Broadband penetration rates - percentages?

eircomtribunal

Ripwave wrote:

Does this mean that the figure of 1.875 is no longer correct?

Using the OECD measure of BB penetration, "subscribers per 100 inhabitants", the figure for Ireland's Broadband Penetration is 1.875 in the case of 75 000 bb subscribers and 2 in the case of 80 000 bb subscribers. (While it is not a percentage figure it is used so by the EU Information Society and in the current discussion and we have to be pragmatic about that fact.)

I'm asking YOU to tell me how many BB subscribers are needed to provide 100% Broadband Penetration, by any definition of Broadband Penetration you choose to use.

Tried to answer that one the last time, I think.
As you won't suggest your definiton, I'll choose two definitions of 100%BB Penetration here.

1. A useful definition could be "Broadband penetration of households", similar to the currently measured "Irish home Internet penetration", let's call it "Irish home (or domestic) broadband penetration", defined as percentage of households with a bb connection.
1 287 958 bb connections ( or whatever the up-to date figure of households is) taken for domestic use, would constitute 100% "Broadband Penetration", when this is defined as "percentage of Irish households with a broadband connection".
The figure about current bb connections in Ireland, 80 000 or 2.0 per 100 inhabitants is not very helpful in this regard, as it does not say how much of it is taken by business and how much by domestic users.


2. If you define "Broadband Penetration" as the percentage of inhabitants with a bb subscription, and this can become a useful measure in the future, just as much as this type of definition is now used for mobile telephone penetration, then we'd need to to have the equivalent of domestic bb subscriptions as there are people here.This could as well be defined to include only all people above a certain age.


The OECD type of figure, as I pointed out earlier, is very clean and easy to measure, perfect to compare countries with each other, but not suited for giving exact answers about domestic bb penetration rates. But as a rough guide, if you multiply the OECD figure by three, you'll arrive at the Household penetration rate (neglecting the influence of business bb figures).
But it is much better to find out the household bb connection figures from normal CSO type stats surveils.


Let's call it a day on this. Don't think we can make any more progress on the issue.

P.

lucernarian

This topic is getting completely out of hand! This is simple maths I remember doing in primary school. I can't believe so much confusion has arisen out of this. First things first:

Could anyone give us the facts about how these statistical agencies obtain these figures of broadband penetration?

There's a problem in the maths here: If muck's average no. of people per household figure is correct and eircomtribunal's figure of 927464 for the total no. of households is correct then this should mean that the population of the State should be around 2.65 million (not including people of no fixed abode). Does this "householders" figure include apartments of any shape or form? Correct me if im wrong:)

I think these two(or more?) methods of calculation should be seperately called "Broadband Availability" and "Broadband take-up" perhaps?

Perhaps the best way to approach this is use the actual figures for broadband usage to show the percentage of broadband connections compared to:
Population of the country
Total no. of householders in the country
Total no. of businesses in the country etc.

Any of these percentages could be properly calculated and then could be compared with the relevant percentages from other countries.

Has anyone established what sources Dermot Ahern/Comreg was actually quoting from when he compared Ireland with other countries?

spongebob

Pop of country 4M

Number of Households in Census , April 2002, 1.28 Million . Allow another 120k built since so its 1.4 Million or so . (we also build empty ones which are not households , eg holiday homes which tend not to be occupied in April when the census is carried out )

http://www.cso.ie/census/pdfs/vol13_t1_22.pdf Ref Table 19

Therefore

Average size of household (2004) = 2.85 .

also see

http://www.cso.ie/census/pdfs/vol13_t1_22.pdf Ref Table 9

Average size of household (2002) = 2.96 .......but factor in what we have built since April 2002

HTH

M

bealtine

Has anyone established what sources Dermot Ahern/Comreg was actually quoting from when he compared Ireland with other countries?

This is the knub of the problem, using whatever metric gives us 3% or 1.8% isn't really that relevant (per se) but knowing what metric is being used IS what is important.

Therefore we should use the same metrics...or stick with whatever methodology the OECD uses. THis gives us a measuring stick (blunt) but
universal to use.

Imho otherwise it's a bit like comparing chalk and cheese and deriving fish.

I'm for the OECD methodology:)

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

As you won't suggest your definiton, I'll choose two definitions of 100%BB Penetration here.

