Getting above the 37% Net usage plateau

eircomtribunal

Sarsfield wrote:

There was an article in the Sunday Business Post (can't find a link and the paper is gone for recycling) in which Adrian Weckler reports that despite UK costs and UK availability (basically 100%), broadband takeup in NI is as bad as, if not worse than, down here.

Have a look at the very recent UK broadband map from analysts point topic to see for yourself.

P.

OfflerCrocGod

eircomtribunal wrote:

Have a look at the very recent UK broadband map from analysts point topic to see for yourself.

P.

That's useful eircomtribunal; how about just telling us without making us register?

damien

Sarsfield wrote:

There was an article in the Sunday Business Post (can't find a link and the paper is gone for recycling) in which Adrian Weckler reports that despite UK costs and UK availability (basically 100%), broadband takeup in NI is as bad as, if not worse than, down here.

There was a report about takeup in NI and it was actually much higher than here I believe. Must try and find it. Someone with the same writing style as Weckler also wrote an anon piece about BT in the same paper bitching about all their name changes. They must have messed up a nill of his ages back as I don't think he's a fan.

eircomtribunal

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

That's useful eircomtribunal; how about just telling us without making us register?

Sorry, my mistake.

New results show a deeper ‘Digital Divide’
18 January 2006
Point Topic analysis of broadband take-up

The broadband ‘Digital Divide’ – the gap between the haves and have-nots – is deeper than was thought and may be getting even deeper. This is one conclusion of new research from Point Topic based on detailed mapping of broadband density, right down to the postcode level (Figure 1).
All the ‘Top Ten’ Local Authority areas with the highest broadband density are in London and the home counties (Figure 2). The ten with the lowest density are in the rural areas of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales – plus West Somerset, which includes the wide open spaces of Exmoor.
The figures show density in terms of the number of broadband lines per 100 population as at mid-2005. They include both DSL lines provided over BT’s network and cable modem connections supplied by the cable TV networks. Household density is highest in prosperous suburban areas but business use drives the total up higher in areas like Westminster and Tower Hamlets.
Thus the ‘Top Ten’ range from 25 broadband lines per 100 people in Wandsworth, south London, to 20 in South Buckinghamshire. Low density areas include Dumfries and Galloway, with 6.3 lines per 100 down to Eilean Siar (the Western Isles) with 4.9. (These figures exclude one of the UKs smallest local authorities, the City of London, which has a very high density because of business use.)
Point Topic’s earlier analysis suggested that some areas outside the South East – for example in the prosperous areas of South Wales – were up among the leaders for broadband density. This was particularly due to the success of the cable companies in selling broadband to their existing customers.
Several factors have now changed this view. DSL is growing faster than cable modems which is reducing the advantage of the cable TV areas. Point Topic’s consumer research, based on 2,000 face-to-face interviews, showed that broadband density for poorer families is lower than had been assumed.
Most important of all, the publication of DSL numbers for different regions by BT has showed that there are big differences in density between different parts of the country which are independent of social factors or cable competition. Rural areas often have lower density than the suburbs even where broadband is equally available. Some parts of the country, such as Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the North-east of England, just seem to have less interest in the Internet than others.
As far as Internet density as a whole is concerned, the ‘Digital Divide’is less deep than it is for broadband only, but follows the same pattern. As more and more families migrate from dial-up to broadband, having Internet access will become increasingly the same thing as having broadband
The Labour Government is committed to eliminating the divide, making sure that “the whole of society can experience the benefits of the Internet.” One key step is to make the means getting online available to all, so one promise in its Election Manifesto was "By 2006 every school supported to offer all pupils access to computers at home."
The results of Point Topic’s research show there is a long way to go to achieve the goal of Internet access for all. Britain’s most advanced boroughs are already around the density levels achieved by the most advanced nations – such as South Korea, the Netherlands and Denmark. Overcoming the Digital Divide will mean bringing the whole country up to that level, and higher.
Fig. 1 - Broadband density by Local Authority *

P.

eircomtribunal

Dave Burstein of the excellent dslprime newsletter mentions Ireland, which he never did before, (congrats Tommy):

Ireland: North 100%, South 70%
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern too close to Eircom
Irish Labor Party spokesman Tommy Broughan holds the government responsible for lagging broadband. ““I think the achievement of Northern Ireland puts the Republic of Ireland to shame, in terms of Broadband. Northern Ireland … has now enabled all of Northern Ireland, both rural and urban areas, whereas in the Republic we still have, perhaps, less than 70% broadband enabled. People living in even the most rural parts of counties Tyrone and Antrim will have access to broadband yet many businesses and householders in areas of Dublin, Cork, Limerick or Galway do not.”

Ireland has long been the laggard in broadband, with prices twice as high as most of Europe and a minimal take rate. Eircom until recently had a virtual monopoly and a weak regulator. Since dial-up access paid by the minute and was enormously profitable, every user who switched to broadband at a reasonable price cost Eircom money. During this period, Tony O’Reilly and friends made hundreds of millions privatizing Eircom and then with an IPO. Meanwhile, the ruling party held back regulation for several years. Prospects are brighter now, with several builds moving forward and the rural areas put in fiber backbones.

The 100% Northern Ireland coverage is only slightly ahead of the 97-98% throughout the U.K. BT has been very effective at getting government money for rural development in return for filling in the last few areas.

P.

Sarsfield

My reading of that map is that despite 100% availability, takeup of bb in Northern Ireland is dismal, apart from downtown Belfast.

Maybe Weckler is right.

