IrelandOffline on Newstalk 04/12/04 - 12.05pm

damien

JWT from IrelandOffline will be on the "Down to Business " show on Newstalk at around 12.05 today.

Can someone try and record it ? http://62.25.96.7/newstalk

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Hal1

listening in now, news is on atm tho

damien

Very very well done John. Good interview. Made us all proud.

cgarvey

Well done John .. well done indeed. Very good comeback to McRedmond's dismissal of IoffL.. just *cough* touching up a crappy rip I have of the piece.. more in a bit.

cgarvey

Story and MP3 are now online.

David McRedmond claims he doesn't know who Ireland Offline are, nor how many people are in Ireland Offline. He's also sick of people talking Ireland down, and talking Broadband in Ireland down [editor: wonder why?]. Nor does he know where our numbers came from, or where the 3 years [that we are behind the rest of Europe] came from.

John made a great comeback to those bizarre (to say the least) comments, but unfortunately it wasn't a live McRedmond interview (of course). Perhaps IoffL should write to McRedmond to address the gaps in his knowledge (or just send him a transcript of the Oireachtas Committee report John mentioned, with the bits where he acknowledges IoffL highlighted).

Lots of tongue in cheek .. but a serious suggestion in there too

.cg

damien

Mr McRedmond is on our Christmas card list this year. I'll add in a quick note explaining to him who we are.

mike65

I did'nt know they still used wax cylinders for recording! what are those random "tone" sounds?

McRedmond denying all knowledge is hilarious, he came up with the classic angle of suggesting we were doing the nation down (i.e. traitors!).

A good piece, IOFFL once again the voice of reason!

Mike.

Moriarty

Great interview, John.

SkepticOne

Great interview. Although I would tend to go with Martin Cronin's analysis more than John's it is good to see the issue raised.

cgarvey

mike65 wrote:

I did'nt know they still used wax cylinders for recording! what are those random "tone" sounds?

lol.. that's my DB download (which was responsible for the first 20ish seconds of wierdness)!!

If anyone has a better recording, let me know!
.cg

jwt

SkepticOne wrote:

Great interview. Although I would tend to go with Martin Cronin's analysis more than John's it is good to see the issue raised.

That'd be the bit where I agreed with the Forfas report

Seriously, its like having an argument, thought of all the things I should have said afterwards

Oh well


John

eircomtribunal

Very well done.

Just a note about Redmond's end 2007 figures.

(For the time leaving alone the fact that the timeline on them is deceitful.)

Redmond is again intentionally misleading the public:
500 000 bb connections by end 2007 do not constitute a 40% household broadband penetration, as McRedmond claims. According to Eircom 2/3 of the current broadband connections are for businesses. Assuming that this figure for business bb connections will rise to 100 000 by end 2007 (conservative estimate), of McRedmond's 500 000 envisaged bb connection only 400 000 will be for residential customers. That would be a household penetration rate of about 30% ( 400 000 for 1 289 000 households), probably even lower, as the number of households has risen since the last CSO figures were published.

When McRedmond speaks of this representing 31% of lines, than this is not correct either, because while 500 000 represents 31% of 1 600 000 lines, in this 1 600 000 lines figure the ISDN lines are not included.

I'd be critical of Forfas' optimism. And I think it is a precondition of success to find the cause of our malaise. Forfas is not able to accuse another state institution, ComReg or the DCMNR for being one of the main causes. So they repeat (in their latest broadband statement) the misleading excuses brought forward by ComReg and others. The lack of cable in Ireland is not the cause of our absolutely phenomenally dismal standing. Denmark and Japan, and to a lesser extent Germany, have shown that countries with no cable competition can become the best broadband countries, or be at least middle of the field in the case of Germany.
Poor regulation is the main cause for our situation.

Goggin said in the Dail committee hearing the "timing of the dotcom" crash was to blame.(Why to hell should the failed attempt of Californian companies to sell cat litter over the Internet have that consequence? – ahh, Isolde knows her chaos theory, must be the butterfly effect.)
McRedmond said in the same hearing the regulator not issuing a broadcasting licence to them was to blame for us not getting decent dsl at a decent time.

P.

Redmond: "For the product to be effective, we were required to apply for a broadcast licence which we were refused by the regulator after very lengthy discussions. As I was not involved at the time, I must provide members with the version I have heard. As a consequence of being refused the licence, the DSL product in question was not affordable. We stripped it out and rolled out instead low-cost DSL which is the type of broadband we have now and is affordable for people."