Digiweb , Lastmile and the death of the Irish Countryside.

Sponge Bob

Last time I looked the Dublin commuter belt went out 50 miles. Much to my surprise I heard today that this was now 70 miles. The claim is made by Estate Agents HOK ...intrinsically no more suspect that anything that Dave in Eircom ever came up with and is carried in the Irish Times property section today.

Part of the reason why commuter belt Dublin has bloated to the Shannon (seemingly suddenly from 50 miles) in the past year is the presence of strong Regionalised ISPs north of Dublin (Digiweb and Net1 and even Icecomms) and Lastmile to the west of Dublin ....and I suppose Premier to the sw and Clearwire and Digiweb along the N9

Nor are they commuting 5 days a week like their benighted brethern used to a mere 2 or 3 years back, the availability of BB has reduced the number of commuter days.

One wonders what effect IBB may have on house prices if there is no alternative

viking

Sponge Bob wrote:

Nor are they commuting 5 days a week like their benighted brethern used to a mere 2 or 3 years back, the availability of BB has reduced the number of commuter days.

Aye, thanks to BB I can now spend 40% of my working week at home.

During the early days of the BB4Kinnegad campaign I had so many emails from people saying that their employers would allow them to work from home as long as they had broadband. Needless to say these tired, stressed out individuals were going mad for broadband until they suddenly realised the total lack of any in the area at the time.

crawler

Sponge Bob wrote:

Last time I looked the Dublin commuter belt went out 50 miles. Much to my surprise I heard today that this was now 70 miles. The claim is made by Estate Agents HOK ...intrinsically no more suspect that anything that Dave in Eircom ever came up with and is carried in the Irish Times property section today.

Part of the reason why commuter belt Dublin has bloated to the Shannon (seemingly suddenly from 50 miles) in the past year is the presence of strong Regionalised ISPs north of Dublin (Digiweb and Net1 and even Icecomms) and Lastmile to the west of Dublin ....and I suppose Premier to the sw and Clearwire and Digiweb along the N9

Nor are they commuting 5 days a week like their benighted brethern used to a mere 2 or 3 years back, the availability of BB has reduced the number of commuter days.

One wonders what effect IBB may have on house prices if there is no alternative

Interesting observation SB - what I can say (and dont want to pimp here so mods feels free to edit if you feel needed) is that the number of emails I got from people about the Metro-20 rollout project citing "please come here as I need BB for work" took me a bit by surprise....People often throw the old "teleworking" thing out there in relation to BB but it really is starting to hit home.....

bk

crawler wrote:

Interesting observation SB - what I can say (and dont want to pimp here so mods feels free to edit if you feel needed) is that the number of emails I got from people about the Metro-20 rollout project citing "please come here as I need BB for work" took me a bit by surprise....People often throw the old "teleworking" thing out there in relation to BB but it really is starting to hit home.....

Absolutely, I know lots of people who work from home.

One colleague works 100% of the time from Limerick (the office is in Dublin).

On average I work about 1 day a week from home.

Other colleagues use BB to have a much more flexible lifetime, for instance some colleagues, work from home in the mornings, come into the office around 10, leave the office again around 4, and finish the day from home. This allows them to avoid rush hour traffic and makes their commute much shorter.

Others use the ability to work from home to ensure there are always home from 3pm in order to keep an eye on the kids after school.

Luckly I work for a very progressive US IT company, but I can see lots of other people starting to do the same.

Could you imagine if everyone who worked in an office could work just one day a week at home, it would significantly reduce the traffic and congestion on our roads. This is one of the reasons why BB is so incredibly important.

I think the government should do everything it can to promote this type of activity by:

1) Promote such activity amongst the civil and public service. (lead by example)
2) Setup blueprints, business conferences and road shows to promote working from home amongst Irish business.
3) Start an ad campaign
4) Give tax breaks to companies who pay for BB for their employes
(on the condition that the company allows their employees to sign up with any BB provider, in order to promote competition.
5) Maybe give companies some other tax break or incentive for every day that an employee works from home.
6) Invest money in BB companies to fill the gaps in BB availabilty in urban and rural areas.

