and Jamie Smyth for really pushing the message. The interviewer sounded well up on the facts too. Would love to see that guy interviewing an eircom spokesperson.

eircomtribunal

Just listened to it (quarter to eight am).
Well done Damien and also well done Jamie Smyth from the Irish Times.
P.

DonegalMan

Very good piece, one of the best I've heard.

Well done Damien in getting key points across.

Jamie Smyth certainly laid in on the line about Eircom's financial approach.

Wonder why no-one from Eircom took part - did they refuse or were they not invited?

dahamsta

If anyone recorded this, please send an MP3 to adam AT beecher DOT net and I'll put it up on the IrelandOffline website. I was actually up at 7:15am (sorry) but forgot about the interview (don't fire on all cylinders until after noon) and wouldn't mind hearing it asap.

adam

damien

Thanks guys. I just got woken by the sound of text messages coming in telling me it sounded good.

We can probably get a follow-up piece to this if the members mail and let their feelings be known to Morning Ireland. Journalists rarely get the feedback on good stories, they only hear from people when they're nitpicking.

So email morningireland@rte.ie and let them know that they did a good job if you believe this to be the case. A follow-up piece about where Ireland goes from here would be good, again only if you think this is a good idea.

Just so you know, we are already getting emails in the IrelandOffline inbox about the story.

cgarvey

I tried to record it (using sndrec32) but failed (because I was using sndrec32), sorry .. I don't see any link to "Listen to latest show" so I don't know if that means there are no RAMs available for Morning Ireland, or that they have just removed the link until later today when the RAM is available. If there is a RAM, I'll happily reencode it as soon as I see the link.

Edit: OK, found the link, will reencode when its up.

.cg

cgarvey

damien.m wrote:

So email morningireland@rte.ie and let them know that they did a good job if you believe this to be the case.

Good point, we're all too quick to criticise! I've emailed a warm fuzzy congrats email

.cg

jwt

If someone can get an MP3 of the interview I'll get a transcript posted here or at IOFFL

John

dahamsta

BTW if you do send me an MP3, please notify me in a separate email, my filters trap everything over 100k so I won't see it for hours otherwise.

adam

bealtine

It seems eircom will be "responding" to the points raised on tomorrows program...That should be a laugh a minute.

I see from todays Irish Times that they have asked for permission from
Comreg to roll out ADSL2, but as is usual in these cases they, the PR bunnies,
get their facts wrong or deliberately misinform. Who knows?

Anyway the problem here isn't speed as such, although that is very important,
it's the appalling quality of the copper in the ground as outlined in the super secret "Project Pittsburgh". You can roll out ADSL50, but if 60% of the countries lines can't carry it then what's the point?
If they won't fix up the copper then that 60% of the country will be stuck on 33.6k (or thereabouts) on awful lines, the lines with plastic bags littered about and temporary fixes to temporary fixes...The string and chewing gum network.

cgarvey

cgarvey wrote:

Good point, we're all too quick to criticise! I've emailed a warm fuzzy congrats email

.cg

Got the reply

Thanks for the comments , we will be having Eircom on
the programme tomorrow to answer the points made.

...

Am doing the MP3 now

.cg

jwt

If someone can get an MP3 of the interview I'll get a transcript posted here or at IOFFL

It seems Damien has beaten me too it and has a transcript already

It seems eircom will be "responding" to the points raised on tomorrows program...That should be a laugh a minute.

Dr Phil's interview will probably be the tone, will we be allowed to repond? on air preferably.

John :cool:

dahamsta

bealtine wrote:

It seems eircom will be "responding" to the points raised on tomorrows program

IrelandOffline should try to break Eircom's long-running success at appearing in public unchallenged by making an extra effort to get on tomorrow. Of course it's members should do the same, but it wouldn't be the same.

adam

seamus

bealtine wrote:

Anyway the problem here isn't speed as such, although that is very important,
it's the appalling quality of the copper in the ground as outlined in the super secret "Project Pittsburgh". You can roll out ADSL50, but if 60% of the countries lines can't carry it then what's the point?

I think that's one of the key points that needs to be driven home. The main problem is the failing of lines and the unwillingness to do anything about it. No matter how the PR ferrets go one about developing the technology, and giving it time, push on the fact that they have had the time, and that there's no point, for example, in rolling out a 64-bit application when most of your customers are still on 16 bit processors.

damien

Transcript:


PRESENTER – RICHARD DOWNES

Today the Minister for Communications, Dermot Ahern, will open the Midland Region Broadband Network in Mullingar; it’s expected to go live in about four weeks. The government has high hopes for broadband and wants the country to be in the OECD’s top league for broadband by next year. It says that in order for Ireland to compete on an international stage in the so-called “information age”, this is an imperative. Our reporter, Emma McNamara found out about some of the barriers that remain in the way of our success.