1. A useful definition could be "Broadband penetration of households", .....
924 464 bb connections ....., would constitute 100% "Broadband Penetration",

Now we're finally getting somewhere. By this definition, we currently have a "Broadband Penetration Rate" of between 4% and 8% depending on how many of the assumed 75,000 eircom DSL connections are residential versus business, and assuming that this number also includes UTV and ESAT. Cable and Wireless connections probably add about half a percent to this.

If Eircoms claim of over 600 new connections on a single day is typical, this number is increasing by 1 approximately every 6 weeks (because it is a reasonable assumption that, even if business subscriptions account for the majority of the earlier, higher priced subscriptions, it is reasonable to assume that at the current prices, new residential subscriptions far out weigh new business subscriptions).

eircomtribunal wrote:

2. If you define "Broadband Penetration" as the percentage of inhabitants with a bb subscription, and this can become a useful measure in the future, just as much as this type of definition is now used for mobile telephone penetration, then we'd need to to have the equivalent of domestic bb subscriptions as there are people here.This could as well be defined to include only all people above a certain age..

Ah, it didn't last long, did it? If you weren't going to actually provide an answer to the question, Peter, why did you bother providing a second definition?

eircomtribunal

Muck wrote:

Pop of country 4M

Number of Households in Census , April 2002, 1.28 Million . Allow another 120k built since so its 1.4 Million or so . (we also build empty ones which are not households , eg holiday homes which tend not to be occupied in April when the census is carried out )

http://www.cso.ie/census/pdfs/vol13_t1_22.pdf Ref Table 19

Therefore

Average size of household (2004) = 2.85 .

also see

http://www.cso.ie/census/pdfs/vol13_t1_22.pdf Ref Table 9

Average size of household (2002) = 2.96 .......but factor in what we have built since April 2002

HTH

M

Thanks for clearing my mistake on the figure of households in the country, which had puzzled me, but not enough to question it.

[My 924 464 figure of "family units in private households" in the country came from table 41 of vol 3 CSO figures. It did not include 1 person households and non family households and was therefore desperately short of the to be expected 1.2 million figure for private households]

I would think that the figures in table 3 and 6 in vol13 are best, as they refer to private households and not dwellings and they have additional information about household figures in towns bigger than 1500 and those in rural areas and as well the breakdown into figures for the number of persons:

Number of households
State: 1 287 958 households (3 791 316 persons)
in towns >1500: 784 789 households or 61% (2 241 826 persons)
rural: 503 169 households or 39% (1 549 454 persons)

So 61 % of households (59% of persons) are in towns bigger than 1500 pop and 39% of households (41% of persons) are outside towns bigger than 1500.
This is important when looking at Eircom's claim of bb availability to 70% of population, when they have all towns >1500 "bb enabled" by March 2005. Of course they will merely claim 70%, and when really quizzed they can always say it was 70% of lines.*
*Addition: This is now totally disregarding the the bb line test failure rate issue.

P.

eircomtribunal

Ripwave wrote:

By this definition, we currently have a "Broadband Penetration Rate" of between 4% and 8% depending on how many of the assumed 75,000 eircom DSL connections are residential versus business, and assuming that this number also includes UTV and ESAT. Cable and Wireless connections probably add about half a percent to this.

My figure for households was wrong. We have 1 287 958 households. So:
We have currently 80 000 bb connections. A maximum of 40 000 would be domestic bb connections. 40 000/ 1 2879.58 = 3.1% . 3.1% of households in the country have a bb connection.
That might well be the figure Dermot was telling us Comreg had told him. He then compared that with a bogus 5% figure for the EU average, which is totally wrong and misleading. As far as I remember, the EU-15 average for household bb connectivity is expected to reach 20 % by the end of 2004.

P.

spongebob

eircomtribunal wrote:

So 61 % of households (59% of persons) are in towns bigger than 1500 pop and 39% of households (41% of persons) are outside towns bigger than 1500.
This is important when looking at Eircom's claim of bb availability to 70% of population, when they have all towns >1500 "bb enabled" by March 2005. Of course they will merely claim 70%, and when really quizzed they can always say it was 70% of lines.

