Smart Recapitalise by €65m and will bid for Nat BB Contract

Sponge Bob

From the trib today

http://www.tribune.ie/article.tvt?_scope=Tribune/Business/Business%20Week&id=71338&SUBCAT=Tribune/Business&SUBCATNAME=Business

NEWLY-REVAMPED Smart Telecom plans to bid for the government's National Broadband Scheme after it delists from the London stock exchange next week.Smart's new chairman and chief executive John Riordan said the National Broadband Scheme . . . a government tender to bring highspeed internet connections to unserved rural and uneconomic areas . . . was "high up the agenda" once the company was privatised.
Riordan said Smart would offer a bid for the national scheme as part of a consortium of other operators. He said if Smart and partners did not win the government blind auction "it would not affect our five-year plan".

Wonder who the other members of this consortium are ?????

DaBreno

Sponge Bob wrote:

A government tender to bring highspeed internet connections to unserved rural and uneconomic areas

Drool! Thats a nice start to the Week.

lucernarian

This is good news. Full of promise, but it's very early days yet to get hopes up. They'll probably have to offer a fair bit more than eircom if they want to be selected over the national USO phone company. The govt and eircom have had a very cosy relationship.

Edit: I just remembered, didn't Smart use satellite broadband for a lot of their school broadband contracts??

watty

DaBreno wrote:

Drool! Thats a nice start to the Week.

NBS is not as good as it sounds:
1/ Gov. assumes only 10% people not covered already! (real non-coverage is anything between 40% and 20%).
2/Excludes all areas that have and will have DSL to 4.5km radius I think
3/Doughnut rather than real coverage used for existing and proposed Wireless areas excluded, even if current Wireless is a lower spec than NBS.
4/How do you fill the "cracks" between two wireless licences with Wireless? (part of the 10%).

It may leave more people with no access than it provides.
What percentage of the so called 10% will get coverage?

SkepticOne

Not a very well thought out scheme the NBS. Basically it is the taxpayer helping Eircom (the likely winner) to extend their monopoly.

Increased monopoly is exactly what is not wanted. Yes, some people will benefit in the short term but it will be detrimental overall in the long term. People will be at the mercy of Eircom + resellers and their regulator. If you fall through the cracks there will be no alternatives to choose from.

The NBS is a product of Eircom lobbying + former comms minister, Noel Dempsey's political opportunism and lack of understanding. Thanks to the efforts of IrelandOffline more and more people are seeing through this sort of rubbish.

bealtine

SkepticOne wrote:

Thanks to the efforts of IrelandOffline more and more people are seeing through this sort of rubbish.

Except IoffL is now defunct, maybe Son of IoffL is required now to counter this nonsense from the .gov and regulator?

SkepticOne

bealtine wrote:

Except IoffL is now defunct, maybe Son of IoffL is required now to counter this nonsense from the .gov and regulator?

I should have said "more people than otherwise are seeing through this sort of thing due to past efforts of the now defunct IOFFL."