[Release] New Broadband Technology by eircom will do nothing for broadband in Ireland

damien

*** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ***

Pending Announcement of new Broadband Technology by eircom will do nothing for Ireland's Broadband Woes.

In a statement today, Internet pressure group IrelandOffline slams the
impending announcement of ADSL2 by eircom as "far too little and far too
late". This supposed solution does not in any way even begin to sort out
Ireland's Broadband failure.

This new technology, known as ADSL2, has the potential to extend the reach
of DSL. if and only if the ongoing network problems are resolved. Poor
quality and ancient copper in the ground will not allow the potential of
this new technology to be achieved as per the specifications for ADSL2.

In simple terms, after fully rolling out ADSL2 to all broadband enabled
exchanges, a process which could take years, Ireland will still have almost
1,250,000 lines which cannot be used for broadband. **

Speaking today, IrelandOffline Chairman Damien Mulley said "The failure of
broadband in Ireland is not a failure of technology. The technology exists,
the technology works and the proof of this is the broadband availability
rates achieved in other countries.

The failure to accomplish a timely rollout of broadband in Ireland is a
massive failure on the part of eircom. Among other things;
- eircom has failed to maintain its lines
- eircom has failed to invest adequately in its network
- eircom has failed to harness and rollout the technology
- eircom has failed to engage with its customers
- eircom has failed to deal with problems
- eircom has failed to fix that which is broken

Eircom spent the last 5 years satisfying its bondholders, its bankers, its
shareholders, its directors, managers and employees. IrelandOffline now
calls on eircom to refocus and to start to satisfy it's customers.

Ireland is very far below the EU average broadband penetration rate which
the Irish Government set as a target for 2005. At current deployment rates,
it will take Ireland at least 5 years to achieve the EU average, and will
never bring us to the point where we match leading broadband economies such
as Sweden, Korea and the UK.


**Ireland has 2,019,000 lines (PSTN and ISDN) Of the 1,000,000 lines
connected to broadband enabled exchanges 300,000 (30%) currently fail to
qualify for broadband. Increasing the range will probably allow another
50,000 to qualify. This is a drop in the ocean, leaving 250,000 lines still
failing and another 1,000,000 lines which are not connected to DSL enabled
exchanges.

cgarvey

Good quick response, fair play.

.cg

Ciaran500

When do morning Ireland record their reports?

This should be sent to them as Eircom is bound to bring this up in their response.