IrelandOffline presentation at the Digital Media Conference

Dangger

IrelandOffline were invited to speak on the telecommuncations panel of the 2nd Digital Media Conference held in the O'Reilly Hall UCD on the 1st of May and organised by Digtal Media Intelligence.

Our presentation was kept to a very strict 5 minutes by the chair, Karlin Lillington the real meat was in the questions and answers session that followed the presentations. On the panel I was joined by Charlie Ardagh (Leap Broadband ), Tommy McCabe (IBEC ) and Justin Cahill (Esat BT). I will hopefully be able to get a transcript of the proceedings. I have notes from the other discussion sessions but not my own.

For the time bieng I have included the text from IrelandOffline's presentation, and the slides are available here.


Here is the text of the presentation:

This time last year flat rate dial up was a distant dream that Eircom told us was not possible and ADSL was available to few for vast expense compared to other European operators.

Today dial-up flat rate is around the corner with a June release, and we have seen reduction in the costs of some ADSL offerings.

The two events are linked with operators realising that the writing was on the wall for squeezing metered access for all it was worth. But we cannot afford to forget how long we have been standing still in Ireland with regard to Internet availability and range of services. We have not been able to rely on operators to provide the services that are required, we’ve had to continuosly highlight the shortcoming of Internet connectivity in Ireland.

Broadband is crucial to our economy and the attraction of Ireland, and this has been identified at a European government level and at a national government level for some time. Other governments have been much faster in prioritising it and in getting results.

If Ireland is to prosper, we must have a communications infrastructure which is well ahead of the average. Checking ourselves against Europe is not enough any more. We need to lead the field.

2003 has seen improvements, all though they have taken a long time coming and we need to ensure that we never get stuck in the deadlock we have seen in the past between operators which has ultimately benefited them and hindered users greatly.

Various groups have been calling for flat rate Internet access for several years. Only last Christmas did we see real movement on the matter with the Minister for Communications issuing a directive on it. Its going to take until June 2003 to get finally there. It’s an easy step that could and should have been made way way back.

Its undeniable that the recent price cuts in Digital Subscriber Lines have been directly linked to the imminent introduction of flat rate dial up products. Operators have had to react. Obvioulsy this benefits the users, who have suffered for long enough! But even the current DSL offerings could do with some serious improvement. More on that later.

Ireland has suffered to a large degree from the lack of cable Internet access via our extensive cable TV network. And this has been the key differentiator between broadband roll out in Ireland and the rest of the EU.

The competition form a cable roll out of Internet services in the UK accelerated the broadband plans of operators such as BT and Freeserve. Without a competing infrastructure in Ireland to their own, Eircom have managed to keep a last mile bottleneck in place and hold us back.

Wireless services and the competition they will bring as they gather pace and roll out across the country are a means of ensuring that no single operator can hold the country to ransom in the future.

It’s interesting to note that from May 2002 (the I-Stream launch date) to December 2002 there were just 3,000 installations of ADSL throughout the country. After a reduced cost version was launched earlier this month, there were 1,000 sales in the first week alone.

However there appears to be something sinister lurking beneath the current DSL service provision. Its high line failure rate has resulted in close to 50% of IrelandOffline’s members who have applied in areas where their exchanges are enabled not being able to avail of the service. Last year Microsoft had a very high number of line failures when they had lines tested for teleworkers they wished to upgrade to ADSL.

Lets not forget too that the recent reduced cost DSL is a lesser service with a higher contention ratio.The contention has climbed from 24:1 to 48:1 which could result in some people not achieving speeds much faster than ISDN in some cases. We’re being offered Hector Grey products at Brown Thomas prices.

There is latent demand, as has already been demonstrated by recent take up, but the price needs to get below the €40 mark as determined by ComReg themselves in their MRBI survey. Demand is likely to triple once the price drops.

Operators have had long enough to implement DSL roll out its crazy that places like the Shannon Industrial Estates in Clare have no ADSL option for the forseeable future. 88 out of 1100 exchanges is not enough.

I don’t want to confuse “HotSpot” technology with wireless Internet access. Hotspots do not provide connectivity for the masses. They are for nomadic access. By wireless Internet access I mean speeds from 256kbps up to 4mbps to the home or business.

We are seeing serious community groups such as Dublin WAN developing rapidly and looking to form a co-operative to get connectivity rolled out at cost. Operators such as Digiweb and Sigma have shown just what wireless can achieve and how quickly.

We can open up the way for true competition leading to greater choice and availability of better services only by ensuring that alternative last mile infrastructure is developed.

Paddy20

Dangger,

I like it. Neat concise factual polite and truthful.

Lets hope the wider more powerful media picks up on the main points, particularly * the last mile connectivity line conundrum!.

An answer exists, but do the appropriate people have the integrity too act NOW??.. or even the bottle required!.

Paddy20.

shinzon

How come eircom are never at these things, do they want to know what people actually want or do they just not care


SHIN

Dangger

How come eircom are never at these things, do they want to know what people actually want or do they just not care

They were invited to partake in the panel but declined. They no longer wish to stand up and take hits in public, IBEC (famous for quotes such as "who is going ot pay for flat rate", "who is going to pay for broadband", "why would businesses need more than 512k", "Eircom's network is underutilised")will do when they are not around though!

PiE

Nicely done.

Apart from...

"Microsoft last year had less than 50% of lines they tested for teleworkers they wished to upgrade fail in their first test."

So more than 50% passed? Somehow I don't think that's what you meant

Dangger

Sorry that was a typo that was actually removed on the day! Thanks.