Broadband penetration rates - percentages?

eircomtribunal

Ripwave wrote:

any business that has a DSL line is a subscriber, but isn't an inhabitant.

That is indeed a good point for your argument to use the metric expression "Broadband Subscribers per 100 inhabitants" of the OECD instead of the percentage of the Danish/EU "percent of population that have a bb subscription" (as it disproves my argument that percentage is mathematically correct).

Many in the media are not as mathematically correct and use the percent version as you will have noticed, even analysts like here, simply because % is shorter than "Broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants".
[You still fail to convince me that your other argument against the % use, as expressed in your latest post holds any water, but it is not relevant now to tease that one out really]

A comparison using "household" broadband penetration rates gives a good graphic description of Ireland's place amongst the nations.

P.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

[You still fail to convince me that your other argument against the % use, as expressed in your latest post holds any water, but it is not relevant now to tease that one out really]

how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself) does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration?

eircomtribunal

Ripwave wrote:

I'll ask you again - how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself) does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration?

Ever thought what's the reason for your aggressive style of arguing? Are you aware of it?

You write "how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself).." when in fact the OECD has "subscribers" and you had made "subscriptions" out of it.

I readily acknowledge that for the mathematical argument about percentage usage this does not make much of a difference, as a business can be a subscriber without being an inhabitant, thus it is no longer the same unit divided by the same unit and hence not really a percentage in the strict mathematical sense..)

To your question:
It all depends on the definition of "broadband penetration".

If you use the OECD definition, as it is expressed in metrics,

it is probably not proper to answer your % question from those metric data.
SKorea does it, and yes it looks funny, 29% of households and 9% of population:

7.2* Subscribers of Broadband Internet Service

This graph clearly shows the continuous increase of broadband subscribers in 2000 and 2001. In*
2000, the number of ADSL subscribers exceeded 2 million, CATV 1 million, and the total number of*subscribers was over 4 million. These figures reveal that the penetration rate of broadband services in*
2000 was about 29% of the total households and about 9% of the total population.
P.

eircomtribunal

ripwave, they're all at it, calling it %.Here's a forfas doc. You have to write to a lot of institutions, to remind them of their sloppy use of maths.

How would you call the OECD figures? Broadband usage index or the likes?I don't see the original OECD document anywhere.

Added by edit:
Here's how the OECD shows it.

P.

eircomtribunal

The EU Information Society has no problems using the "subscribers per 100 population" method, here with mobile phone penetration, and expresses that as a percentage.

I am just showing that to demonstrate that we will have to live with this method.

P.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

Ever thought what's the reason for your aggressive style of arguing? Are you aware of it?

Ever thought what's the reason for your evasive style of arguing? Are you aware of it?

I'm not agressive, I'm frustrated. Frustrated that you would rather chase around trying to redefine the question rather than answer it. I really don't have a lot of patience with people who wave their hands about and avoid the question. (You know, people like Dave McRedmond from eircom, George McGrath from e-net, and now Peter Wiegl from Comwreck. You're really putting yourself in some illustriuos company there).

You write "how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself).." when in fact the OECD has "subscribers" and you had made "subscriptions" out of it.

Sigh. Peter, again, in very simple terms, as far as I can tell, there is no difference between "subscribers" and "subscriptions". (at least in terms of the way you are using the terms wrt to eircom). The term "subscribers" is somewhat ambiguous because it could imply that you are excluding business subscriptions. In countries where business subscriptions don't amount to a significant fraction of the total, that doesn't matter. In Ireland, it does.

To your question:
It all depends on the definition of "broadband penetration".

If you use the OECD definition, as it is expressed in metrics,

Oh, so now the OECDs definition is good enough for you, is it? Even though it doesn't mention percentages anywhere?

Again, I'll repeat myself:

RipWave wrote:

The 12.7 number isn't the problem - I have no problem with the claim that Denmark has a "Broadband Penetration Rate" of 12.7 compared to Irelands 1.8 or 2.5 or 3, or whatever the number of the day is. That's a perfectly valid way to compare the two countries.

7.2* Subscribers of Broadband Internet Service

This graph clearly shows the continuous increase of broadband subscribers in 2000 and 2001. In*
2000, the number of ADSL subscribers exceeded 2 million, CATV 1 million, and the total number of*subscribers was over 4 million. These figures reveal that the penetration rate of broadband services in*
2000 was about 29% of the total households and about 9% of the total population.

