Prime Time tonight

SkepticOne

seamus wrote:

It should have been set up as a wholesale only state-owned company, which resold the connectivity to retail companies. It should have been operated by NUI or HEAnet, or a similar kind of idea, dedicated mostly to technology research and network development instead of profit.

Effectively this would have meant splitting off and selling the TE retail division, but the wholesale section would still be subject to those inefficiencies that you mentioned earlier. They would still want 200 (or whatever it was) euros a month for an ISDN line and their revenues would still be under threat from companies attempting to install DSLAMs so they would erect barriers to that in much the same way as Eircom is doing now. I'm not sure why people think state ownership is the answer tbh.

Of course, "If ifs and buts were candy and nuts.....".

Indeed.

In fairness, it was only then that we became "less poor", and de tellyfone was no longer a luxury.

Well I think a basic telephone was pretty common by the late 70s, though there could be major delays in getting one.

Moriarty

SkepticOne wrote:

Effectively this would have meant splitting off and selling the TE retail division, but the wholesale section would still be subject to those inefficiencies that you mentioned earlier. They would still want 200 (or whatever it was) euros a month for an ISDN line and their revenues would still be under threat from companies attempting to install DSLAMs so they would erect barriers to that in much the same way as Eircom is doing now. I'm not sure why people think state ownership is the answer tbh.

The benefits of state ownership are up for debate, but I can think of no argument against the seperation of the retail and wholesale divisions of eircom into seperate businesses.

Has anything like the not-for-profit idea of Seamus' ever actually been done with any major utility anywhere in the world, does anyone know? I've thought about it on and off myself and I haven't come up with any negative aspects to it yet.

spongebob

Moriarty wrote:

Has anything like the not-for-profit idea of Seamus' ever actually been done with any major utility anywhere in the world, does anyone know? .

see http://www.csu.org/ and http://www.csu.org/about/

This in a Republican stronghold too.

M

Moriarty

Most intresting.

SkepticOne

Moriarty wrote:

The benefits of state ownership are up for debate, but I can think of no argument against the seperation of the retail and wholesale divisions of eircom into seperate businesses.

From my point of view as a consumer, what is the point of separating these businesses?

Has anything like the not-for-profit idea of Seamus' ever actually been done with any major utility anywhere in the world, does anyone know? I've thought about it on and off myself and I haven't come up with any negative aspects to it yet.

But TE was a (technically) not-for-profit company and I think most people would agree that it was not the best. The problem is that change tends to happen very slowly in monopolies.

Moriarty

SkepticOne wrote:

From my point of view as a consumer, what is the point of separating these businesses?

One retail operator will no longer have (alleged) priority and favourtisim to the detriment of every other telco. The wholesale operator will no longer have a reason to block the transition from pstn-based internet access to IP-based access. The wholesale operator will no longer be able to rely on price-gouging of the consumer to keep profit margins, so will have to open up their networks to greater use (far greater bitstream service variation, a proper LLU implementation , etc etc etc) so that they can earn revenue. Revenue will be entirely dependant on the revenue of the OLO's, so it's in the wholesalers intrest to help them provide any services that the OLO's want to provide.

SkepticOne wrote:

But TE was a (technically) not-for-profit company and I think most people would agree that it was not the best. The problem is that change tends to happen very slowly in monopolies.

True enough, but I would argue that expecting competition for the telecoms access network throughout the country is unrealistic in such a small, low-density market. When competition isn't likely, your next best option is a well regulated monopoly that has no reason to stifle change and technological progress. We've got neither of those at the moment, due to the unholy marrige of wholesale and retail arms with the incumbent and a lax regulator.

bealtine

Moriarty wrote:

Has anything like the not-for-profit idea of Seamus' ever actually been done with any major utility anywhere in the world, does anyone know?

The mantra of privitisation is only for those outside of the USA.
Inside its a very different story, afaik most utility companies (electricity) certainly are owned by the city or the state.
San Diego for instance.

Blaster99

Incidently, most of Eircom's practises were started by Telecom Eireann, your beloved semi-state that really looked out for the consumer. When after a lot of significant grief Esat managed to be allowed to sell telephony over leased lines, TE did two things: jacked up the leased line rates to probably the highest in the world and increased local call charges and line rentals and lowered national and international call charges. And may I remind everyone that up until some point in the 90's, only TE was allowed to route IP traffic in Ireland. Everyone else had to send their packets abroad and then back again. How anyone could seriously suggest that TE would have been good for the country completely baffles me.

