Ireland bottom of broad-band league table

shotamoose

The Broadband Stakeholder Group in the UK have released their annual report, which includes lots of interesting figures comparing a bunch of countries on various broadband indicators. It looks like a pretty professional attempt at a comparison of who has got broadband properly up and running who is completely f***ing it up. Guess which camp Ireland's in?

There's six main indicators: price, choice, regulation, availability, market context and take-up. These are calculated as indices between 0 and 1, where a high score represents a good performance. 11 countries were compared on each indicator. This is how Ireland did:

Choice: 9th (0.47)
Price: 9th (0.35)
Regulation*: 4th (0.83)
Availability: 11th (0.45)
Market context**: (9th) (0.14)
Take-up index: 11th (0.01)

*Regulation index measures 'broadband market actions taken by regulators', but doesn't try to measure the success of policies.
** Market context measures whether countries have high penetration of services that are ‘part way’ towards broadband

They also include a handy chart to show just how far we are behind everyone else on take-up.

Looks like the Italians might be nearly as badly off as us.

seamus

Lol, the graph on page 9 says it all I think. All the other countries all huddled together, and little Ireland out on its own, doing its own thing.

The results are from September 2003, just around the introduction of FRIACO. It would be interesting to see the no of metered narrowband -v- unmetered narrowband now. Although I'm not sure if they'd count what we have now as true unmetered narrowband.....

Agent7249

Doubt they would since unmetered means unlimited hours while 180 is defined, go over it and yer fecked. lol I've gone over it a couple times already. I have no life

Ryaner

From reading it I believe it takes flat rate as any kind of flat rate dial up access. The Uk have no completely unmetered access. They all range in around 150-180hours a month for the set price so the IOL etc ones over here would be counted

Urban Weigl

Originally posted by Ryaner
From reading it I believe it takes flat rate as any kind of flat rate dial up access. The Uk have no completely unmetered access. They all range in around 150-180hours a month for the set price so the IOL etc ones over here would be counted

I am sure you meant the ones in Ireland all range between 150 and 180 hours?

Ripwave

Originally posted by Urban Weigl
I am sure you meant the ones in Ireland all range between 150 and 180 hours?

BT Yahoo! Internet £15.99
"With no internet call charges and you can surf for 150 hours every month. Online session limits apply. BT line is required. "
(First 3 months for £3.99/month)

Ryaner

Exactly, I work indirectly for BT and knew of the products and how and why they had to put the time limits on. It doesnt look like the limits will go either altho the new Esat off with free calls up an hour long over here could turn it into a situation like the states(free local calls over there). I thing esats package is paired with the BB tho

Ripwave

Originally posted by Ryaner
a situation like the states(free local calls over there).

People keep saying that. I lived in the states for 10 years, and my regular bill included $4 worth of "free" calls. Local calls were unmetered, but cost a few cents per call. When I say local, I mean the 4 exchanges nearest to my exchange. A call from my home in the suburbs to my office in centre City (about 20 miles, same area code) cost me more than a national call costs here in Ireland. "Metropolitan calling" allowing unlimited calls throughout the city and its suburbs, cost $40 a month. (I was with Bell Atlantic which is now part of Verizon. Because they still apply different tarrifs in different cities, they don't publish their prices on their website, unless you "log in" with your own local phone account info. that way, you can't compare what you're paying to what other people in other Verizon cities are paying).

Ryaner

Well my relatives live over there. I didnt know about the diff call prices within area codes altho where my relatives where, people had a second line for internet access and left it dialed in constantly with an auto dialer program. (the isps tended to dc them after 2hrs I think it was). They had to pay for isp access which was around 10-15dollars a month at a max