Labour Manifesto on Communications

damien

This is more like it. Much better than anything any other party is offering. They still need to abolish ComReg though.

The Labour Party believes that a widespread, accessible and affordable broadband network is crucial for ensuring a cohesive society, competitive economy and to enable all Irish people to access the most technologically up-to-date services and products. At the heart of Labour’s IT vision is also a commitment to the abolition of the digital divide and the guarantee that a new type of social exclusion will not be fuelled by the fast-paced technological changes that are now being experienced.

Our vision will be to create, by 2012, a new, high speed, open access, next generation telecoms network, designed and managed to support competing service operators that will use a variety of wireless and fixed wire “local loop” technologies, depending on local settlement patterns and geographic conditions, to deliver triple-play (TV, Internet and voice) services to every home in Ireland that wants them.

• Establish an ambitious new government vision of how Irish broadband connectivity should develop and the wider economic and social benefits intensified broadband development will facilitate. Renewed objectives, vigorously approached targets and a commitment to delivering on these targets will be a policy priority.
  
  
• Set-up a specific broadband task force headed by an e-envoy to concentrate resources and responsibility in a central location to drive an intensified rollout. The ICT industry will be encouraged to lead this development.
  
  
• Within six months of coming to power, we will tender for the upgrade and “broadband enabling” of telephone exchanges in those, mainly rural, areas where it has been uneconomic for the private sector to do so.
  
  
• Introduce serious regulatory reform to ensure that the broadband sector is regulated much more effectively. The communications regulator ComReg will have the ability to impose much greater financial penalties on telecom operators. Operational changes will also be examined to allow ComReg to operate without the current intensely prohibitive legal restrictions and to strengthen its anticompetitive mandate.
  
  
• To expedite competition blockages and remove obstruction, a separate High Court division of regulation will be established.
  
  
• Introduce co-competition powers for ComReg with the Competition Authority
  
  
• We will strengthen the hand of the regulator, and seek a settlement with Eircom to create an operationally separate network division to address the absolutely crucial problem of access to the local loop. This should ensure greater access for other broadband operators to provide services, and a greater variety and less expensive range of broadband products will be on offer for Irish consumers and businesses.
  
  
• Promote innovative measures for the delivery of a range of platforms for delivering different broadband technologies. These would include a widespread designation of ‘hot spots’ for wireless transmission, and making entire urban areas ‘hot zones’ that are entirely wireless broadband enabled.
  
  
• Incorporate local government institutions including partnerships, county leaders and county development boards in broadband rollout
  
  
• Create a Universal Service Obligation (USO) for broadband. Accessibility to broadband networks will assume the same character as the present expectation of universal access to the postal service or telephone network. The development of mechanisms for ensuring that a broadband USO is in place creates considerable potential for ensuring a widespread and universally accessible broadband network.
  
  
• Instigate a national information technology education programme in order to provide the essential knowledge and training for using the critical ICT infrastructure of a modern economy. Although some schools provide such education, it is essential that all children regardless of the school they attend have access to a proper IT education so as to equip them with the knowledge and practical experience to participate fully in society.
  
  
• Ensure access to laptops for secondary school children. Broadband connectivity needs to have a practical application. An objective of a national ICT policy should be the provision of all secondary school students with laptops so the relevant knowledge of and necessary skills for advanced technology can be experienced within the classroom.All methods of practically facilitating such a scheme, such as a partnership agreement with the IT industry, should be examined to ensure the widespread provision of laptops at second level.
  

lucernarian

While the ideas are a bit flexible and are more of the investigative type, there's certainly a few concepts there that would have a positive effect. They have put effort into this section, and they have ideas on what they want to do. Pretty impressive.

Their ideas on broadcasting are lacklustre however. No ideas on how DTT will be rolled out or how it will be financed. Postal stuff has suggestions such as forming a postal regulation division within ComReg. Pointless, given that they would already have a special team dealing exclusively with An Post.

But internet is what this forum's all about, and their manifesto commitments are to be welcomed IMO.

exiztone

Wait, what's the deal with the laptops for students bit? It's a bit extreme isn't it? I remember when I was in secondary school the problem was not a lack of equipment, it was just poorly managed and thus restricted (for fear of the students doing something stupid).

What would be nice would to give training to school administrators on how to maintain a network. I'm in university at the moment where you have a username/password generated for you during your registration. You can log in at any station on campus and any Internet activity is monitored through a proxy. The idea works and you're not restricting students to that MS Office class every year :P

thebman

Yeah we had the same problem exiztone. I think the problem is that they want them supervised so they can be caught fast.

With college they are just policing you to make sure your not doing anything illegal or whatever. With school's they have to make sure they are not viewing certain sites which no amounts of blockers will stop the determined child getting to.

damien

The Dept. of Education stopped money for training and maintaining of computers in schools as far as I know. The ugly fact is that there are more Tesco PCs in schools than ones from the Government. What's worse is the Govt are using that as an excuse not to give money to schools.