I incidently think that Eircom is somewhat stuck in the TE mindset. It's difficult to shake the semi-state culture it seems. That they have a lot of union control obviously doesn't help either, given Irish union's traditional resistance to any changes.

The simple fact is that telecoms provision works better in practically every other EU country. I don't think any of them have a state owned wholesaler or any of the other suggestions above. It's just a matter of copying one of the many regulatory environments that work and Eircom/ComReg can go and screw themselves. Any of the usual arguments about population density being lower in Ireland and therefore nothing applies to Ireland is bollocks, because I'm pretty sure both Sweden and Finland have lower population density and both of those countries are about 5-10 years ahead of Ireland in terms of telecoms infrastructure.

lucernarian

I see lots of comments on whether TE was a good thing but could anyone provide links to back up their good or bad claims on TE? Btw when people say that TE installed pairgains on phone lines they should remember that this was at a time when there was no need to have higher speed internet access and it was much more cost-effective to use them.

I remember Telecom Éireann working on the road I live around 1996 and when I think about it now they brought a second 30-pair cable a distance of 1 km when they could have used pairgains to provide extra lines. Ironically this second cable ends outside a neighbour's house (he worked for TE and Eircom). From there on are pairgains galore.

I think the main benefit of a monopoly in telecoms here is that if it was run correctly all communications infrastructure would work in synergy.

Moriarty

Blaster99 wrote:

Incidently, most of Eircom's practises were started by Telecom Eireann, your beloved semi-state that really looked out for the consumer. <snip> . How anyone could seriously suggest that TE would have been good for the country completely baffles me.

No one has said anything even close to that here.

Blaster99 wrote:

The simple fact is that telecoms provision works better in practically every other EU country. I don't think any of them have a state owned wholesaler or any of the other suggestions above. It's just a matter of copying one of the many regulatory environments that work and Eircom/ComReg can go and screw themselves.

It isn't all peaches and cream in the rest of europe, they've simply handled a bad situation far better. The incumbent telcos are still, well, incumbent telcos. The problem still exists, the current regulatory regimes are just a temporary cure. Leaving one company with all the infrastructure while still letting them compete directly with all other telcos is an inherently unbalanced, unfair and short sighted policy.

OFCOM - the UK regulator - have repeatedly floated the idea of forcing through the complete seperation of BT Wholesale from the retail arm because they recognise the inherent problems as well as anyone else with this. It's only a matter of time until they do it.

Blaster99 wrote:

Any of the usual arguments about population density being lower in Ireland and therefore nothing applies to Ireland is bollocks, because I'm pretty sure both Sweden and Finland have lower population density and both of those countries are about 5-10 years ahead of Ireland in terms of telecoms infrastructure.

We had this debate in this forum about a year ago. Sweden and Finland have lower overall population densitys because they have vast tracts of land where litterly no one lives. There's no need to provide any infrastructure there. Most of each country's populations live in high density citys which are the perfect environment for the provision of utilitys. The policy of one-off housing in Ireland pushes up infrastucture requirements quite substantially.

Blaster99

Re pairgains, TE or Eircom never guaranteed anything other than voice, regardless of what the requirements of the consumer were. I remember complaining to TE some ten years ago about a crap phone line that couldn't handle a modem and after having gone through the customary 15 phone numbers (TE could seemingly not transfer an external caller to another part of TE) before I could find somebody who cared enough to give me a response, the response was tough luck. What's new, eh? Anyways, my point is that there were people who required dial-up access back in the dark old TE days.

I'm incidently not disputing the value of having a wholesaler, I'm disputing the ever recurring argument that TE or Eircom were somehow of any use before the privitisation. On the contrary, Eircom has improved since privitisation. Which wasn't difficult.

I probably wasn't around for the fascinating Sweden/Finland/Ireland population density debate. There's plenty of one-off housing in Sweden and Finland, by the way. I don't really know what we're debating here, but nobody expects people in the sticks to get ADSL broadband. Does the supposedly lower population density using whatever measurement you like equate to a 30% (or whatever it is) higher LLU rental than in Sweden or Finland? I seriously doubt that there are facts to back that up. This is a piddly little country, it can't be that bloody hard to lie a bit of cable to cover it.

