Government Broadband Tender to be announced in morning

jwt

This has to be the stupidest map I've seen in a long time. Totally unusable once you zoom in a bit. All it needs is a couple of "Here be dragons".

How exactly is anyone supposed to use that as part of a legal tender.

You could promise the moon in the tender response and if ever challeged just show that piece of artistry.

John

EDIT


Bastardising a Blackadder Quote

It's stupid....It's STUPID! It's stupider than "Stupid Jack" McStupid the winner of last year's "Mr Stupidman" competition.

jwt

And if Minister Dempsey turns up on your door looking for a vote you could quote the following Blackadder classic.

"You wouldn't know a cunning plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on the table in front of you singing "cunning plans are here again."

John

damien

oscarBravo wrote:

it's seriously problematic for those of us who will have a subsidised competitor parachuted into areas where we're already offering service, thankyouverymuch.

Competition Authority!

Blaster99

How exactly does one approach 100% coverage in a vendor neutral way? It doesn't strike me as being trivial or even possible. There's only one ISP that has an actual or potential presence across the country and that's eircom. If you/we want true 100% coverage, then eircom are the only ones who can provide it. If on the other hand we want to use some arbitrary map and fill blanks on it, then the current approach is great and not all that different from the GBS, which achieved sod all in the greater scheme of things.

jbkenn

From the Minister's speech

The knowledge worker cannot be confined by geographic location and should be free to live and work outside of the cities and towns. Our future should require networks to follow the knowledge worker rather than the other way around,” Minister Dempsey said speaking at today’s launch.

Could'nt agree with you more Minister, perhaps, if you could take time out from your busy canvassing schedule, you might enquire from the Revenue Commissioners why the opportunity for staff to telework from their Limerick offices was confined solely to those staff members who could avail of Eircom wired broadband, and, denied to those living in rural areas, not enabled by Eircom, but enabled by wireless operators. (see red blobs on your map)

As a result of this little stroke of genius, we have the ludicrous situation of rural resident staff, with a daily roundtrip commute of 80Km forced to continue commuting, while urban resident staff with a roundtrip commute of 5Km, are able to telework. (probably to free up space on the Raheen bus for other commuters?)

You could also enquire from our premier industrial developement agency why they insisted on having ISDN lines from Eircom installed in their new offices in a fibre enabled building connected to the Limerick MAN and serviced by 2 alternative operators (why use 21st century technology, when you can use tried and trusted 20th century crap)

The final product that consumers will receive from the NBS will be an always on service of at least 1Mbit/s down and 128kbits/s up. The minimum download capacity per connection will be 10 gigabits per month

Let me see now, that spec sounds familiar?? quick web search... yes indeed,
http://www.eircom.ie/cgi-bin/bvsm/bveircom/store/productDetails.jsp?store=Res&shopCategory=retrieveBBHomeStarter&Title=eircom%20broadband%20home%20starter&storeChanId=536896472&site=Res&chanId=536896472&ProductID=12492&BV_SessionID=@@@@1946619098.1178147598@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccceaddkleeeijgcefeceiedffndffg.0
why Minister, you just described the Eircom Broadband Home Starter package, phew, good job you did'nt specify 1Mbit down 512kbit up

Monthly downstream / upstream speeds: 1MB downstream and 128k upstream.*
Monthly megabyte allowance: 10 GB download / 1 GB upload.

important bit to note here Minister, is the *

*These speeds are not guaranteed as eircom broadband is rate adaptive i.e. a distance dependant technology

Best of luck in the election, hopefully, if you get elected, they will make you Minister for something else.

jbkenn

cgarvey

Surely the number of those who can't get BB in red areas is higher than those in the green areas to be covered? I.e. this is a rural broadband tender, not a national one?

Which satellite company will be first along with to say VoIP and VPN activities work beatuifully over their service?

Don't the Aran Islands (or one of them anyway) have BB (similar to OBWan's point above)?

Whilst there is provision for price increases, there's no provision for increased speeds. 1Mb/128Kb is not going to be me of much use to anyone in 5 years time.

SLAs are welcome. No consumer-focussed SLAs mentioned though (no uptime, install times, fault repair time guarantees).

It's a good measure, and it will bring hapiness to many, but I've an awful feeling there'll be a lot of people feeling shafted & neglected by this.

oscarBravo

Blaster99 wrote:

If on the other hand we want to use some arbitrary map and fill blanks on it, then the current approach is great and not all that different from the GBS, which achieved sod all in the greater scheme of things.