REPORTER – EMMA McNAMARA

The sound of a dial up connection is likely to stay fresh in this country’s memory. The rollout of broadband is plagued by problems. Currently in Ireland there are about seventy-five thousand broadband connections, per head of population this about three years behind the European average.

I asked Damien Mulley, Chairman of lobby group, Ireland Off Line, why we’re falling behind.

DAMIEN MULLEY – CHAIRMAN – IRELAND OFF LINE

There is numerous reasons, the fact I think that thirty percent of what are classed as broadband lines in this country are actually failing. So there are a lot of people that when they apply for broadband they actually can’t get it due to poor quality lines. As well as that there is… not every exchange in this country is enabled for DSL. Until all exchanges are enabled not everyone in this country can get access to broadband.

EMMA McNAMARA

Broadband provides access to the internet at a higher speed than normal phone lines. It’s an always on connection and the user pays a standard price for a whole month’s use.

DAMIEN MULLEY

It was recognised back in the nineties that Ireland had one of the best phone systems in the world, but it appears that investment in the network since then has slowed or even stopped. There needs to be serious reinvestment in the network. Everyone is affected, from people in the middle of Dublin to people in the country and the thirty percent failure rate is thirty times higher than the UK, where BT has brought failure rate almost to zero. The reasons for failure can be poor quality lines, internal wiring of a house, distance from the exchange, but most of these can be rectified if an engineer calls to your house.

EMMA McNAMARA

DCU Economics Professor, David Jacobson is on sabbatical and made initially enquiries about getting a broadband connection in his Dublin home last September.

DAVID JACOBSON – ECONOMICS PROFESSOR – DCU

What they’re saying is that I can’t get access because when they were testing my line, and I have two lines and both are showing red, when I say, “please explain why my line is showing red? What’s happening? What’s the answer”? It’s either your house or it’s the area, we aren’t sure which. Now this began in September last year. In the meantime I have discovered that it’s not my area, because I have a next door neighbour who can get broadband, but I’ve spent literally hours… add it all up days, trying to get correct answers to these kind of questions.

EMMA McNAMARA

Why it is so important for you to have broadband?


DAVID JACOBSON

Well I’m an academic and… in the last year I’ve been on sabbatical and I’ve been working a lot from home, so broadband would give me almost immediate access. It’s very important for me to have broadband.

EMMA McNAMARA

Not only can it be difficult to get a broadband connection, sometimes getting over the initial hurdle of even having a land line is the problem. Andrew McCarthy is doing a PhD in computer science in UCD’s Belfield campus. He moved into a house in Athy, County Kildare last March and has been waiting for a land line to be installed since then.

ANDREW McCARTHY – UCD

I moved down to Athy in March and I expected it to take two or three weeks to get a telephone line and after that I’d be able to telecommute two or three days a week at least, because I knew the commute to be fairly long, but after delay after delay the latest, which is their fifth estimate, is that Eircom might have a phone line for me early next year. So I’ve been waiting six months to date and it could be another six months before I get a broadband connection or even a phone line. They also couldn’t guarantee that even when they do install all this equipment that it’ll even be DSL capable.

At the moment now nobody on my street has a phone. Nobody on the street behind or perpendicular I would imagine has a phone since they’re even newer than our house, and I think half of the street in front of me doesn’t have a phone line either. So there’s actually quite a large number of people who can’t even get a phone let alone broadband. I mean we’re just working on the first step here.

EMMA McNAMARA

You’re at UCD and you’re doing a PhD in computer science, how much time do you realistically need to spend in UCD every week?

ANDREW McCARTHY

Very little, if any at all. I have the occasional meeting with my supervisor and it’s handy to talk to people face to face when you’re trying to interact on a project that we were working on. But apart from that everything I do based on a computer it’s all useable over the internet, there’s absolutely no technical reason, apart from meetings, that I’d actually need to be on campus at all.

EMMA McNAMARA

And how long do you commute?

ANDREW McCARTHY

It’s two and a quarter hours each way. I mean I never imaged that in 2004 I’d be waiting at least six months, possibly even a year to get a phone line, it’s just… it’s not something you’d even expect to have to think about.

RICHARD DOWNES

And that report from Emma McNamara. The time now coming up to ten minutes to eight. Now Jamie Smyth is a technology reporter with the Irish Times and he’s here to talk about broadband. Jamie we’re supposed to be heading into this… you know, digital economy, knowledge-based industries, it doesn’t sound like it from that report. What are the problems?

JAMIE SMYTH – TECHNOLOGY REPORTER – IRISH TIMES

Yeah I think there are three major problems here. The first one is that there has been a lack of competition in the Irish broadband market over the past three and a half years, so in many countries across the world the broadband leaders there are cable television networks which also provide broadband…


RICHARD DOWNES

Which they don’t do here.

JAMIE SMYTH

… which NTL said it was going to in 2000, but then pulled out of that market…?