And by the way, USA has a lot of urban sprawl and very low population density and significantly cheaper telephony and broadband. Figure that one out. As I wrote above, blaming population density is bollocks.

SkepticOne

Moriarty wrote:

One retail operator will no longer have (alleged) priority and favourtisim to the detriment of every other telco. The wholesale operator will no longer have a reason to block the transition from pstn-based internet access to IP-based access.

But if the monopoly wholesaler is making good money gouging the OLOs selling pstn minutes, why change? Where are these OLOs going to go?

The wholesale operator will no longer be able to rely on price-gouging of the consumer to keep profit margins, so will have to open up their networks to greater use (far greater bitstream service variation, a proper LLU implementation , etc etc etc) so that they can earn revenue.

But all that happens is that the gouging shifts to the wholesale level something that has largely happened already. Why bother gouging the consumer directly if you can gouge the OLOs who in turn pass it on to the consumers.

Revenue will be entirely dependant on the revenue of the OLO's, so it's in the wholesalers intrest to help them provide any services that the OLO's want to provide.

Why should the monopoly wholesaler worry about what the OLOs want?

eircomtribunal

Blaster99 wrote:

blaming population density is bollocks.

I strongly agree.
Each and every country has its particular particularities. They are here to be overcome. They should not be used as a (fake) reason to explain or condone failure of a different nature.
Ireland's Internet and Broadband development did not fail because of our low population density. We fundamentally failed to connect enough people at a time when it was a matter of having dial-up modem connectivity. An English speaking, educated and young population living in a northerly climate is at the bottom of the league, because Eircom was allowed to price us out of getting online by stupid bureaucrats in the regulator's office and the gov departments. Many of those grey suits are still in charge.
It's not the missing cable competition either, a fact that Etain Doyle, JohnDoherty, Dermot Ahern and now Noel Dempsey and McRedmond try to make us believe, as the success of Denmark and Japan shows.
P.

eircomtribunal

SkepticOne wrote:

But if the monopoly wholesaler is making good money gouging the OLOs selling pstn minutes, why change? Where are these OLOs going to go?

The solution is a very simple one. We just have to look at countries successful in this area and copy.

As all grey suits tells us: Real competition to the network provider makes the incumbent cut the price, improve efficiency, invest. As we have no (cable ) competition the regulator has to emulate the effect of competition by setting a very low LLU price (Denmark had the lowest in Europe, Japanese LLU has been set way lower again).
Competitors will try to undercut the line rental of the incumbent, extend the broadband rollout, the broadband speed, reduce the dsl price. The incumbent has no other chance than to take get efficient and imaginative. The rest would be history.

P.

SkepticOne

eircomtribunal wrote:

As all grey suits tells us: Real competition to the network provider makes the incumbent cut the price, improve efficiency, invest. As we have no (cable ) competition the regulator has to emulate the effect of competition by setting a very low LLU price (Denmark had the lowest in Europe, Japanese LLU has been set way lower again).
Competitors will try to undercut the line rental of the incumbent, extend the broadband rollout, the broadband speed, reduce the dsl price. The incumbent has no other chance than to take get efficient and imaginative. The rest would be history.

I was just trying to make the point that splitting the wholesale and retail divisions of Eircom doesn't really make much difference. I agree with the grey suits and yourself that ultimately there has to be real competition to this wholesaler. One way or another the monopoly has to be brought to an end.

jmcc

The one thing that bothered me about McRedmond's mention of the absence of a viable cable broadband player was that he does not seem to know much of Eircom's history. RTE and Telecom Eireann ran Cablelink. There was a serious question as to the motives of the main shareholders. By running to badly, TE had effectively ensured that Cablelink would not be a competitor to TE's core fixed line business. NTL basically bought a network that was not capable of being used to implement a widescale broadband solution.

Regards...jmcc

SkepticOne

jmcc wrote:

The one thing that bothered me about McRedmond's mention of the absence of a viable cable broadband player was that he does not seem to know much of Eircom's history.

I think his purpose here was to muddy the waters on the issue of competition. In reality, McRedmond and the board of Eircom are very happy that NTL and Chorus don't represent a competitive threat to them but, in order to obscure this, they twist it around in such a way that it seems an extra burden is being placed on Eircom since NTL aren't doing their bit in providing broadband. The effect of this is to create the impression that Eircom are going out of their way to roll out DSL over and above the desire to make money. This seems to be a theme of theirs at the moment.

