Berties Lies at the Ard Fheis, we are not all getting BB after all

Sponge Bob

Bertie blathered at the ard fhis about some plan to provide BB to all Irish citizens. He lied. There is no plan and today we find out there is no money.

The cost of providing universal BB has been estimated at between €50m and €200m, Dempsey got an extra €15m thats all. Top of page 63 of the book of estimates. He will spend €86m on Seafood Development though.

The entire comms budget will be €50m but the department costs €40m in administration alone (page 62)

No money equals no fun. Simple really. Bertie was obviously lying because there is no money to do anything beyond finish a few MANS they are already digging at present (the man budget is €160m over 3 years) .

I doubt Dempsey even asked for the money TBH

watty

What about the billions in Stamp Duty the ESRI says is barrier to job mobility?

It's not lack on money but not percieved to be a Vote Getter. The €86 Seafood is no doubt because of overdue ending of drift netting of Salmon

JNive

40m in adminstration costs lol, look how useless that administration has been this year lol.

for the national telephony provider to resist upgrading telecoms services and infrasturucture outside the 5 urban areas is rediculous. and having a department which deals with both marine and sea-based resources as well as modern, high-tech engineering complex systems as a telecommunications network is nothing short of hilarious.

the news last night was going on about 1.2bn being unallocated, where did that go. and this notion that anything remotely high-tech isnt vote worthy is what drives this country into the bloody dark ages, err sure 'whats tis about the interweb and fancy networks, sure im happy with my dial-up, people dont be needing any more than that, sure alls you will be doing is checking your emails a few times a day' is what the average politician thinks is all the response they would get from voters.

Its not important to people cause the government havent showed how important it is, nor have they attempted to promote the benefits of it to the broader public.

Sponge Bob

JNive wrote:

the news last night was going on about 1.2bn being unallocated, where did that go. and this notion that anything remotely high-tech isnt vote worthy is what drives this country into the bloody dark ages, err sure 'whats tis about the interweb and fancy networks,

mostly nursing home compo , €600m .

JNive

fair enough on that one, what about a measely 200m for telecommunications infrastructure initiatives lol

watty

eircom would snaffle it, try and hurt competitors and we would be worse off than if it wasn't offered.

JNive

ok, maybe a little clearer, 200m for alternative infrastructure investments non controlled by eircom,

philologos

Sponge Bob wrote:

Bertie blathered at the ard fhis about some plan to provide BB to all Irish citizens. He lied. There is no plan and today we find out there is no money.

The cost of providing universal BB has been estimated at between €50m and €200m, Dempsey got an extra €15m thats all. Top of page 63 of the book of estimates. He will spend €86m on Seafood Development though.

The entire comms budget will be €50m but the department costs €40m in administration alone (page 62)

No money equals no fun. Simple really. Bertie was obviously lying because there is no money to do anything beyond finish a few MANS they are already digging at present (the man budget is €160m over 3 years) .

I doubt Dempsey even asked for the money TBH

I thought Eircom owned the broadband infastructure, it never should had been sold, but since it has been it should be their priority to add more exchanges etc.

watty

They own dsl Infrastructure. But a lot of people have had to put their own backhaul, not due to any eircom shortage, but high price. non copper infrastructure such as some fibre and wireless to customers. eircom does have national wireless to customers but seems to pretend it doesn't exist. Most fibre to apartments and non-Business would not be eircom

godskitchen

I am speechless, almost. This type of lying is what I have come to expect from this country and the people that live in it. I don’t know which is worse, having the head of government lie to the public at large, or the public not seeing the lie!

Most people don’t know enough about broadband to see how important it is to the economy/environment/family/stress reduction/crime rates/road deaths, I can give compelling arguments for each of those benefits and how broadband can help each one.

I am sure everyone on here knows what broadband means for this country so I am not going to tell you all that not having it means Ireland being left behind. Since moving back here I have been astounded by how much the place has changed, people have so much money here (well some of it is the banks), we are at “full employment” but yet we cant seem to look at other countries and how they have integrated what should really be classed as a utility!