The fact that only 61% of households will be covered once every town with a pop over 1500 is done is worthy of note . The further fact 30% of lines tested to that 61% fail the BB test then reduces the number of households that will be able to avail of DSL BB to approx 43% of all the households in the state by March 2005 and probably for a long long time thereafter given the ongoing decrepitude of the copper.

43% of 1.4 Million is 602,000 . These are 'those who can' while most households as Peter explained and as we know from the failure rates from other carriers with access to the database , can't get DSL owing to it not being there or their line being inadequate or too long.

I see no reason to disagree with the 40k figure for Households and 35k for Business DSL connections. The 40k figure would indicate a CURRENT uptake rate of 6.6% of Households Capable Of Getting DSL . It is actually a tad more as the DSL installation programme is still ongoing but largely complete .

The figure for total DSL connections before the recent 3 Month Free and 2 Month Free promos was about 55k in Total, shall we assume 30k Residential and 25k Business connectiosn there for proportionality . This was in the Eircom annual report about 3 months back by the way .

Therefore we can further conclude that

30k households Capable Of Getting DSL Pay for their BB and are in contract (5%) and 10k dont .....yet (1.6%) . Once the free trial periods are over the DSL penetration figures could actually FALL , especially in Dublin where the arrival of NTL is imminent in large swathes ......certainly within the one year contract period. Once NTL appear in Galway and Waterford I can see them making huge inroads there too .

M

eircomtribunal

Muck wrote:

The fact that only 61% of households will be covered once every town with a pop over 1500 is done is worthy of note . The further fact 30% of lines tested to that 61% fail the BB test then reduces the number of households that will be able to avail of DSL BB to approx 43% of all the households in the state by March 2005 and probably for a long long time thereafter given the ongoing decrepitude of the copper.
M

Look at that:


The (forfas) National Competitive Council publishes these dsl availability figures for 2003. They are defined as DSL % of population. And they are wrong and misleading.

Even by March 2005 only a theoretical 61% of households and a theoretical 59% of persons will have DSL availability. Take into the account the line failure rate of 20%(that's what Eircom admits) or 30% (that's what Esat/BT claims) and we see how once again deliberate Eircom misinformation has found its way into official documentation.

Who's to contact Forfas on this?

P.

oscarBravo

eircomtribunal wrote:

Even by March 2005 only a theoretical 61% of households and a theoretical 59% of persons will have DSL availability. Take into the account the line failure rate of 20%(that's what Eircom admits) or 30% (that's what Esat/BT claims) and we see how once again deliberate Eircom misinformation has found its way into official documentation.

I was in a carpet shop in Ballina today, and had a casual conversation with the proprietor (which he initiated by saying "you're the guy that does the broadband, right?" ). He said that both his shop (in town) and his house (three miles from town) had failed for DSL, and that Eircom had told him both lines would never qualify. He also mentioned that the majority of people he'd spoken to in Ballina couldn't get DSL, including the inhabitants of some of the town's newest estates.

lucernarian

We are assuming here that only people who live inside towns with populations greater than 1500 are even eligible to receive ADSL. We all know of eircom's ridiculous distance limits (which is AFAIK the sole reason stopping me receiving ADSL) but I would imagine that some houses pretty close to towns could receive DSL. In that case, the amount of households/population who can avail of DSL would be closer to IMO 70% or more. In my case I'm connected to the Drogheda exchange but am 3.75 miles from it.

Could anyone provide us with the figure for the exact distance limit eircom uses and if they have any plans to increase this in the future? I shouldn't be hopeful of this though.

Btw I asked a certain Thomas Ryan of eircom if they had any plans to increase the distance limit and he replied that he could not answer the question.

bealtine

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Could anyone provide us with the figure for the exact distance limit eircom uses and if they have any plans to increase this in the future? I shouldn't be hopeful of this though.

even eircom cannot provide a distance limit for their lines.
The standard says 4.5 kms for ADSL.
BTs implementation of ADSL2 stretches over 6km, sometimes up to
10km. In fact BT DO NOT have any limits as such for 512k ADSL.

The reason eircom use pathetic distance limits, they often quote 2.5kms,
is the woeful state of the copper in the ground. So they use these fictional
limits to hide a multitude of reasons/excuses for not supplying DSL.