RICHARD DOWNES

And anybody who has an NTL connection knows you can’t get a broadband connection from them now… they’re changing it, but you can’t get it at the moment.

JAMIE SMYTH

Sure, they’re only starting now to roll out this, so that lack of competition really hurt the Irish market. What it did was it allowed Eircom to pull back from its own broadband plans it had set in 2000, it was going to rollout DSL, this digital subscriber line technology, which… which enables houses for broadband, but when NTL dropped out of the market it pulled back from its investment.

This also happened at a time when Eircom was going through a large amount of financial re-engineering. The company was…was sold to venture capitalists who had… had probably a different… a different view of what they wanted from the company at this stage. So rather than perhaps focusing on their customers over the last three years, I would argue that the company’s been more interested in trying to boost profits and to… to pay… to pay for executive pay for example, which has gone up a lot, and also to pay corporate financiers. If you could add up the amount of money that’s been paid to lawyers and corporate financiers over the last three years you could probably build a DSL network…


RICHARD DOWNES

And they also got a huge dividend didn’t they out of the company, which the minister I know has been critical of. Meanwhile there are lots of exchanges around the country which are not digitally enabled and lots of lines, people who want to get onto broadband, who want this new frontier of technology and they just can’t get it?

JAMIE SMYTH

Sure what… I think there are… there’s a poor quality network in places throughout Ireland and I think there is a lot of investment which is required to actually get the… the lines ready for broadband, get them up to… up to speed. One of the interesting figures, which I picked out was, that in 2001 the capital expenditure on Eircom’s fixed line network was five hundred million euro. In 2004 this’ll drop to two hundred million euro.

RICHARD DOWNES

So they’re not even investing now?

JAMIE SMYTH

They are investing a minimal amount I would say to sort of “sweat the assets”, keep them going. One of the problems here is the company faces huge… huge debt levels, about two billion euro, so it has to service this debt and it doesn’t have the flexibility to actually invest in its network to the same extent as other European telecom’s operators.

RICHARD DOWNES

And it has also promised a very high level of dividend to its shareholders in the future, which would also seem to go against the business of investing in its network and in its customers?


JAMIE SMYTH

That’s right. I think if you look over to the UK, British Telecom recently came out and said it was going to spend three billion pounds every year on its network to create a twenty-first century infrastructure. That means that all their consumers should be connected to broadband by 2008.

RICHARD DOWNES

When would we all be connected do you think? On the current…

JAMIE SMYTH

At this stage it’s very difficult to tell, but I would say certainly not before 2010 and beyond.

RICHARD DOWNES

Okay. Jamie we’ll have to leave it there. Jamie Smyth, technology reporter with the Irish Times, thanks for that.

cgarvey

MP3 is up here or on IoffL website shortly. (8K .. 520K or 16K 1.1M)
.cg

dahamsta

Thanks again cgarvey.

http://www.irelandoffline.org/files/media/mp3/040914-rte1-morningireland-mulley.mp3

adam

jwt

seamus wrote:

I think that's one of the key points that needs to be driven home. The main problem is the failing of lines and the unwillingness to do anything about it. No matter how the PR ferrets go one about developing the technology, and giving it time, push on the fact that they have had the time, and that there's no point, for example, in rolling out a 64-bit application when most of your customers are still on 16 bit processors.

See my other post here

John

damien

Can I just give a quick shout out to the people in Eircom reading this thread ? Hi guys ! IrelandOffline is looking forward to going head to head with your boss real soon now, and even if you are reading here what we are going to say about you there will be no way of spinning it.

Don't worry though. It'll be over soon enough and won't hurt you that much.

jwt

damien.m wrote:

Can I just give a quick shout out to the people in Eircom reading this thread ? Hi guys ! IrelandOffline is looking forward to going head to head with your boss real soon now, and even if you are reading here what we are going to say about you there will be no way of spinning it.

Don't worry though. It'll be over soon enough and won't hurt you that much.

What happened to not taunting them Damien

Its like a game of chess, you can see the other guys pieces, exactly where they are but there is still nothing you can do. You know it's coming, you can either move pices around in a frustrated attempt to postpone the inevitable, or you can give us your King

John

eircomtribunal

It is important to try to cut through the lies and misinformation Eircom has been able to put out. They are very good in doing it.

Let us as well not forget the big picture. Comreg and the DCMNR should stand in the dock with Eircom.

When Minister Dermot Ahern now cries that he had told Eircom all along that they should invest in the network, but they would not listen, it makes me cringe.
How can he give our cow into the hands of a beast and believe the beast's promise we would still be getting our milk?
The beast gnaws off the cows tail. "Don't worry, I needed that against my hunger. It'll make no difference for the milk yield." He watches in horror as the beast bites off one leg, but accepts the same explanation and the same promise. In the end the beast walks away leaving only the udder saying "thanks and you still can have the milk".

P.