RTE and Telecom Eireann ran Cablelink. There was a serious question as to the motives of the main shareholders. By running to badly, TE had effectively ensured that Cablelink would not be a competitor to TE's core fixed line business. NTL basically bought a network that was not capable of being used to implement a widescale broadband solution.

This illustrates a conflict of interest when companies are in state ownership. On the one hand, competition is good for consumers. If they aren't happy with one provider they switch to another. Prices are forced down and/or services are improved. On the other hand, such competition undermines the value of the asset and no shareholder likes to see this happen. Monopolies are worth far more to their shareholders than competing companies.

spongebob

SkepticOne wrote:

.....in order to obscure this, they twist it around in such a way that it seems an extra burden is being placed on Eircom since NTL aren't doing their bit in providing broadband. The effect of this is to create the impression that Eircom are going out of their way to roll out DSL over and above the desire to make money. .

I believe that Eircomtribunal has analysed the situation in Denmark ...where cable competition is negligible and DSL penetration is much higher....to debunk this myth.

M

eircomtribunal

SkepticOne wrote:

that ultimately there has to be real competition to this wholesaler. One way or another the monopoly has to be brought to an end.

I agree with you, the question about private company vs state owned is the wrong one and only deflects. ( That is not saying that dividing the network operation from the resale operation should not be done - as the combination brings in another string of anticompetitive temptations)

The ultimate misunderstanding goes back to a public controversy Etain Doyle had with a much wiser regulator from the EU. He tried to convince her that the telecom's situation is a sort of natural monopoly (with no real competition possible on the fixed line infrastructure in the form of another network being built by a competitor) and would therefore always be in need of decisive regulatory intervention. Etain maintained it was feasible to pull back all regulation as soon as possible and let "competition" rule.

What I mean to say is: Ending the monopoly on the fixed line sector is urgent and the most important issue. Competition has to be introduced into the network by regulatory means via LLU.

Noel's talk on the PT programme about competition being ultimately the only working option is nonsense (and his argument that the MANs were bringing that competition or alternate network to the last mile has to get challenged soon), when not seen in the context of the sort of competition introduced by the regulator via LLU. Cable is not an adequate competition to the telephone network – more and more countries who came away with this idea for a while (because cable made some competitive pressure on the incumbent fixed line holder in their country) have realised that now and have set very low LLU prices (France, NL etc. and soon UK). In France this has led to a revolution on the broadband sector. Other regulators, like OFCOM have no difficulties to get orientation with their LLU pricing by looking to other EU prices, rather then trying to calculate the incumbent's cost. Many other factors than the cost of poles inclusive of footrests etc have to be considered. Like the price of the competitive advantage Eircom achieved by dragging out the introduction of viable LLU for years.

P.

Ripwave

Victor wrote:

Wow, must be the first warezing of RTÉ content ev4r!

The RTE To Everywhere project started distributing audio clips of RTE radio news in March 1994!

(RTE took a couple of years to get in on the act themselves, and even then were well ahead of the pack, internationally speaking).

Ripwave

Blaster99 wrote:

Any of the usual arguments about population density being lower in Ireland and therefore nothing applies to Ireland is bollocks, because I'm pretty sure both Sweden and Finland have lower population density

And you'd be guilty of exactky the same sort of statistical picking and choosing that you castigate McRedmond for.

Sweden and Finland have vast areas of almost totally unpopulated forest. The areas where the vast majority of their populations live have a considerably higher population density than anywhere in Ireland (Even our cities have much lower population densities than "normal" cities).

Blaster99

I didn't castigate McRedmond as far as I recall, but never mind. I'm still waiting for an argument as to why it is that USA can deliver cheap broadband and telephony if population density is such a big deal. I also don't believe that you're correct about Sweden and Finland. Having experienced those countries first hand, the main difference is the mindset of the incumbants. They tend to invest so they can deliver quality added value services to their customers. Customers are happy, the telco makes money. Sweden had the world's most open telecoms market in the early 1990's and Telia even advertised this as a benefit. Eircom just has no vision beyond line rental increases.

I'm incidently a firm believer of competition instead of beating up Eircom or ComReg, even though you guys are admittedly making great strides on the beating up. Competition has a way of sorting out most inefficencies.

