Can't get broadband? Irish Times Journo says you're wrong

damien

She is now saying she never ever said Ireland has 90% broadband coverage: http://url.ie/5fo but we have the mp3 where she does say it.

Cabaal

damien.m wrote:

She is now saying she never ever said Ireland has 90% broadband coverage: http://url.ie/5fo but we have the mp3 where she does say it.

whoops!
I guess she didn't think anyone would record it using there PC/Mac and then upload it to the net using the broadband connection that they didn't want

watty

PC penetration is about 60% Then there are PS/2, PS/3, Wii, DS, X360 all of which have networking or can have networking for not just multiplayer games.

Then there are WiFi enabled phones... Listen to R4FM or BBC World on your phone headset.

Internet availability is about 55% to 80% depending on assumptions or who you beleive. Remember eircom's 90% may be of total lines, many may be ISDN, or pair gained or fail DSL and number of households with lines gone from 82% to less than 69%.

Cost is high, especially including line rental. I know people on the oxymoron of "timed broadband". There is only a market for it because the price is high.

There is no comparison between TV & Internet usage. If you only want the four Irish channels you can get perfect pictures in analogue, better than the Digital signals of some suppliers.

About 1/2 of Internet users use dialup. It's only cheaper if you don't use it much and it's potentially 100 times slower than Broadband. So TV is a poor analogy.

If there was reasonably priced 100% available broadband and only 1/2 of PC users wanted it that would be nearly 30% penetration. Our penetration is 9% to 17% depending on what you allow as "broadband" (The Government and Comreg count things not counted in UK).

Broadband is more important for business today potentially than Fax machine.

The long delay even at till for cash/credit card validation can be due to dailup rather than BB. Many of the "instant" ones are actually on ISDN, which is not cost effective on high rate of sales.


I've absolutely no doubt you can stimulate demand, have better banking and Government services online and some businesses may not need Internet. Some GreatGrandparents love it and some Teenagers can't see the point (really).

But we have a LOT of Regulatory, competitive and infrastructure problems that eircom, Comreg and the Government seem to be in denial about, those need solved before worrying about demand. It's hard to even know the extent of the problem due to lack of eircom transparency and Massaging of Figures supplied to EU & OECD.

The Government's own committee on the issue identified that the main problem was lack of regulation and availability. They made recommendations that were ignored. The structure of the GBS made it nearly unworkable, hence the poor take up. The replacement NBS is based on heavily flawed assumptions and has so many caveats that only two believable companies have been shortlisted and some capable companies didn't even apply.

Cabaal

The whole issue of lack of demand is the same crap that lots of companys and people used to say about broadband in the UK years ago, now look at it, broadband usage is through the roof and there;s a very good range of products,

Coverage on BT (UK) telephone lines via ADSL (not ISDN like Eircom) is 99%, anyone who says there is no demand is just talking out there hat, demand can be created...I would have thought that advertising companys would have thought these people that already

From my own personal experience, line failure rates on BT (UK) ADSL lines are extremely low when compared to Ireland, it just goes to show what can happen when the job is done properly, BT Wholesale will often spend months investigating an issue to see if they can supply ADSL to an end user that is outside of limits...despite what people might think in the UK they do a decent enough job

thefinalstage

watty wrote:

PC penetration is about 60% Then there are PS/2, PS/3, Wii, DS, X360 all of which have networking or can have networking for not just multiplayer games.

Then there are WiFi enabled phones... Listen to R4FM or BBC World on your phone headset.

Internet availability is about 55% to 80% depending on assumptions or who you beleive. Remember eircom's 90% may be of total lines, many may be ISDN, or pair gained or fail DSL and number of households with lines gone from 82% to less than 69%.

Cost is high, especially including line rental. I know people on the oxymoron of "timed broadband". There is only a market for it because the price is high.

There is no comparison between TV & Internet usage. If you only want the four Irish channels you can get perfect pictures in analogue, better than the Digital signals of some suppliers.

About 1/2 of Internet users use dialup. It's only cheaper if you don't use it much and it's potentially 100 times slower than Broadband. So TV is a poor analogy.

If there was reasonably priced 100% available broadband and only 1/2 of PC users wanted it that would be nearly 30% penetration. Our penetration is 9% to 17% depending on what you allow as "broadband" (The Government and Comreg count things not counted in UK).

Broadband is more important for business today potentially than Fax machine.

The long delay even at till for cash/credit card validation can be due to dailup rather than BB. Many of the "instant" ones are actually on ISDN, which is not cost effective on high rate of sales.


I've absolutely no doubt you can stimulate demand, have better banking and Government services online and some businesses may not need Internet. Some GreatGrandparents love it and some Teenagers can't see the point (really).

But we have a LOT of Regulatory, competitive and infrastructure problems that eircom, Comreg and the Government seem to be in denial about, those need solved before worrying about demand. It's hard to even know the extent of the problem due to lack of eircom transparency and Massaging of Figures supplied to EU & OECD.

The Government's own committee on the issue identified that the main problem was lack of regulation and availability. They made recommendations that were ignored. The structure of the GBS made it nearly unworkable, hence the poor take up. The replacement NBS is based on heavily flawed assumptions and has so many caveats that only two believable companies have been shortlisted and some capable companies didn't even apply.

Did Smart apply?

jmcc

Freddie59 wrote:

In the article in question a respondent (John McCormack) points out that the wrong age group is used as a demographic for penetration rates. Indeed, it would appear that the largest amount of broadband subs are families - with this being driven by young teenagers with an insatiable appetite for the new technology.

I was commenting on Karlin's blog on how the her demographic of young professionals and students was the wrong one to use to measure the uptake of broadband (if you could even call what she was doing a measurement) in her area.

As for her claim that she was ahead of all the others in the media in highlighting the issue of broadband. She was not.

Regards...jmcc

Lissavane

I used to read and enjoy Ms Lillington's pieces in the Irish Times business supplement on Fridays. It was only when she started to contribute to George Hook's radio show that I realised how little she actually appeared to know.

I'm certainly no expert at anything tech-related but I was astonished to notice that her answers to some quite simple ICT related questions seemed inaccurate.

I rarely read her IT column now because I simply don't trust her opinions. It's a shame because I really liked her writing style. Suppose that explains the auld Doctorate in Literature.