That is, once again, not a quotation from the OECD. It is a misinterpretation of the OECD data. And when you say

SKorea does it, and yes it looks funny, 29% of households and 9% of population:

you're like someone trying to ignore the Elephant in the fridge - it "looks funny" because you are misrepresenting what the data actually stands for.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

ripwave, they're all at it, calling it %.Here's a forfas doc. You have to write to a lot of institutions, to remind them of their sloppy use of maths.

Peter, it's not a sloppy use of Maths, it's a sloppy use of English. Which might excuse the Danes and the Japanese. As for Forfas, they claim that the graph represents "Population penetration of broadband access technologies", and quote the OECD as the source, even though the OECD doesn't use the term "population penetration" anywhere.

How would you call the OECD figures? Broadband usage index or the likes?

It obviously isn't a "usage" index, if you're only counting "subscribers", and not users. I'm perfectly happy with Broadband Penetration Index, or Broadband Penetration Rate.

I don't see the original OECD document anywhere.

http://www1.oecd.org/publications/e-book/9303021E.PDF (This makes some effort to define "subscriber", but it's a protected document, so I can't cut and paste from it, so just read how they define it on page 120).

Added by edit:
Here's how the OECD shows it.

Oh look - another OECD document that doesn't refer to percentages! Who'd a thunk it?

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

The EU Information Society has no problems using the "subscribers per 100 population" method, here with mobile phone penetration, and expresses that as a percentage.

Peter, I think most people would agree that a mobile phone is a "personal" communication device, and that you would need 4 million mobile phones to have 100% Mobile phone penetration in a country with 4 million inhabitants.

You still haven't said how many BB connections a country of 4 million needs to reach 100% Broadband Penetration.

eircomtribunal

Ok, back to you question.
how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself) does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration?

The OECD measures "Broadband Penetration" in metrics in terms of "subscribers per 100 inhabitants", hence your question about the number of subscribers to reach 100% Broadband Penetration cannot be answered.

Give me your definition of "100% Broadband Penetration", please.

P.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

Ok, back to you question.
how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself) does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration?

The OECD measures "Broadband Penetration" in metrics in terms of "subscribers per 100 inhabitants", hence your question about the number of subscribers to reach 100% Broadband Penetration cannot be answered.

Peter, you're not using the OECDs definition, so don't try to hide behind it now. I have a vague recollection that, way back in the mists of time when this thread started, I pointed out that the OECD metrics would give 100% Broadband penetration at a "score" of 30 to 40 on the "per 100 inhabitants" metric.

Give me your definition of "100% Broadband Penetration", please.

Peter, just use whatever definition you used to decide that ireland has a rate of 1.875% today.

jwt

To my mind 100% (percent deliberate) penetration would require bb for every inhabitant regardless of whether one person in a house had a single bb line or a family of 10 in a house had a single bb line.

However if we went from the absurd to the ridiculous and had a country with 100 inhabitants and 100 companies and all the companies had 1 bb line and none of the inhabitants had bb. Technically that country would have 100 bb in 100 inhabitants


John

eircomtribunal

Ripwave,
I have come along with your arguments, discovered and acknowledged that the penetration rate definition the OECD uses (subscribers per 100 inhabitants) is not mathematically a percentage figure (while stating that the Information Society of the EU and many others, including the figures in our current political/media discussion do use the underlying OECD-type measurements as percentage figures) and now you want to drag me back before that stage.

My point is that you cannot ask a percentage question on the basis of the non-percentage OECD BB penetration data, without defining what you mean with percent.
When you say I pointed out that the OECD metrics would give 100% Broadband penetration at a "score" of 30 to 40 on the "per 100 inhabitants" metric., then my question is still not answered: What is your definition of 100% BB penetration rate?
You must have a definition in your head, when you say you reckon that 30 or 40 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants would give 100% BB penetration.
100 out of 100 persons living in a household that has a bb subscription? 100 out of 100 persons living not further than 5 miles from a public broadband access point? What is your definition?
Depending on your definition of 100% Broadband penetration, it may be possible to answer your question or not, or to some degree from the metric OECD data.
P.

spongebob

I am staying out of this one .... in general.

The average Irish household has 2.85 Inhabitants or so . (source CSO census 2002) .

Thats about 35% by pop to get one in every house and also assume that we share them and do group hugs once a week , is that what you mean Ripwave ?

M

eircomtribunal

Dermot said on RTE today, that a Comreg guy had told him the Irish bb penetration was now at 3 (%) and the EU was at 5(%). What do we make of those figures?

