Ireland trails in OECD broadband ranks

bealtine

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/1211/breaking54.html


No surprises at how miserably Ireland Inc is doing in the broadband stakes.

Sponge Bob

Don't you worry, Comreg will slither some quarterly stats out soon.

bealtine

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8408919.stm

The UK is trailing when it comes to next-generation access, new figures show.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the UK is placed 21st out of 30 in terms of speed.

That puts it below countries such as Greece, Portugal and Spain.

The report suggests that countries that invest in fibre networks are likely to see the best economic returns in other areas.

When it comes to broadband penetration, the UK is doing OK - placed 13th out of the 30 OECD members.

But most of these subscribers still access broadband via so-called DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) rather than via fibre.

Overall, nearly one in 10 OECD subscribers currently accesses the internet over fibre.

In Japan and Korea, most people do; it is also growing fast in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the US.

The report finds that many governments are subsidising the rollout of new broadband networks.


FASTEST BROADBAND NATIONS
Japan - top advertised speed 1Gbps
Finland - 110Mbps
Sweden - 100Mbps
Korea - 100Mbps
Iceland - 100Mbps
France - 100Mbps
Denmark - 100Mbps
Netherlands - 60Mbps
United States - 50Mbps
Spain - 50Mbps

It concludes that such subsidies are justified because of the benefits broadband can make in four key sectors of the economy - electricity, health, education and transportation.

"If you cut 1% off the costs of education, electricity, health and transport you would more than pay for a fibre network," said Taylor Reynolds of the technology division of the OECD.

"That is the type of thinking required by countries considering rolling out next-generation networks," he said.

Broadband tax

With the UK's broadband population standing at nearly 18 million, take-up of the technology is good but there are concerns about how quickly the UK is rolling out super-fast services.

The government wants to see super-fast broadband available to 90% of the country by the end of 2017.

Superfast broadband is generally regarded as speeds of 50Mbps (megabits per second) or above.

Currently BT has plans to offer a mixture of fibre technologies to around 40% of the country and Virgin Media has made cable broadband - capable of speeds of around 50Mbps - available to half of UK homes.

The government has announced a £6 a year tax on fixed-line phones to raise funds for the 30% of the country that it estimates won't get super-fast broadband via existing commercial broadband plans.

It hopes to raise around £170m a year through the levy, although the Conservatives have vowed to scrap the tax if they win the next election.

bealtine

http://www.oecd.org/document/54/0,3343,en_2649_34225_38690102_1_1_1_37441,00.html

Sponge Bob

bealtine wrote: »

"If you cut 1% off the costs of education, electricity, health and transport you would more than pay for a fibre network," said Taylor Reynolds of the technology division of the OECD.

That is exactly the point of fibre. The current smart metering trial has been cut back because of insufficient network density among mobile operators , instead of Ryans promised 25k units it will be 5k units at most.

Smart metering only works if it is pretty much ubiquitous.

Transport spends are reduced as rush hours are spread out by teleworking.

Education savings are achieveable in most countries EXCEPT Ireland beacuse so much is sunk in salaries that the 1% has to be saved from the 25% non salary portion = 4% . A big ask.

Telemedicine savings are likely not achievable for the same reason and must be offset by extra GP visits for things that hypochondriacs read about on the internet

But transport and energy, yes. And we have the most expensive electricity in the EU thanks to Eamon Ryan and his policies so we must do something urgently

Tea_Bag

bealtine wrote: »

FASTEST BROADBAND NATIONS
Japan - top advertised speed 1Gbps
Finland - 110Mbps
Sweden - 100Mbps
Korea - 100Mbps
Iceland - 100Mbps
France - 100Mbps
Denmark - 100Mbps
Netherlands - 60Mbps
United States - 50Mbps
Spain - 50Mbps

not sure if these figures are accurate tbh..

http://www.upc.nl/internet/

UPC does 120mbps fibre option for instance.

also i read somewhere that north korea was entering the gigabit market.


unfortunately this only makes ireland look worse though.
roll out some fibre PLEASE!

rob808

Tea_Bag wrote: »

not sure if these figures are accurate tbh..

http://www.upc.nl/internet/

UPC does 120mbps fibre option for instance.

also i read somewhere that north korea was entering the gigabit market.


unfortunately this only makes ireland look worse though.
roll out some fibre PLEASE!

you can add singapore to fibre nation's since by 2012 they have FTTH to 95% of it country

kodi

I think Poland should be included on this list as well. Widely available is 120Mbit/s (for under 50E/month). Local operators in bigger cities usually have LAN with 100Mbit/1Gbit access (and yes, in some cases you can have up to 1Gbit/s connection outside the LAN if you can afford it).

bealtine

kodi wrote: »

I think Poland should be included on this list as well.

