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[Sunday Times] Kiberd: Broadband failings are slowing us down

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29-01-2006 3:21pm

#1

damien

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Join Date: July 2004

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-2014097,00.html

A GOVERNMENT in the throes of spending €900m “decentralising” 10,000 public servants to 53 locations around the country simultaneously tolerates a situation where coverage achieved by DSL broadband (digital subscriber or telephone lines that permit broadband connections to be made) in rural districts is running at about 30%, according to the European commission.

A government that has spent many years and lots of taxpayers’ cash promoting an elaborate National Spatial Strategy now presides over a situation where a mere 29% of small and medium-sized (SME) firms in Munster use broadband, with the figure falling to 20% in Connaught/Ulster, according to Isme, an SME lobby group.

Those whom the gods destroy, they first make mad. And these terrible statistics actually may understate the scale of the mountain we must climb in an economy routinely described by politicians as “the most computer-literate in Europe”.

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