These steps really wouldn't cost much, yet just think about the billions that the government spends every year on roads, infrastructue and child care. These steps would cost far less, yet could go much further to help with conjestion and child care costs, then any other project I can think of.

Blaster99

Companies implicitly save money by having people working from home, so they probably don't need additional incentives. Simple things like personal phone calls or if they're reasonable well managed, they can save desk space by having shared desks.

damien

How can you have teleworking when so much of the bloody country can't even get proper dialup? I notice the teleworking association or whatever they were called are pretty much dead.

Look at how much was spent on the Information Society Commission and yet SFA was implemented and then the ISC was shut down.

Edit: spelling

bk

damien.m wrote:

How can you have teleworking when so much of the bloody country can't even get proper dialup?

I'm not saying that we all suddenly start working from home 100% of the time. But many people can now get BB (probably most people in Dublin can now get at least one operator) and the government should do whatever it can to promote teleworking amongst those who can.

I have seen the benefits of teleworking for real and the benefits are great.

Also notice point 6, I think that we are almost reaching a stage where the government will have to start giving out contracts to companies to rollout BB to 100% of people, like they did up North.

Blaster99 wrote:

Companies implicitly save money by having people working from home, so they probably don't need additional incentives. Simple things like personal phone calls or if they're reasonable well managed, they can save desk space by having shared desks.

Well maybe, were I work most people do come into the office most of the time, so everyone still has their own desk.

However you might be right for other industries, in particular it seems like a no brainer for call centre staff.

Blaster99

Sun has a policy, possibly worldwide, to get people to work at home so they can get rid of office space. I think if you work more than two days at home a week, you will be assigned a shared desk. They save a lot of money on this.

Eircom has a "dsl e-worker" system that can be used by companies, so the company pays for the broadband of their employees on the company bill. I get a nice "dsl e-worker credit" on my bill every month.

I'm somewhat surprised that there aren't hotspot offices available in the outskirts of Dublin, so instead of communiting all the way to work, you go to a facility that gives you broadband access and a phone. An office away from the office. This would be a half-way solution and would work particularly well here seeing as a lot of rural Ireland doesn't have broadband. Again, I'm fairly sure Sun uses these in the US. With a bit of imagination, these types of services could be setup in the various satellite towns 50 miles from Dublin and people wouldn't have to go insane in the traffic.

damien

bk wrote:

I'm not saying that we all suddenly start working from home 100% of the time. But many people can now get BB (probably most people in Dublin can now get at least one operator) and the government should do whatever it can to promote teleworking amongst those who can.

Teleworking in Dublin is a waste to a large extent because of the population size. It's like teleworking if you live in New York. Traffic doesn't die off after rush hour anymore. Sure it might go down a small bit but the Dublin sprawl has gotten to the stage that it's too late really unless they start giving broadband to all in that 40 mile outer zone and fund small companies to stay the feck away from Dublin, which many really can't do because of the crappy telecom/net infrastructure.

watty

Blaster99 wrote:

I'm somewhat surprised that there aren't hotspot offices available in the outskirts of Dublin, so instead of communiting all the way to work, you go to a facility that gives you broadband access and a phone.

Athlone, Galway, Limerick, Cork, Dundalk, Waterford, Sligo, Kilkenny

lucernarian

*cough* Drogheda, Navan, Ashbourne, Nass, Portlaoise, Maynooth, Bray *cough*

Where are the teleworking offices in those towns, to name but a few? Apart from Drogheda and Navan and mabye Portlaoise, the towns above are overwhelmingly dependent on Dublin for employment. Govt. doesn't seem to be interested in the slightest in developing these basic facilities for commuters, let alone 100% reliable broadband access for the GDA.

watty

Very few employers seem interested either. In most companies Teleworking is a good way to get made redundant at the next profits hiccup. So much depends on who you know, having the face that fits etc rather than the quality of your work.

