Has Ireland's crumbling broadband network become an election issue?

bealtine

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/20199-has-irelands-crumbling/

A wit on Twitter late last year made the sweeping statement: “To the average Irish politician, broadband could well be a 1970s showband.”

This sad indictment is not wholly undeserved. Whether through a lack of understanding of what broadband technology can deliver by way of jobs and investment or through a fear of a population better informed than ever before, lack of political will in the past allowed Ireland to fall to the bottom of the heap when it came to broadband.

Since 2001, copper-based DSL has been a commercial disaster, with only 4pc of Ireland’s copper DSL lines unbundled and sold by licensed operators. The Group Broadband Scheme, modelled on the old Group Water Scheme, was an unmitigated disaster. And the One Stop Shop to join up miles of fibre owned by Irish semi-states and make it available to the telecoms industry still hasn’t materialised.

However, the State-backed metropolitan area networks that serve up 90 towns have led to increased foreign direct investment (FDI) in the towns they are located in. And the EU-backed €233m National Broadband Scheme by 3 Ireland is bringing a broadband service to 1,028 areas across rural Ireland resulting in 99pc of the population – in theory – able to access broadband.

A recent report by Cisco put Ireland 13th out of 72 nations for broadband quality, but described this country as “unprepared for the internet applications of tomorrow.”

But has the worm turned? Are Irish politicians finally switched on to the reality that there will be no job creation in Ireland unless the broadband issue is urgently addressed?

Read more of 'Has our crumbling broadband network become an election issue?' at Digital 21.

clohamon

So far we have NetCo(Labour) vs Broadband 21(FineGael). Fine Gael have put money on the table so at least now there's something to argue about.

A Next Generation Telecoms Network (up to €2bn): Co-operating and coinvesting with Eircom, UPC and other telecommunications companies to provide Next Generation Access (high-speed broadband) to every home and business in the State. This will be achieved by delivering fibre to the home or kerb for 90% of homes and businesses in Ireland with the remaining 10% provided with high-speed mobile or wireless broadband. The €2 billion figure is based on the State funding of 66% of the cost of the project as calculated by the Telecommunications and Internet Federation (TIF).
This will be done through Broadband 21, a new joint venture company which will also manage the MANs and other State-owned telecommunications infrastructure currently managed by ESB-T, Aurora, the NRA, CIE and Waterways Ireland.

http://www.finegael.ie/upload/WorkingforOurFuture.pdf

Isn't it amazing how you can get all the necessary details into two paragraphs

oscarBravo

bealtine wrote: »

The Group Broadband Scheme, modelled on the old Group Water Scheme, was an unmitigated disaster.

...once the government decided to stop accepting applications for projects, and then canceled the scheme three years later citing "lack of demand".

And the EU-backed €233m National Broadband Scheme by 3 Ireland is bringing a broadband mobile phone service to 1,028 areas across rural Ireland...

FYP.

SkepticOne

I have heard the issue of broadband mentioned a few times in the press and on the radio recently so I would regard it as an election issue albeit perhaps not a major one.

trekkypj

Good to see FG and Labour actually paying attention to this issue, though I do hope there's something concrete behind these policy documents - we've been here before, after all.

I'm planning on putting together a document on rolling out fibre in rural communities using community-based fibre schemes in the next few weeks. This has long been a pet peeve of mine - without having anything against Craig Doyle, I'm tiring of seeing him telling us about UPC fibre when I can't get the bloody service!

The biggest hinderance to widespread fibre deployment is that, with the absence of regulatory schemes standardising and pooling fibre resources among operators in the Irish market, there is no commercial incentive for companies either to use their competitor's network or, indeed, to bring fibre to the farm.

This is a huge mistake that has been repeatedly made going back to the days of dial-up rollout where pair gains made decent connectivity all but impossible on dial up modems. Then the exact same thing happened with DSL and continues in some communities - including ours.

Those areas who don't even have DSL should have priority to 'skip' the DSL generation altogether and move straight to fibre based services. And all areas should be fibred within five years.

My question is this : how can this be achieved, given Fine Gael and Labour's policy documents speaking of getting fibre roll-out dealt with? How can they be given direction from organisations like IrelandOffline so that we don't have a repeat of the white elephant that was the NBS scheme?

richardw001

This might seem very skeptical however I think the Irish political party attitude to the whole area of broadband and next generation broadband has simply to pay lip service to it.
There's no reason to believe that the incoming parties will do anything constructive in this area - I would have expected the greens to do something to be honest - as this should have been right down their street. And they didn't produce anything meaningful - so what hope have we for labour and fine gael !

To be honest - what I'd like to see would be Shane Ross as minister for communications - I should add that I have no affiliation with him - however from what I can see over the past 5 years he is the only one that has tried to do something meaningful in the area - wonder is there any chance of this - what do people think ?

jimmycrackcorm

How can it be described as crumbling when I and everyone I know with broadband has had increased speeds over the last year.

Perhaps if it was truly crumbling then it would become an issue, but it doesn't appear to be so.

R P McMurphy

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

How can it be described as crumbling when I and everyone I know with broadband has had increased speeds over the last year.

Perhaps if it was truly crumbling then it would become an issue, but it doesn't appear to be so.

We simply don't measure up to our European counterparts though. The broadband and phone service is overpriced and slow in comparison to other countries. Outside of major urban areas the NBS is only a temporary fix and is completely inadequate. It is a service that demands investment for the future development of the economy and society

lucernarian

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

How can it be described as crumbling when I and everyone I know with broadband has had increased speeds over the last year.

Perhaps if it was truly crumbling then it would become an issue, but it doesn't appear to be so.

I wouldn't say it's crumbling (note: copper doesn't "rot") but it's stunted and limited to a few areas. To really change the broadband supply market, it'll take a lot more than removing pairgains these days. It all comes down to fibre, fibre, fibre.

watty

Almost all the Speed Increase is on UPC.