“The entire comms budget will be €50m but the department costs €40m in administration alone” you could give Dempsey €1000m every year and he would still squander it, the guy is a fool, I have first hand experience of him and he does not have a clue! And why someone in a position of power does not come out and say this in public is beyond me.

So what needs to happen? People have been banging on about Broadband in this country for years, things are not changing fast enough. Its fine to come on a forum and moan about it and cry over how we cant download simple security updates for our PC’s that support out incomes, but what can we do to change things? Everything up till now has been as effective as trying to get silence while asking Bertie questions whilst he is hooked up to a polygraph machine! Do we need more silly EU adverts with some gobs*it who is off to play golf telling us how great his life is now he has BB? No! We need someone who knows what they are talking about to sell this idea of broadband to the public, the public on a whole are stupid and wont work it out on their own. Until the public at large push for broadband it wont happen, there are no votes in it.

The technology is here now to make blanket coverage of some form of BB possible, there really is no excuse.

netwhizkid

watty wrote:

They own dsl Infrastructure. But a lot of people have had to put their own backhaul, not due to any eircom shortage, but high price. non copper infrastructure such as some fibre and wireless to customers. eircom does have national wireless to customers but seems to pretend it doesn't exist. Most fibre to apartments and non-Business would not be eircom

To your point Watty "eircom does have national wireless to customers but seems to pretend it doesn't exist"

They hide it, and rip-off those who can get their crappy FWA service anyway. FWA is available to me but their is no-way in blazes I am going to give them over €700 to install the thing and pay €54.50 blood money a month on top of it then. It really is a disgrace the way Eircom are carrying on at the moment, heading into 2007 my area and area's of far more importance than mine are without Broadband.

I can remember this time last year when my sister asked me to email about 70 digital photo's of a birthday party to friends around the country, I was soo annoyed at having to drive nearly 40Miles (return trip) to Killarney to email them from a net Cafe. I contacted Eircom. Fianna Fail councillors and John O'Donoghue TD, I even went to the local scummy Fianna Fail cumann and raised the issue very vocally. I was assured that they would deliver and sometime in the summer it would arrive.

I don't have no hope for it now when you see €1Billion Fibre, 3 rolls out 3G broadband, Vodafone etc. I don't live in a 3G area even. Everything is only about Dublin and the cities, Like Dublin is a nice place but f*ck wasting money on Fibre when us rural dwellers can't even get a service. Thankfully that Fianna Fail cumann will be on again in a few weeks and I for one will go down fighting.

The stark reality is that Fianna Fail are such wasters that we would be ten times better off under British Rule. I hate to say it but it is true.

pjq

I dont know why I'm wasting my time on this topic , we need to accept that there is no alternative to FF , and come next July Berty and all our problems will be just where they are now.

We all know that they cant manage Health , Transport , Broadband , they cant make pools or tunnels without leaks ........ but they manage the Economy VERY WELL !!

FF , The Indo and RTE say that they do manage the Economy well , and the opposition don't challenge this truth .

I think that at most , they can cause side-effects in the economy , but the Government can no more manage it now than they did in the awful eightys . The Economy feeds them with BILLIONS and they squander it . ( Barca , Valentia and Bilbao have METRO , and they are digging the tunnels in Seville Malaga and Granada , and we are left behind , maybe I'm wrong in assuming that their BB rollout is also better and more cost effective than our's ??) .

The opposition might not be any better at MANAGING , but if they can't point out how bad the current chaps are at managing the simplest task ,,, they will never get a chance at managing the country themselves .

PJQ

Sorry for wasting yout time too

Sponge Bob

There are , however , alternatives within Fianna Fáil. Ahern only uses a very limited ministerial gene pool.

godskitchen

pjq wrote:

We all know that they cant manage Health , Transport , Broadband , they cant make pools or tunnels without leaks ........ but they manage the Economy VERY WELL !!