Who knows what it could have achieved if it hadn't been cancelled just over two years ago?

jbkenn

Which satellite company will be first along with to say VoIP and VPN activities work beatuifully over their service?

Naw you're alright there, Ildana are gone, their satellite could handle VoIP and VPN no problem, could make the tea, walk the dog, mow the lawn, aah fond memories of the GBS community meetings, and John waxing lyrical about satellite.

p.s. a lot of the orange blobs on the map are Ildana GBS projects, long since defunct, and left high and dry

jbkenn

watty

oscarBravo wrote:

Considering the amount of time I spent compiling coverage information for the Department last August, I'm seriously pissed to see areas on that map marked as not covered when we have pretty much blanket coverage in them.

Grumpy phone call to the DCMNR in the morning...

Similarly people are not amused to see large areas marked as covered by Wireless when the signal doesn't get there.

damien

I'm going to send in a list of questions to the DCMNR about this.

Anyone want to suggest some questions they'd like answered. Specifically about the tender not general broadband stuff.

watty

They are reserving spectrum for NBS. I havn't read it yet...

http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg0724.pdf

watty

For those on dialup:

In order to facilitate the two different types of technology currently available, it is
proposed to reserve channel B, a TDD channel and one FDD channel (either A, C or
D) for the use of the successful tender(s), if required, as shown in Figure 1 below.

[Image of 3.5Ghz spectrum Fig1 omitted]

By definition, in all the unserved areas identified by the NBS, the 3.5 GHz band is
not currently utilised. By reserving only two channels, there remain two, freely
available, unreserved channels for expansion and future competing FWA services.

oscarBravo

Interesting, for a number of reasons, not least of which is that the state of affairs wrt 3.5GHz licencing is completely up in the air, since there has been no word on last year's "flexibility" consultation. First, it can be argued that some of the areas in question may be underserved in part because of the way the original licence scheme was structured. Second, unless that structure is changed, it's just not going to be possible to allocate licences in those areas anyway.

This whole thing bites, tbh.

rahtkennades

damien.m wrote:

I'm going to send in a list of questions to the DCMNR about this.

Anyone want to suggest some questions they'd like answered. Specifically about the tender not general broadband stuff.

Damien, I'd like to know what they actually mean by 'all reasonable requests', or if they actually mean that at all.
I've been looking to get broadband for quite some time in Meath, but not covered by wireless due to topographical constraints and not going to be covered by dsl due to the 4.5km radius from the 'whenever' to be enabled exchange. Yet I'm under a big red splodge on that map.

Basically, what are the department's plans to address the gaps in service that will still remain.

Will they move my house to an area that's covered?:rolleyes:

cgarvey

damien.m wrote:

Anyone want to suggest some questions they'd like answered. Specifically about the tender not general broadband stuff.

+ Any provision for minimum customer-focussed requirements (such as minimum time to install, fault repair, etc.? Or is that left up to the winning provider?

+ Who decides what is reasonable when it comes to determining whether a rural/remote location can get BB? Is there a minimum population coverage requirement in the green areas?

+ Will any provision be made for the many in red or pink areas who cannot get broadband?

+ Will the contract have service level & satisfaction metrics built in? Any sort of review process during that 5 years at all?

thebman

I don't think 10Gigabit's is enough. It certainly isn't future proof, neither is any of the minimum requirements. Its what people needed 2 years ago or so.

I would like to know if they have any plans for ensuring that this doesn't end up like the situation LastMile.ie have now where since they are the only operator in the area they can charge 38 Euro a month for 512Kbps download access. I want to know (because the government and so the people are going to fund monopolies essentially to go into rural areas) that they are going to have conditions where service must be improved to be the same standard as it is in towns and cities as time goes on so that rural Ireland is not left behind in the future.

Basically if the minimum broadband you can get and need for reasonable Internet access increases to 10Mbps, I want a condition whereby these providers must invest in the service. That can be linked to a condition whereby the government must fund areas where this is non-profitable but there should be a time limit for when this should occur. Eg. if the towns have 10Mbps then rural Ireland should be upgraded to it within 2 years or something like that.

oscarBravo

brim4brim wrote:

...because the government and so the people are going to fund monopolies essentially to go into rural areas...

Oh, don't worry: they're only going to fund one monopoly to go into all rural areas. Which is much better. Right?

watty

Looking at the map they are going to fund a monopoly to go into some rural areas. I think this might serve less than half the rural people that don't have broadband.

Unless we moor zepplins with 400GHz LOS wireless above the supposed gaps in existing coverage. Wind is a bit of a problem.

Google HAP broadband. The issues of providing the platform seem to be insurmountable, or it would be deployed somewhere already. Supposedly the advantages of satellite without the latency and bandwidth limits.

