[IT]Feargal Quinn: We ignore information society at our peril

eircomtribunal

An important article by the Senator in Thursday's Irish Times. Not that he would say anything new to us, but the fact that he is saying it, clear and loud, with no when and but or other foul excuse the public and media gets bombarded from ComReg/DCMNR.
Anybody in a position to quote the full article?
I'll type in Feargal's third point:

• Third, we are failing to equip ourselves with a required tool for the new age – universal broadband access to the internet, available to everyone at an affordable price.

Broadband is the basic enabling technology for the information age. Without it we can not only do nothing, we can't even realise what we are missing. People who experience the internet only by way of dial-up cannot imagine the effect of being plugged in to the world, at high speed, all the time. It is only people brought up with this experience at the centre of their lives who can hope to exploit fully the potential of the information society.

Wo clearly, we should be right out at the front of the pack in adopting broadband and promoting its use.

Tragically, the very opposite is the case. Consistently over the past five years, we have been near the bottom of every international league table of broadband penetration. We have made some recent faltering progress, but our competitors have done more – so our relative position has not changed at all.

For the majority of our people (and worse, the majority of our businesses) still to be without access to affordable broadband is nothing short of a scandal. It makes nonsense of all the high-flown rhetoric about it being a national aim to achieve leadership in the new information age.

Until we begin to take the information society seriously, that will never happen.

P.