You must know something i dont, manage the economy VERY WELL? This country is in the position it is now not because of any government policy but due to the fact that up until 10/15 years ago Ireland was a 2nd world country with little or no infrastructure. (it still is 2nd world in some respects) Once a little bit of investment came in it was bound to boom, it would have happened sooner or later with out tax relief, I honestly don’t think the government has anything to do with the wealth creation going on right now.

If it was really that good at managing the economy it would be investing in its Telecoms network, so that when this construction boom ends and the disproportionate number of workers currently employed building shoddy over priced homes, will have one more option fo,r firstly seeking employment and secondly booking flights out of the country to find work. Ireland has a very small economy, it doesn’t make very much, we have no big industry apart from construction, and we all know that cant continue forever.
still think they are doing a good job?

fatherdougalmag

Not to mention possible double-potential-triple taxation.

Sponge Bob

€60m for universal BB nationally could take so much rush hour traffic off our roads every day and to put it into infrastructural perspective thats less than the cost of one Charlestown Bypass, Dempsey never even asked for that much the idiot.

godskitchen

Sponge Bob wrote:

€60m for universal BB nationally could take so much rush hour traffic off our roads every day and to put it into infrastructural perspective thats less than the cost of one Charlestown Bypass, Dempsey never even asked for that much the idiot.

Spot on Sponge Bob, i dont know how much the Charlestown bypass is costing but i am guessing by its length its a lot!

if that money was invested in BB it would not only cut down on traffic but everything that goes with that, road deaths, Pollution, stress. It all leads on to other things like, if someone can work from home even 1 day a week with BB, and send more time with their children as the dont have to sit in their car for 3 hours, you could agrue that those children will turn out better and a a result this country in years to come will turn out better. the list is endless and if i thought anyone would take any notice i would list everything!

I dont understand why people cant see what we see..............are they just thick?

Sponge Bob

godskitchen wrote:

I dont understand why people cant see what we see..............are they just thick?

emmmm. Yep!

Its possible to provide BB, (maybe only 512k but hey) to everyone in the country for the cost of bypassing Charlestown as shown in my link.

Most of these potential BB users have never gone through Charlestown but it ain't that clogged in my opinion and never has been . OTOH FF want 2 seats in Mayo.

godskitchen

i go through Charlestown about twice a week and its never that bad! There is a bad bend just coming into Carracastle that needed to be sorted out. Still the cost of the bypass would have been better spent on BB,

Just out of interest Sponge, where are you getting the price for country wide BB and what system would it use?

Sponge Bob

Dave Mc Redmond ( eircom director) told the Oireachtas that eircom would enable every exchange for €50m (before they said they would do 100 anyway) so I assume that a few squids spent on fixing lines and BB would be everywhere ish.

This statement of Mcredmonds is also where Bertie got his 15% figure from

Source here

Mr. McRedmond: That is the last 15%, which is not covered. It accounts for a huge number of sites. That is correct because we have an extremely dispersed population. In Ireland there is one third the population per exchange as compared to other countries and that just reflects population dispersion. This is not an easy issue. We (eircom) have identified the cost of enabling those exchanges as being €50 million. As Dr. Nolan has told the committee, we have called several times for Government to work with us to enable all those——

Absolutely every nook and cranny would cost no more than €100m but will not all be DSL

Then the estimates show that Dempsey got a €12m increase so where is the ****ing money then Bertie??

watty

Wireless Broadband from every mast in West Cork, Kerry, Donegal and bobbly rural bits of Mayo/Galway/Clare.

Maybe some more in Carlow, Wicklow, Tipperary County, Limerick County and Waterford.

Wireless can be up to 8M down and 1M up, or even more with channel bonding if you have a deeper pocket. It's just a matter of spectrum (we have enough), base stations (The masts are mostly there arleady) and backhaul (some fixed wireless links needed).

It's not rocket science. You don't even need WiMax.