For Ireland to have a 3(%) BB penetration, as in 3 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants, we would need 120 000 BB lines. Redmond claimed 75 000 dsl, Dermot 80 000 lines. Could there be an additional 40 - 45 000 other BB connections like cabel and wireless? Doubtful?

For Ireland to have a 3 % of households with bb connection, we would only need 27 733 BB households (=3% of the total of 927 464 households). Could it be that our 75 000 or 80 000 are 27 733 taken by domestic users and the rest by business? But in this case, the 3% being the household penetration percentage, the comparatively used 5% for Europe would not fit, as Europe's household bb penetration is currently at over 20 %.

P.

DonegalMan

eircomtribunal wrote:

For Ireland to have a 3(%) BB penetration, as in 3 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants, we would need 120 000 BB lines. Redmond claimed 75 000 dsl, Dermot 80 000 lines. Could there be an additional 40 - 45 000 other BB connections like cabel and wireless? Doubtful?

God only knows, we don't

1. Do the 75000/80000 include business?
   
2. Are these Eircom subscriptions only or have IOL/UTV to be added?
   
3. Staying with the mathematics theme, if you're rounding off to nearest percent then 3% is anything >= 2.5%

Questions, questions ... wish we could get some answers for a change.

BTW - I myself think it's probably 2) above - Eircom couldn't really include IOL/UTV is their subscription figures ... but then again, I wouldn't put it past them.

spongebob

DonegalMan wrote:

God only knows, we don't
Eircom couldn't really include IOL/UTV is their subscription figures ... but then again, I wouldn't put it past them.

IOL and UTV are all supplied in their entirety by Eircom Wholesale as Bitstream product as are Digiweb and Netsource and others.

The total number of currently active DSL lines in the state equals everything supplied by Eircom Wholesale and some hundreds (absolute max 2000) of the ESAT Business DSL added to it.

email the 'head' of Eircom Wholesale to get that latest figure, that would be Herb Hribar .....who in turn could be herb.hribar@eircom.ie or herb.hribar@eircom.com or herb.hribar@eircomwholesale.ie or hhribar@eircom.com or hhribar@eircom.ie or hhribar@eircomwholesale.ie or even all of the above given his key role in Eircom .

M

eircomtribunal

DonegalMan wrote:

God only knows, we don't

1. Do the 75000/80000 include business?
   
2. Are these Eircom subscriptions only or have IOL/UTV to be added?
   
3. Staying with the mathematics theme, if you're rounding off to nearest percent then 3% is anything >= 2.5%

Questions, questions ... wish we could get some answers for a change.

BTW - I myself think it's probably 2) above - Eircom couldn't really include IOL/UTV is their subscription figures ... but then again, I wouldn't put it past them.

Eircom recently stated they are not differentiating between domestic and business with their dsl figures, when a journo questioned the assumption that all that many households were connected, as it would mostly be businesses making he dsl figures.

IMO Eircom's 75 000 dsl figure includes all Irish dsl, as Eircom say this with the wholesaler's hat on. Esat/Bt has a tiny few dsl subscribers on their own exchanges.

Could be Comreg have added a figure in for existing big pipe businesses, the cable bb users and there must be a number of wireless users by now, too. 100 000 would be 2.5(%) and they could call it 3(%). Then they compare it with the EU figure, which was at 6 (%) in January 2004, but has probably decreased since, because of the new entrants. (Of course Dermot has excluded the new entrants in the directive to Comreg for the mid 2005 goal of reaching the EU average, but such things would never hold back the likes of Comreg to use the conveniently lower EU-25 figure whenever it suits them)

P.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

My point is that you cannot ask a percentage question on the basis of the non-percentage OECD BB penetration data, without defining what you mean with percent.
When you say I pointed out that the OECD metrics would give 100% Broadband penetration at a "score" of 30 to 40 on the "per 100 inhabitants" metric., then my question is still not answered: What is your definition of 100% BB penetration rate?

Peter, it doesn't matter what I consider 100% Broadband Penetration, the question is what you, the great proponent of the "1.875% Broadband Penetration" statistic, consider 100% Broadband Penetration.

Your attempts at "the dog ate my homework" style excuses are getting pretty lame. Once, again, I'm going to repeat myself for your benefit:

RipWave wrote:

Peter, just use whatever definition you used to decide that ireland has a rate of 1.875% today.