Cable has been a major factor in broadband competition. It is true that neither RTE or TE had much of an interest in developing the Cablelink infrastructure and probably made sure it was as shoddy as possible to avoid competition.

Ripwave

Blaster99 wrote:

I'm still waiting for an argument as to why it is that USA can deliver cheap broadband and telephony if population density is such a big deal.

Funnily enough, I spent last week in a house in rural western New York. No broadband, and no realistic likelihood of it anytime soon. 28.8 dialup was the best I could get.

This is considered perfectly normal in vast tracts of the US, because people who don't want to live in towns and cities understand that they're not going to get cable TV, or distance limited technology like DSL. Rolling hills, with nothing high enough to oversee significant areas makes wireless somewhat impractical too. But somehow, nobody ever mentions these areas when comparing Ireland with the US.

Then I decided to do a test. I went to www.anywho.com, an online phone book, and I looked up "B Ahern" in Philadelphia PA, just to get a real persons phone number, in a large US city. The Phone Number came back as (215) 332-7135. I put it into the line checker tool on www.verizon.com, and I get back "Verizon Online DSL is not currently available on (215) 332-7135."
Covad also said "We're Sorry. TeleSurfer Plus is not available at your location. Please review those services that are available to you."

(I just tried one number - was I just "lucky" to pick a rare number that can't get DSL, or is the availability picture in the US, even in cities, not quote as rosy as some people believe?)

I also don't believe that you're correct about Sweden and Finland.

Believe what you like - it won't change the facts.

eircomtribunal

Blaster99 wrote:

I'm incidently a firm believer of competition instead of beating up Eircom or ComReg, even though you guys are admittedly making great strides on the beating up. Competition has a way of sorting out most inefficencies.

Competition in this market can only be via LLU. And LLU is a regulator-driven affair.

Total lack of cable competition in Denmark and Japan has not hindered these countries to become broadband leaders, after their regulators forcefully introduced/enabled competition on the incumbents' networks.

The current LLU revolution in France will soon be repeated in the UK.

I cannot fault Eircom for hindering the introduction of competition on its last mile network, I can only try to expose the lies they are telling us in the process.

The man to blame for continuously failing to introduce competition is Comreg's Doherty. By now setting the second-highest EU LLU pricing for the next three years John Doherty is peeing on our legs again while telling us "hey, it's raining!". Any excuse is good enough to get peddled by him to deflect from Comreg's failure to introduce competition: the burst of the telco bubble, the missing cable, the low pop density.


Three notes about the pop density discussion:

1. The mother of Ireland's failure with regards to Internet development is the low percentage of people connecting to the net. At an almost stagnant 37% of households connected, with only 58% of them really using the net in a substantial way (several times a week, which is for example the measure the Swiss regulator uses to count households at all as Internet households) we are way behind our EU compagnions and will stay way behind with bb usage, however fast bb availability and pricing might improve. This slow Internet growth has nothing to do with our particular geography or demography, as telephone lines are available to all.(It was of course caused by the regulator standing idly by, as Eircom priced us out of using the Net; remember this?)

2. The ESB has exactly the same pop density situation to cope with as Eircom. How much more expensive is Irish electricity line rental (standing charge) than that of our EU counterparts? I know it has gone up to over 11 euros lately, in connection with the separation of the grid from the rest of the ESB, but it would be interesting to make some comparisons with other countries.

3. Of course factors like pop density, geography, climate are factors for the price of the lines, but none of them should be misused as an excuse for failure of a different nature. Other regulators write about the difficulties with terrain, fragmented line ownership (Finland), but not as an excuse, but as the challenge they had to overcome.

P.

spongebob

Ripwave wrote:

Rolling hills, with nothing high enough to oversee significant areas makes wireless somewhat impractical too. But somehow, nobody ever mentions these areas when comparing Ireland with the US.

That topology is indeed difficult Ripwave. Unlike the Midlands of Ireland which are pretty flat the rolling countryside is very had to service with BB save at difficult to acquire sub 1Ghz frequencies.

Nevertheless the NI government will do it in Fermanagh Armagh and Tyrone by 2005 . Cavan Leitrim and Monaghan have similar 'drumlin' terrain FYI . If it can be done in the North it surely can be done hear.

