2nd Bottom In the Infants

spongebob

According to some National something or other we are now 2nd botom of 16 surveyed countries in Broadband, see Here . The 16th isn't Estonia anyway, probably not Iran either. Is it Argentina I wonder?

Nothing up on Their Site yet.

milltown

I had a whole tirade prepared for paedophiles posting on Boards when I saw the subject line.

Delphi91

Sky News had a report about Broadband on their morning news on Monday or Tuesday. I couldn't find the report on their website so sorry for the absence of a linked article.

Anyway, the gist of it was that the UK Gov were gonna pull out all the stops to make Britain the E-Commerce hub of Europe. Seems they are second on some list or other (and I SERIOUSLY doubt if we're the top!!!). They're gonna do everything in their power to up the levels of Broadband connectivity - gov spokesperson claimed there are 30,000 NEW broadband customers every month in the UK.

How many customers do we have here in Ireland IN TOTAL?????

Mike

Raskolnikov

http://www.ucc.ie/opa/pr/PressReleaseGlobalComp.html

A decline in Ireland's ranking regarding technological progress (from 28th in 2001 to 31st in 2002) also contributed to Ireland's lower ranking which indicates scope for improvement regarding research & development activities and innovation and with regard to the licensing of foreign technology.

Although the government would have you believe that it's the fault of the global economy that we are slipping down the ranks.

DC

I could guess around 500 per week new connections. About 90%+ of those being business connections. The pace has picked up in the last month.

About three months ago the figure was 2,000 broadband connections. I would imagine it would reach 5 figures sometime in January / February with the launch of Esat's 256 offering giving the figures a boost (six weeks from now I'm told).

I'm only basing this on the fact that the sub-contracted (by EsatBT) engineer who installed my DSL said they were getting very busy in the last couple of weeks, particularly with business customers.

Only time will tell I suppose.....

De Rebel

Originally posted by Muck
Nothing up on Their Site yet.

Muck yer mixing up yer quangos

The people who published the report are the National Competitiveness Council , a creation which operates under the auspices of Forfas helping that august body in its mission to change the world by putting lots of black ink on white paper. Claim to fame is that its charied by one William Burgess, former MD & Chairman of IBM Ireland and also the repalcement for Paddy Teahon as chairman of Digital Media Development

The report entitled The National Competitiveness Council - National Competitiveness Challenge 2002 is available from the website. There is one page covering Telecommunications; the ACR (which is the same body's Annual Competitiveness Report 2002) is named as the source of the 15th out of 16 quote. The ACR should be avilable from The Annual Competitiveness Report 2002 but the link is broken

There is one page on Telecommunications in the Infrastructure chapter: it contains 4 reasonable recommendations, I especially like the final one. This is the page in full:

Telecommunications

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Widespread availability of competitively priced broadband is crucial to Ireland’s
development as a knowledge economy, realising the growth and productivity benefits
of e-business and new technologies and developing as an attractive location for
portable investment in hi-tech industry. Larger companies and institutions are
generally well served. However, the roll-out of broadband connectivity to smaller
towns and to SMEs in general remains disappointingly slow.

Recent Developments
According to the ACR Ireland is ranked 15th out of 16 countries for access to
broadband lines.

WHAT HAS BEEN DONE?
In March 2002, the Government announced the Regional Broadband Investment
Initiative to provide optical fibre networks and DSL services over copper networks to
an initial 20 towns, to be rolled out to 123 locations over the next five years on a PPP
basis if the initial phase proves successful. It is important to ensure that the State’s
involvement is efficient and effective in itself and does not crowd out private-sector
investment. The Government should not own the local loop but must play a strong
role in putting the required investment in place if the economic benefits of broadband
are to be secured.

Recommendations
1. Funding to complete the development of optical fibre networks in the initial 20
towns identified by the Regional Broadband Investment Initiative should be
provided in the Budget 2003 estimates. In light of the tighter fiscal situation, the
development of a single PPP should be accelerated to leverage the maximum
private sector finance and participation.
2. A specialist broadband planning body or office should be established to coordinate
and manage, in close co-operation with the private sector, the
involvement of the full range of public authorities concerned in the Regional
Broadband Investment Initiative. The State should make the best use of existing
infrastructures to achieve a faster and more complete rollout of broadband
services, including the optical fibre networks of semi-state bodies.
3. The transposition into domestic law of the new EU regulatory framework for
telecommunications should be accelerated. In transposing these directives, the
Government should address the following key omissions from the
Communications Regulation Act, 2002:
• The potential insufficiency of existing fines as a deterrent;
• The lack of an appeals mechanism; and,
• The need to maintain national regulatory oversight of market areas where
competition is yet to develop, in particular mobile and high speed
interconnection charges.
4. A substantial programme of demand-side measures to stimulate rapid take-up of
broadband services should be developed by the Department of Communications,
Marine and Natural Resources, at the level of Government in the roll-out of
eGovernment services on a more extensive and faster rate than competing
countries.

The other lot, The National Centre for Partnership and Performance are a think tank intended to produce support material for the next national wages agreement (or whatever its called)

Scottish

This mihgt be a bit unrelated, but if this government persists with PPP, then we will all still be paying for what will be an obsolete broadband infrastucture in 20 years or so. PPP is perhaps the biggest single con to be tried by governments in the history of western democracy. The brits are starting to wake up to this fact a little, but putting capital projects off the nations balance sheet in this manner is just one large, expensive, long term hire purchase agreement. :eek:

LFCFan

Originally posted by DC

I would imagine it would reach 5 figures sometime in January / February with the launch of Esat's 256 offering giving the figures a boost (six weeks from now I'm told).

Thing is though, 256K cannot be considered Broadband so Broadband figures in the future should not include people using this service. How much are you betting though the government will include these connections when talking about Ireland's Broadband penetration.

De Rebel

Like it or not, the majority of international reports on the topic appear to include 256k services in the broadband category. Its a grey area and I agree that 512K is pretty much what we expect, but there appears to be a consensus that broadband includes 256k services. No doubt the various interests here will take the same view. Unfortunatly.

LoBo

its certainly better than touting 128k ISDN as broadband though at least the half size DSL offering is always on and flat rate

LFCFan

Originally posted by LoBo
its certainly better than touting 128k ISDN as broadband though at least the half size DSL offering is always on and flat rate

It's very expensive though and I'm afraid that it's gonna set a standard in this country that is just way too off the mark to be called broadband. No other country in the world had to take a slimline version of ADSL at a rediculous price. Why oh why can't we just be like the rest of the developed world and not have to put up with sub standard services all the time. €ircon have a hell of a lot to answer for. Ireland is slowly losing it's status as a player in the IT industry and if we're not careful we'll lose out altogether and then where will we be. At the same time though €ircon's profits will keep them laughing, Valencia will rape the company for all it can get and then leave an even worse company behind.

De Rebel

LFCFan, you make a number of valid points.

The way I see it we are better off at the end of 2002 than we were at the start. There is much greater Broadband availability and FRAICO is apparently on the way. So much for 2002.

For 2003, we need to focus on affordability as well as increased availability.

A lot has happened in the last few weeks. IOFFL is on the way to achieving its overall objectives. Objectives for 2003 should include much less expensive DSL, much less expensive FRAICO (assuming the initial products will also be the most expensive in the world!) and much greater broadband availability, including broadband for those who cannot avail of DSL.

If things go as well for IOFFL in 2003 as the have in the last quarter of 2002 then we may all be happy campers 12 months hence.