ADSL project in Ennis?

matthiku

Earlier this year, the Clare Champion reported the undertaking of an ADSL brodband Internet Access test project being carried out in Ennis. It should involve about 100 households in new Developments on the Tulla Road.

Does anybody knows anything about that project and its progress?

matthiku

I just found a reference to this project on the Ennis web site:

http://www.ennis.ie/cgi-bin/eiat.cgi?page=iat_whats_happening.htm

The shallow text is as follows:

A Broadband Internet Access Trial is being conducted with 100 households in Ennis to evaluate state of the art broadband Internet access. This latest offering from eircom Ennis Information Age Town is described as "always on" high speed Internet access and will be provided free of charge for a six month period

No dates and further links available. Sad.

conZ

eheh yes,
Its been running since Febuary and will be ending up in the next few weeks. Eircom will be releasing it to the public in summer 2003.
I am currently using it, living on the Tulla Road.
If you were eligable (lived in one of the estates), you would have been sent out a form and invited to a meeting in the Old Ground, last Febuary

matthiku

This is the correspondence I meanwhile had with the Operations Manager from Ennis Information Age Research team.

My letter:

On your Website is a report about a DSL trial project in Ennis.
Is there any further information available, like test area, roll-out time and further progress? And is there still any possibility to take part in this project in any form? I do live in Ennis on the Tulla Road and would be highly interested. I already have ISDN, but it's still too slow for all of my family's needs.
The lack of broadband Internet access with a decent flatrate and nation-wide availability is, in my opinion, a major setback for the Irish community and its access to the world of information out there. Ennis may be an exception to a certain degree, but it's still frightening that you have to watch the clock when you are online. Working from home, for instance, is basically impossible with the available Internet access speed. A change here could reduce the traffic pressure and help parents spent more valuable time with their family by being more flexible regarding working hours. I am actually wondering why it is necessary to evalutate broadband access in Ireland while in other countries they are already using it since years! You should take a look at www.irelandoffline.com or www.eircomtribunal.com to find out that this is not just my view.

His answer (quoted with his permission):

Your email reflects the growing demand throughout Ireland for broadband access to the Internet. This demand is very strong in Ennis, where there is a very high PC penetration rate (85%) among the town's households as a direct result of the Information Age Town project. Over the past two years, the Ennis Information Age town project has provided broadband ADSL access to 140 users covering businesses, schools, library and community organisations. In February of this year, we offered 100 residents an opportunity to use broadband access (using VSDL) to the Internet free of charge for a six month period. The feedback from all of these users is that broadband always-on access to the Internet has a significant impact on how people work, communicate and interact. Unfortunately, we are unable to include any more people in either the ADSL or VDSL trials as we have reached full capacity.
We have asked both eircom and Esat/BT for their timeframes for the roll-out of commercial ADSL in Ennis but were unable to obtain scheduled dates except that it was likely to be in the second half of next year.
Regards
John Culligan
Operations Manager

So the only alternative in the short future for us less fortunate is ISDN and a kinda flatrate, offered currently only by UTV: www.utvip.com

See also the IrelandOFFline forum in this webpage.