You'll have to take that point up with the OECD:)

It's good to see great broadband being rolled out in all the different countries of the EU, it all goes to show just how far behind Ireland actually is.
Of course there's simply no commercial or political will here to actually do something, except to talk crap on the tele about the Smart economy, but to actually do nothing whatsoever. It just shows how far removed from reality our Minister actually is and how far behind we have fallen under his stewardship.

kodi

After 4 years in Ireland - I'm still trying to understand this situation. Every country which invested in fiber networks/broadband access (and I mean BROADband - not the advertised 3.6Mbit/s crap) had the investment returned in next few years. I was talking with my friends here why there are no fiber cables along the railroads, why there are no new cable ducts along the roads being repaired, why there is no law, requiring every new building permission request to have designed broadband connection? I got an answer that there were projects, talks and such, but... it just died. On the other hand when I had my discussion of my broadband usage levels with one of the bigger providers, he was really surprised I'm using it for VoD things. I really had to explain why I'm not willing to buy a TV (I don't have one) and pay few dozens Euros a month to watch just few things in the week which I would find interesting.

rob808

bealtine wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/1211/breaking54.html


No surprises at how miserably Ireland Inc is doing in the broadband stakes.

It go to show you that because we never invested in our networks were going to be in recession for a long time and our broadband going to get worse before it get better thanks to eircom greedy investors last few owners of eircom and our government lack of seeing how important our telecounication networks are a well back to our dial up broadband and rest europe enjoy there super fast broadband . It be funny if they did those eircom ads on european TV they would be on there back laughing at us always on super fast 7mb broadband wow .

watty

Maybe less than 1/2 of people with a line can get 7Mbps (some getting nothing), and only 66% have lines, and dropping.

I used to worry about LLU, GLUMP, Bitrstream, enforcement of regulation on eircom etc. But maybe DSL and eircom is fast becoming irrelevent and should just be bypassed on a true Next Gen Networks delivered on last mile?

rob808

watty wrote: »

Maybe less than 1/2 of people with a line can get 7Mbps (some getting nothing), and only 66% have lines, and dropping.

I used to worry about LLU, GLUMP, Bitrstream, enforcement of regulation on eircom etc. But maybe DSL and eircom is fast becoming irrelevent and should just be bypassed on a true Next Gen Networks delivered on last mile?

I don't think Next Gen Networks ever going to come and even if it does we be so far behind the rest of europe plus if eircom roll out VDSL+2 they going give speed of 25mb not great since 66% can't even get 7mb and uk going to be on 40mb to 60mb on VDSL+2 and probably higher before eircom even roll it out to say Dublin.I mean like who in Dublin will want eircom VDSL+2 when most can get UPC Next Gen Broadband of up to 120mb.

watty

My estimation of speed vs users assumed ADSL2+ and even VDSL but those only give higher speeds on shorter lines.

There is now no point in investing in DSL or worrying about DSL competition.

bealtine

A snippet from this intersting news item : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8417521.stm

Broadband warning

A report earlier this month from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned that the UK risked falling behind rivals if it did not invest in fast broadband.

It placed the UK 21st out of 30 countries in terms of network speeds.

The OECD suggested that countries that invested in fibre networks were likely to see the best economic returns in other areas.

The UK's broadband population currently stands at nearly 18 million and take-up of the technology is good but there are concerns about how quickly the UK is rolling out super-fast services.

The UK government would like everyone in the country to have access to broadband speeds of 2Mbps by 2012.

And it wants to see super-fast broadband available to 90% of the country by the end of 2017.

Superfast broadband is generally regarded as speeds of 50Mbps or above.