Here's a snippet from Morning Ireland on Thursday morning, reporting the comments of a certain Peter Weigl, that might jog your memory - [URL=rtsp://streaming2.rte.ie/2004/0916/16092004rte-morningireland.rm?start=1:51:31&end=1:52:02]Mr McRedmond steamrolled factually false messages across the airwaves, claiming that Ireland had a current 5% Broadband Penetration rate, ... in fact the Irish rate is 1.87%.[/URL] (that's a RealPlayer link directly to the streamed clip from RTE).

Just in case you've forgotten what the question is, I'll repeat it, yet again:
How many BB subscribers does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration, using your own definition of "Broadband Penetration", and your own definition of "subscriber".

eircomtribunal

Ripwave wrote:

Peter, it doesn't matter what I consider 100% Broadband Penetration, the question is what you, the great proponent of the "1.875% Broadband Penetration" statistic, consider 100% Broadband Penetration.

I am not at all the great proponent of the % statistics. I've acknowledged that the OECD definition of BB penetration as "subscribers per 100 inhabitants" is not a percentage figure.
On the other hand the Information Society of the EU, as used by the Danish regulator, has used the underlying OECD figures and expressed them as a percentage figure. Mathematically not correct, but nevertheless they've done it and this % figure is getting used in interviews and discussion, as you know.

Here's a snippet from Morning Ireland on Thursday morning, reporting the comments of a certain Peter Weigl, that might jog your memory - [URL=rtsp://streaming2.rte.ie/2004/0916/16092004rte-morningireland.rm?start=1:51:31&end=1:52:02]Mr McRedmond steamrolled factually false messages across the airwaves, claiming that Ireland had a current 5% Broadband Penetration rate, ... in fact the Irish rate is 1.87%.[/URL] (that's a RealPlayer link directly to the streamed clip from RTE).

You do not suggest I should have tried to explain to them that it is not really a percentage figure etc.? I was not in the know about the "difficulties" with these figure sets then, so ok you can blame me for that. And sometimes a pragmatic approach has to override absolute exactness. No use in being totally exact but nobody listens any more or is sidelined by to much complexity etc. So, yes, in the context of a reply to the above RTE piece, I think it would still make sense to use the false % unit. Of course it'd be preferable to correct the misconception.

Just in case you've forgotten what the question is, I'll repeat it, yet again:
How many BB subscribers does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration, using your own definition of "Broadband Penetration", and your own definition of "subscriber".

Repeating your question does not change the impossibility of the question. It cannot be answered.
You cannot ask this percentage question on top of its metric figure base of "subscribers per 100 inhabitants".
I've acknowledged that the OECD figures are metric and not %.

Example: A statistic shows that he "car penetration rate" in Ireland is "40 cars per 100 inhabitants". You would not ask: How many "cars per 100 inhabitants" does a country with a population of 4 million need to have a "100% car penetration".

If you now define "100% car penetration" for example as "each adult has his/her own car", then the metric stats of "X cars per 100 inhabitants", can help you answer your question, but you'd have also to know the figure for company cars and the figure for the adult population.

For other definitions of "100% car penetration" like "every family has their own car", the metric figure set of "X cars per 100 inhabitants" can be helpful, but only with other additional figures like number of company owned cars, number of families in the state, number of families that have 2 or more cars etc

Don't try to make me look like a fool with bringing up things I thought were right days ago.

When two monks that had sworn absolute chastity, found a woman at a swollen river unable to cross it, one of the monks took her on his shoulders and carried her across. The monk who had not touched the woman accused the other one: "You have broken your pledge and carried a woman". The other monk replied: "I've carried that woman – you are still carrying her."

So, Ripwave, what is you definition of 100% Broadband penetration?
Only then can we assess if and how the OECD "BB penetration" figures can help answer your question.

P.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

Don't try to make me look like a fool with bringing up things I thought were right days ago.

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

Repeating your question does not change the impossibility of the question. It cannot be answered.
You cannot ask this percentage question on top of its metric figure base of "subscribers per 100 inhabitants".
I've acknowledged that the OECD figures are metric and not %.

Peter, go back and read the question again. You'll note that I'm not asking it on top of any metric figure base. 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.

(When I first asked the question, I expected you to be sufficiently consistent as to use the the same definition of Broadband Penetration that you used to arrive at the figure of 1.875. I no longer have any expectation of consistency, so feel free to use whatever definition you think works best for you).

So, Ripwave, what is you definition of 100% Broadband penetration?
Only then can we assess if and how the OECD "BB penetration" figures can help answer your question.

Eh, Peter, why would I ask you to do the calculation based on my definition? I'm perfectly capable of ding simple arithmetic myself.

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.