SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

There was 2 months over the summer where everything worked as it should, they've been having congestion problems since September of last year, so pardon me if I'm not optimistic in my posts

Its Only Ray Parlour wrote: »

It's not a waste. The money is to be made in the densely populated areas. Don't you think UPC would have rolled out fibre in rural areas already if there was money to be made there? They're not ignoring yous just to piss yous off or anything.

These private companies would go bankrupt if they rolled it out to the rural parts first. You should consider yourselves lucky that you're actually getting FTTH eventually because very few countries are getting a 100% fibre rollout.

Take a look at this: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=92848782&postcount=98

Around 37% of our population lives in rural areas, which is quite high. Countries with faster average speeds tend to have higher population densities, more apartments and less rural dwellings.

All that's missing in that tome of drivel is the word cultchie. Shur shouldn't we all be around de turf fire reading Peig and leave that new fangled tinternet to dem lads in de big smoke. Turn up de wireless there Biddy never mind churning that milk.

Rural broadband really does need subsidies if it's something we consider important enough to do right.

What was worrying here was that the market on the 2000s was so dysfunctional that urban broadband was bad during a massive economic boom. That really doesn't paint ComReg and the Government of that era in a very good light at all.

I would wonder if that's partly down to planning differences though?

The Republic creates a lot of rural scatter development without density of villages and towns. That makes sustaining anything viable very difficult.

You've also got an issue where a large area of rural Ireland in the West is very, very poor land albeit very spectacular so agricultural output would be much lower than NI.

I wonder if you compared NI to the Southeast, South Midlands or to County Cork would you get a more valid comparison.

All of the poorer parts of Ulster landwise were basically not taken into NI because of how partition happened : wealthy landowners didn't really exist in Donegal and Western Fermanagh and Western Rural Derry are sort of borderline.

Connections to urban centres is easier in NI because its just a lot more compact too. You can't really compare it to some of the more remote parts of the west in terms of access to urban centres.

A comparison between Western Ireland and the Scottish Highlands would be more useful tbh.

I would be very concerned about 30% of employment being state funded in NI. That's not sustainable as I don't see an appetite in Britain to subsidise to that level and waining interest in NI. That needs to be urgently addressed or they could be facing major issues down the line.

I agree though there's been exceptionally unbalanced regional development here. They basically piled all the investment into Dublin while scattering investment in non-Dublin to the four winds. We should have a smaller, more sustainable Dublin, a bigger Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford serving as regional hubs.

I find in Irish politics it's like you've Dublin and "Down the Country" and Cork, Limerick and Galway are sort of put into the same notional category as small towns. Any suggestion of building cities as hubs gets met with severe GAA shirt mentality where they cannot see how Cork and Limerick Cities actually benefit Kerry, Tipp and rural Waterford etc etc

Watch as the FTTH turns into the all Ireland hurling league!

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Oh there are others who have expressed the view that the culchies should up sticks and move to urban areas if they want decent broadband

The land Tadgh the land. Tadgh has to take care of the land....... No urban life for Tadgh.