M

De Rebel

Martin

I agree with and endorse everything Damien said. It was a very good appearance. Calm, measured and professional. Well done. You have our thanks for the amount of time you put into it, both the preparatory work and the travelling.

Well done.

Blaster99

My little Ripwave debate: Maybe this is a good time to point out that I'm not talking about broadband coverage, I'm talking about cost, LLU cost specifically. I can't be arsed going back through what I've written above, but I'm pretty sure I pointed out the fairly obvious and that is that ADSL is not going to deliver 100% geographical coverage.

The competition debate: Perhaps wishful thinking on my part, but I'm a firm believer of NTL sticking it to the man. If (and a big if perhaps) NTL can get broadband to their Dublin customer base, Eircom will be in trouble because that's where the money is. I would think an educated guess is that Dublin subsidises Eircom's universal services delivered across the country. So Eircom would have to respond to not lose business in Dublin and this will mean cheaper prices for everyone.

Ripwave

Blaster99 wrote:

My little Ripwave debate: Maybe this is a good time to point out that I'm not talking about broadband coverage, I'm talking about cost, LLU cost specifically.

And the high cost of LLU in Ireland has come about because eircom has been allowed to average the cost of lines all over the country, so that short lines in a relatively densely populated town or city cost the same as long lines in rural areas. As we have a large proportion of one off housing, the average cost of LLU is higher here than it is in Sweden and Finland, where the average density in the parts of the country where people actually live is significantly higher than here.

(Perhaps when IOFFL has gone through some of the FoIA documentation it has received on LLU, a clearer picture of this might emerge, but I wouldn't bet on it. I have no doubt that any eircom costings that might be available will be obfuscated beyond all understand. I absolutely agree with you that eircoms attitude to competition is radically different to that of Telia. But that's like agreeing with you that the average temperature in Florida is much hotter than it is in Dublin. So what - acknowledging the fact doesn't change the reality that we have to deal with).

DonegalMan

I'm just back from holidays so I'm just catching up on this thread.

Overall, I thought it was an excellent programme, bringing the whole issue to centre stage in a way that the average Joe Soap can understand it, though we should bear in mind that the Prime Time audience is not really your typical Joe Soap, it's more the A/B Professional class (or whatever the marketeers call it) which is even more important to us, as these are people who can see through the Eircom waffle and push for real action.

Quick thoughts on the performance of the various parties:

IrelandOffline - great for us, we now really are firmly esconced as the leading representative body for Internet users; the fact that we were able to encourage Prime Time to go from a 5 minute 'filler' to a full 15 minute in depth investigation and interview with a minister shows how much influence we can have when we present hard facts.

Eircom - McRedmond seemed under more pressure than he's ever been in the past, Donagh Diamond seemed to have given him a tough time on the basis of info we had given him - I'm sure Eircom just loved the Pittsburgh report being resurrected .

I realise some people are annoyed at Eircom still being allowed to peddle their waffle but that doesn't bother me anymore, I think their waffle has become pretty stale by now and no-one of importance (except perhaps Comreg) is buying it. I actually think that Eircom should become less of a target for us, everyone now knows the state they are in and we need to focus more on cures for the problems rather than analysis of the causes (more about this in a separate thread called "A Very Pertinent Question")

Comreg - what a total f**king disaster! John Doherty comes across as nothing but an apologist for Eircom - in the middle of a programme showing explicitly how far behind our country is, he talks about 100,000 subscribers as if that was something to be proud of and the great job Eircom are now doing. Holy Mother of God, what planet is this guy living on?

The Government - much as I had said before, these guys are in trouble with Broadband, they know it and are desperate for a solution as highlighted by today's SBP exposé.There's a tremendous opportunity here for us if we can give them the right answers.


Martin

spongebob

DonegalMan wrote:

The Government - much as I had said before, these guys are in trouble with Broadband, they know it and are desperate for a solution as highlighted by today's SBP exposé.There's a tremendous opportunity here for us if we can give them the right answers.

LLU is a dead duck, ritually garotted and embalmed by Comreg when they agreed the stupid pricing regime until 2006 or 2007 .

We need an LLU variant which may possibly work in economic terms. I hereby present SCHLUP , which is an Irish solution to an Irish problem .

Add in some fiscal incentives for the consumers connecting to these services in the form of tax breaks and we should be fine .

M