Blaster99

oscarBravo wrote:

Oh, don't worry: they're only going to fund one monopoly to go into all rural areas. Which is much better. Right?

Absolutely. They're the only ones who can provide 100% coverage so why waste time/money on the little guys?

oscarBravo

Blaster99 wrote:

Absolutely. They're the only ones who can provide 100% coverage so why waste time/money on the little guys?

Their track record of 100% coverage to date is pretty impressive, isn't it? I mean, they just enable an exchange, and - hey presto! - 100% coverage of all lines connected to that exchange.

Right?

lucernarian

It's wishful thinking, but eircom's minimum package is the very lowest spec package for its price available on a widespread basis. Any other large player would be able to beat that. But can you really see the government rewarding the competition who forced eircom to compete? Remember eircom's upgrades back when Smart Telecom started LLU??

Instead, eircom's dire mismanagement in the early part of this decade and their continued refusal to accept responsibility will be overlooked. Let Dialup Dempsey know how you feel here

qwertplaywert

man
for the rural areas-will the high population areas be more likley to be sereved quicker than the lower densly populated ones?

AndrewMc

cgarvey wrote:

Whilst there is provision for price increases, there's no provision for increased speeds. 1Mb/128Kb is not going to be me of much use to anyone in 5 years time.

5 years? Here's a BBC news article from last year complaining then that the typical top speed of 8Mb in the UK was becoming too slow.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6041446.stm

The lack of ambition of this government doesn't even surprise me any more.

watty

Well there are ISPs here that offer 8Mbps or more to regular retail sales, and there are also 10Mbps and higher buisness packages from various ISPs.

The "bitstream product" resold, which is not real competition at all is poor. Also LLU is not proper competiton either given how much eircom cream off in line rental. The Line rental cost of LLU makes it impossible to offer a competitive, inovative product at higher speed without making a loss.

Micky Finn

Would somebody out there get a grip on reality! As far as I can see there are numerous people about to burst blood vessels and already talking about whether speeds of 8 meg. will be attainable with the new service.
What new service ??
Don't forget this is Fianna Fail we are talking about here.
Let me refresh your collective memories : Six weeks ago as part of the National Development Plan we were told that we would all be in broadband Nirvana because the Government had allocated 460 million for broadband. As the NDP was a seven year plan Nirvana was not going to happen until 2013 !
They then advertised for consultants to tell them how to spend the money.
Two weeks ago we found that a tender of 350,000 had been accepted for this work. Now even if you are the most **** hot consultant in the world you are going to require at least three months (at approx 30,000 per week ) to report back in any intelligent way. At this stage we don't even know if they have been officially appointed yet or what their terms of reference are.
In the meantime Bertie trips up to the Park and the race is on.
Now in order to stop the FF footsoldiers from getting their balls chewed off on the doorsteps about the lack of broadband countrywide, the backroom boys decide to issue some form of mickey mouse invitation to "pre qualify" for the "broadband tender" which will take the heat off the footsoldiers and lull some of the electorate into a false sense of "broadband is on the way". They also got some young wan in the Department to cobble together some sort of an oul map and cover it over with lipstick and nail varnish.
All of this is a pure and unadulterated load of horse cobblers and should not be a cause for rising blood pressure among you normally sane scribes for the following obvious reasons :
1. There is an election in three weeks therefore all bets are off as far as previous promises and proposals are concerned.
2. At the time of writing Bertie Ahearn's chances of surviving past next week are getting slimmer by the minute much less his chances of being returned as Taoiseach.As in the past, once Fianna Fail consider a leader a liability he will be dropped like hot potato.
3. Even if he miraculously survives and returns to power you can bet your sweet fanny adams that Dempsey will not be the new Communications Minister. As well as a new minister there will be new spin doctors, new advisers etc. for the new Minister and they will take months to get their feet under the table so the "Tender" (if you could call it that) will be consigned to the bin.
So take it easy lads - there's an awful long way to go yet.

pointofnoreturn

Micky Finn wrote:

Would somebody out there get a grip on reality! As far as I can see there are numerous people about to burst blood vessels and already talking about whether speeds of 8 meg. will be attainable with the new service.
What new service ??
Don't forget this is Fianna Fail we are talking about here.
Let me refresh your collective memories : Six weeks ago as part of the National Development Plan we were told that we.......................

I agree with you too, this will be drawn out for a long time and only minor changes will happen rural Broadband access is only a buzz word as far as the elections go, and promise is only reassurance!
It’s all about votes from hear till election day!,