Capt'n Midnight

The figures show density in terms of the number of broadband lines per 100 population as at mid-2005. They include both DSL lines provided over BT’s network and cable modem connections supplied by the cable TV networks.

8.9/100 is the lowest (white) colour on the map.

For a population of 3,917,203 this translates as 348,631 broadband connections..

How many do we have ??

http://www.cso.ie/statistics/popofeachprovcountycity2002.htm - by county if anyone has BB line numbers on a regional basis.

Sarsfield

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

8.9/100 is the lowest (white) colour on the map.

For a population of 3,917,203 this translates as 348,631 broadband connections..

How many do we have ??

http://www.cso.ie/statistics/popofeachprovcountycity2002.htm - by county if anyone has BB line numbers on a regional basis.

The lightest colour is 0.4% to 8.9% is it not? So for a population of 3,917,203 this could translate to anything between 348,631 at best to just 15,669! I'm sure we have more than 15,669 broadband customers at this stage.

eircomtribunal

Point Topic's grading of the map is unfortunate. The mention of the low density in some areas [Thus the ‘Top Ten’ range from 25 broadband lines per 100 people in Wandsworth, south London, to 20 in South Buckinghamshire. Low density areas include Dumfries and Galloway, with 6.3 lines per 100 down to Eilean Siar (the Western Isles) with 4.9.] in the accompanying text seems to indicate that NI is rather higher, or nearer to 8.9 per hundred.
Overall though the map seems to confirm the assumption that NI is rather slow with take-up compared to the rest of the UK, despite the 100% bb availability.
Exact figures of bb numbers in NI should be obtainable somewhere.
P.

eircomtribunal

The map is not giving the correct impression:
By the end of 2004 there were already 150 000 broadband subscribers in NI (see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/25/ni_broadband_coverage/ for example), which gives it an overall "density" (as Point Topic likes to call the bb penetration rate = bb connections per 100 inhabitants) of 10, or 10 percent.
The ROI had at this stage an overall figure of some 4 for bb penetration.

So, the darker segments in the map, which look small as an area, make up by much bigger numbers of connections.
P.

bealtine

eircomtribunal wrote:

(see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/25/ni_broadband_coverage/

The most interesting quote (imho) from that piece is
"Demand for broadband in Northern Ireland has increased dramatically as exchanges have gone live. In just 12 months, the region has moved from having one of the lowest levels of broadband uptake in the UK to becoming the fastest growing area. The latest industry figures show 150,000 broadband users and demand is still growing."


This clearly shows that if broadband is available then there wil be a demand for it unlike the limbo situation that exists here : low countrywide availability and patchy "coverage" within enabled areas.

These issues will need to be addressed before we can move to "demand stimulation".
If the existing demand cannot be met then what's the point of "demand stimulation", if most people who demand bb can't already get it?

The people who live within enabled areas and cannot get broadband are some of the forgotten consumers.

I know of situations where estates are enabled but only in only a few houses have lines that are "suitable". They are all on exactly the same cables and are all less that 3 to 4 km from the exchange.
I also happen to know that the denamd for broadband is these estates is fairly high. Yet it seems to be a "lotto" as to whether people can actually get it. Cheap and nasty cables are (mostly) the cause.

It is my opinion that those within enabled areas should get broadband and everything should be done to supply these forgotten and ignored consumers. If simple basic standards and incentives (for instance : no profiteering on dialup) were put in place by Comreg and the government this situation would be resolved very very quickly and demand and takeup would increase dramatically. Then, and only then, can we move to the "demand stimulation" phase. Attempting to stimulate demand at this stage while existing demand cannot be met will only lead to frustration on the part of consumers.

Then of course there are the last few hundred exchanges also.

cgarvey

That gets my post of the month nomination anyway.

watty

Was at a kind of BT / IEE sponserd lecture tonight on Network Planning, The guy talked about use of Wireless Broadband in Rural areas to meet 100% mandatory coverage in N.I.

So why is 100% coverage not mandatory on operators here?

cgarvey

because they haven't been funded .. BT UK got funding to get to the 100% in the north, and eircom have been looking for the same here. What I don't know is what the percentage of availability was in the north before government funding.

I think broadband should be in the USO (and therefore 100%, none of this pretend 'universal' ComReg recently introduced), but it's unrealistic to expect this to happen soon, and even less unrealistic to expect it to happen within a few years without funding. If eircom are to get funding, there should be strict restrictions including proper automated LLU from day 1, with no lack of space/air-con excuses.

My €0.02

.cg

zuma

I would personially not like to see eircom be payed with my Taxes to enable exchanges by governmentst request.

It should be put up to tender and share the "burden" among BT/Smart/others but NOT eircom alone by any means!

Sponge Bob

watty wrote:

So why is 100% coverage not mandatory on operators here?

aw phew Watty, what a question :eek: Its not legally/regulatory mandatory in NI but BT chose to tender to make it so, receive about €25m of government cash and signed a contract and then it became contractually mandatory for them to deliver.

I suspect they can use still use scum VSAT in National Parks like Mourne/Antrim Plateau but must deploy DSL or wireless to 100% of all households in the rest of NI. People in the south have even gotten BT wireless by dint of getting someone in the north to apply and install and then shifting the aerial / cpu of an evening .

watty

Hmm. I'm a bit far from my Northern relatives...

zuma wrote:

would personially not like to see eircom be payed with my Taxes to enable exchanges by governmentst request.

It should be put up to tender and share the "burden" among BT/Smart/others but NOT eircom alone by any means!

INDEED!