Sponge Bob

Aside from considerations of what employers want or do the fact is that teleworking was simply not an option 2 years ago but that the WISPs which are so necessary for rural Ireland are starting to get traction and coverage

The ironic thing is that the growth of WISPs has increased the commuter belt depths around Dublin from c.50- to 70 miles , other larger towns , outside of the Greater Dublin belt tend to have smaller 20 mile out commuter belts (Galway / Limerick-Shannon ) or 30 miles (Cork) or 10 miles (Sligo or Letterkenny or Athlone )

Athlone (with lastmile) Dundalk (with Digiweb) and Sligo (fastnet) would make a fascinating study . Since I posted this article it seems that 350 telecomms related jobs are on their way to Dundalk. Once upon a time (as recently as 2000 and the .com boomtime) they would have gone to Athlone or Cork (becuase of Ericcson or Alcatel) or to Dublin.

The presence of strong regionalised ISPs , especially in the Wireless space, is now a prerequisite for every region. We cannot wait any longer for the snakeoil merchants to build out of Dublin because they simply won't bother !!!!

Otherwise rural Ireland is very dead .

watty

Pity UPC/UCG seems to be centralising on NTL's Dublin rather than Chorus's Limerick.

bk

watty wrote:

Pity UPC/UCG seems to be centralising on NTL's Dublin rather than Chorus's Limerick.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

If you mean then are centralising on NTL's staff, then this is great. No offence to the people who work there, but having dealt with CS staff and sales staff from both companies, NTL's staff is far better trained and my experiences with them have been far better.

Also it would seem that the NTL engineers have far more experience with BB then the Chorus people.

If you mean by channel lineup, well I would hope so, NTL digital has well over 120 channels, while Chorus has only 60. Also NTL's prices tend to be cheaper.

Look at it this way, NTL in Dublin has one of the highest cable penetration rates in Europe and with one of the lowest churn rates in Europe. Chorus on the other hand has a very high churn rate, losing customers hand over fist to NTL. If you were a UPC executive, which would you standardise on?

watty

Ah they may ditch NTL call centre and use Chorus Call center. I was solely thinking of TECHNICAL jobs. Also a similar house in Dublin to suburbs of Limerick is 4 times commuting time at least each day and 3 times to 5 times the price to buy.

Also I'm in Limerick and welcome jobs arriving here

I'm basically selfish.

I'm sure that the Digital package will eventually be harmonised to that which is most competitve.

I think the 60 ch is an MMDS limit, which becomes about 125 if they ditch Analog MMDS. Obviously there should be no reason why cable should not offer the same BB, 120+ channels and phone in all Digital Cable areas.

Chorus really messed up and missed lots of good opportunities over the last 10 years.

When it is a fully merged operation they are hardly going to be able to charge more in Cork than in Dublin.

damien

Wasn't there a director in NTL and one in Chorus axed recently?

Sponge Bob

damien.m wrote:

Wasn't there a director in NTL and one in Chorus axed recently?

The Chorus one buggered off IIRC to become a Comreg Commissioner Type Person in Qatar . I feel sorry for them poor arabs !

Qatar set up the appropriately named SCCIT a few years back in order to "create a society that has an advanced awareness of IT" and then apparently put someone from Chorus in charge of it . They should have sent a delegation of movers and sheikhers to Castlebar first ....but no.

As the poem said

<pathos>

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

<sob><sniff><end pathos>

damien

Nah, it wasn't Willie fagan. He was the regulatory guy for Chorus. There was someone higher up than him booted out. Don't knock the Qatar job. A LOT of money, free flights, really nice gaff and the wages are all tax free.

jwt

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Second favourite poem, first one is

One man in a thousand, Solomon says,
Will stick more close than a brother.
And it's worth while seeking him half your days
If you find him before the other.
Nine nundred and ninety-nine depend
On what the world sees in you,
But the Thousandth man will stand your friend
With the whole round world agin you