Help Needed - Meeting with Politicians

DonegalMan

As mentioned in an earlier thread, we are trying to get a meeting with local TD’s in Donegal – hopefully this will include Mary Coughlan who is Minister for Social Community and Family Affairs.

First of all, what exactly should we be asking politicians to do in simple terms?

I would suggest:

1. Understand how important Internet access is to economic growth.
2. Understand how far Ireland is behind in comparison to the rest of the world.
3. Stop worrying about getting more fibre installed – concentrate on getting the existing fibre lit.
4. Pressurise the government to deal with the fact that Eircom as a private company has control over a major piece of national infrastructure and is abusing it for commercial gain at the expense of this country’s development.
5. Make sure that these issues are kept at the fore with the Government.

Anyone like to contribute any specific points?

Secondly, I want to prepare a short presentation (max 15 mins) outlining the key points of Internet access.

Here are the points I am thinking of making about the different types of Internet access:

Dial Up
Advantages:

• Infrastructure in place, no capital expenditure required.
• Cheap (at least it should be)

Disadvantages:

• Slow Speed
• Not really “always on” - cut off times imposed by most ISP’s

ISDN
Advantages:

• Similar to dial-up but faster

Disadvantages:

• Still limited to 128kps
• Double charge rate
• Not really “always on” - cut off times imposed by most ISP’s

Broadband (Copper)
Advantages

• High Speed/Always On
• Proven success elsewhere in world

Disadvantages:

• Requires exchanges to be enabled
• Only feasible is highly populated areas due to distance limitations from exchanges
• Is already becoming ‘yesterday’s technology’

Satellite
Advantages:

• Available anywhere
• Always on

Disadvantages:

• Installation cost
• Latency problems limit effectiveness.
• Not suitable for peer-to-peer networks

Wireless
Advantages:

• High speed/Always on
• Reasonable equipment costs

Disadvantages:

• Line of Sight issues – problematic in rural/hilly areas.
• Distance limitations would require extensive network of transmitters.
• Public opposition to radio transmitters.

Would appreciate any suggestions on above, bearing in mind I want to keep them as simple bullet points, not getting into detailed technical issues.

Martin Harran

timod

Wireless is probably the only way that some parts of the country will get broadband due to distance requirements of DSL.

Also, it doesn't tie us to copper owned by a commercial company (i.e. Eircom) Wireless Essentially creates a third last mile network.
(The other one being cable, which seems to be a bit of a lost cause in many cases, but might be worth mentioning as it is happening slowly in the midlands.)

theciscokid

Before I became familiar with boards.ie, i had gotten the mail addresses of some td's off of the eircomtribunal site and mailed everyone of them,

one or two of the td's agreed to meet up with me to discuss the situation,,

i regret now that i did not meet them

topgold

Show your elected officials examples of what always-on connectivity means for you, the local second level school, businesses with subcontracts, email services, and instant messaging.

Show these elected officials that all these services cost more in Ireland.

Tell them you wonder why the State is preserving this high-cost regime while trying to make itself more competitive internationally.

Tell them in the USA, people can use 802.11b antennas that push one and even two watts of power, while the Regulator caps Irish wireless 802.11b to 100mw. Wonder why that policy is in place when all it does is hurt the little guy trying to connect the warehouse to the reception.

Tell your officials that Ireland has a proud history of pirate radio and TV deflectors and that there's a groundswell of Irish small businesses entering the high-powered unregulated wireless space. They would like to connect the local constituency office as part of the wireless information grid. Ask the politician to sign up. You could do the setup for EUR 400, if you had an always-on access node for the infrastructure.

Ask your elected officials (that includes the councillors and those in the county council offices) to define their position in this area. You have to know who is opposing the reach of broadband in Ireland by identifying those paid politicos who don't know the issues.

Bernie
wireless information network kilkenny

Paddy20

Martin,

I agree with "topgold", but I would suggest that you put it all - in writing - for obvious reasons.

Nice to see your thread getting some constructive feedback at last. Despite the apathy that exists in general in "Donegal" my own damn County.

Be lucky & I will be in touch ASAP.

God bless.

Yours,

Paddy20;)

theciscokid

include "teleworking" - working from the home,

less traffic on the streets, at the end of the day its becoming more popular with companies abroad anyway, 100 more teleworkers is a 100 more cars off the streets

DonegalMan

Originally posted by theciscokid
include "teleworking" - working from the home,

Along same lines, as this is a meeting specifically with Donegal TD's , I will certainly make an issue of how Internet access can create a level playing field for people in rural areas.

Martin

ragabone

As always this issue comes down to money, Eircom are not going to supply DSL to rural communities without a profit making supply of customers, Companies or community grown business are going to be detered from setting up and running business in communities with poor telecommunications infrastructure. This cycle needs to broken and it is up to our TDs to break the cycle, by putting pressure on Eircom to enable DSl lines (realistically the government needs to offer some incentives to accomplish this). Alternatively, Eircom should be forced to open there lines up to other organisations, it would be nice to get some real competition to Eircom.