Dempsey waffles to Senator Shane Ross

Sponge Bob

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=184&si=1698386&issue_id=14715

[FONT=Verdana, Arial][/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial] THE Government is to subsidise broadband in areas where the private sector is unwilling to operate. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial] In a major breakthrough in broadband rollout policy, revealed yesterday, Communications Minister Noel Dempsey told the Sunday Independent: "Today I am initiating a process that will address the so-called last 15 per cent issue, to deliver nationwide broadband. Which will mean that every reasonable request for broadband can be met at a reasonable price. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial] "This solution can use all technologies including wireless to reach those customers where fixed-line provisioning can't work." [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial] This announcement follows a reversal of Government policy, announced in the Senate last week, where Junior Enterprise Minister Michael Ahern admitted that "there are some areas of the country where the private sector will be unable to justify the provision of broadband on a commercial basis".[/FONT]

Or is all that waffle simply a belated GBS 3 and with narrower availability criteria ???

Shane had proposed this following motion on wednesday , good on ya Shane

http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.aspx?F=SEN20060927.XML&Dail=29&Ex=All&Page=1

That Seanad Éireann condemns the failure of the Government to ensure that broadband is available to every business and household in Ireland and calls on it to take immediate measures to remove us from the bottom of the European broadband league.

other senators joined in and the Senator got this answer (not the sunday indo ) that

Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (Mr. M. Ahern):

The Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources also offers (present tense SB) funding assistance for smaller towns and rural communities through the group broadband scheme. The scheme, which is technology-neutral, subsidises the roll out of the most suitable broadband infrastructure for a particular area. Over 160 projects have been approved for funding under the scheme covering almost 580 communities with a combined population of over 420,000. A total of 37 service providers have participated in this scheme. This range of small to medium-sized service providers has supported competition using a range of different technologies. In addition, these service providers have made use of the private and State owned regional backhaul links.

Despite Ireland’s rapidly expanding broadband market I accept there are some areas of the country where the sector will be unable to justify the provision of broadband connectivity on a commercial basis. The time has come to address this issue. The Minister is currently examining options in this regard and he hopes to be in a position to bring proposals to Government shortly.

He later told Shane Ross the proposal would be to cover 15% of the population.

If you wanna take a guess its 9% of the population in Clár areas + some dribs and drabs in Meath .

15% is the number of phone lines nationally that are not connected to a DSL enabled exchange.

anything from 20-30% is the % of the population who cannot get Proper BB at home although that will fall somewhat when HSDPA is launched this month .

thebman

Read the Irish Independant one. Hopefully he means it and not just going to suggest people get satellite broadband.

Hopefully he also has a plan to make existing broadband more competitive as the bandwidth and prices are just too high for a lot of people at the moment where broadband is actually available.