Broadband penetration rates - percentages?

LoBo

Interesting reads - thanks for the transcripts.

"..that’s maths that you’re putting forward rather than spin.."
heh, obviously maths is a difficult proposition for them - where's the 5% coming from? 75000/4000000 = 1.875% ..

Ripwave

LoBo wrote:

Interesting reads - thanks for the transcripts.

"..that’s maths that you’re putting forward rather than spin.."
heh, obviously maths is a difficult proposition for them - where's the 5% coming from? 75000/4000000 = 1.875% ..

Look, if you're going to slag off McRedmonds maths, you should get your own right.

There are 4,000,000 people in Ireland, but there are only about 1,500,000 households in the country. Unless you want to argue that only one person in any household should be allowed to use DSL, and a household with 5 people should have to pay for 5 DSL connections, then you have to allow the 5% figure.

(Of course, McRedmonds 75,000 includes Business DSL connections, but as far as I can tell, that's trough for the figures from other countries too).

DonegalMan

Ripwave wrote:

Look, if you're going to slag off McRedmonds maths, you should get your own right.

Read EircomTribunal's post above where he corrected me on this.

Your maths are quite correct (as mine were) but if we are making comparisons with figures published for other countries, then we have to use the standard measure which is the amount of broadband connections per 100 population.

Ripwave

DonegalMan wrote:

Read EircomTribunal's post above where he corrected me on this.

Your maths are quite correct (as mine were) but if we are making comparisons with figures published for other countries, then we have to use the standard measure which is the amount of broadband connections per 100 population.

Yes, I've since verified that.

But I've also re-read the interview, and McRedmond never said 5% for "broadband connections per 100 inhabitants" (in fact, that's not generally expressed as a percentage figure). And the interviewer said "for example in Denmark, which has twelve point seven percent of the population having access to broadband". I don't know if Downes meant that there are 12.7 broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in Denmark (700,000 DSL connections more or less) or not, but if he did, then his statistics are skewed too, because a "score" of 12.7 of the "BB subscriptions per 100 inhabitants" would actually imply that about 35% of the population have access to Broadband. (That's what the OECD says - referring to Koreas "score" of 21, it says that at 30 broadband connections per 100 inhabitants, 90% of the population would have access to Broadband).

So what I said still stands - if you want to refute McRedmond, there's no point in using a different standard than the one he used.

His figure of 75,000 DSL connections representing 5% of households stands (ignoring the substantial issue of residential versus business connections for the moment). Maybe that particular frame of reference happens to flatter eircom, but that, in and of itself, doesn't make it invalid.

Does anyone have up to date numbers for the actual number of broadband connections in other EU countries?

eircomtribunal

Ripwave wrote:

Yes, I've since verified that.

But I've also re-read the interview, and McRedmond never said 5% for "broadband connections per 100 inhabitants" (in fact, that's not generally expressed as a percentage figure). And the interviewer said "for example in Denmark, which has twelve point seven percent of the population having access to broadband". I don't know if Downes meant that there are 12.7 broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in Denmark (700,000 DSL connections more or less) or not, but if he did, then his statistics are skewed too, because a "score" of 12.7 of the "BB subscriptions per 100 inhabitants" would actually imply that about 35% of the population have access to Broadband. (That's what the OECD says - referring to Koreas "score" of 21, it says that at 30 broadband connections per 100 inhabitants, 90% of the population would have access to Broadband).

So what I said still stands - if you want to refute McRedmond, there's no point in using a different standard than the one he used.

His figure of 75,000 DSL connections representing 5% of households stands (ignoring the substantial issue of residential versus business connections for the moment). Maybe that particular frame of reference happens to flatter eircom, but that, in and of itself, doesn't make it invalid.

Does anyone have up to date numbers for the actual number of broadband connections in other EU countries?

Ripwave,
if you listen again through the interview or read it, then can see that they were discussing on the basis of the Broadband penetration figures of connections per 100 persons.
They referred to the 0.1 % of Greece and to the 12.7 of Denmark, which are from the most up-to date official EU–15 stats for January 2004. They were not talking about household figures, and while they were not saying that after quoting each of the figures it is clearly implied.
McRedmond knows exactly that the Irish figure in this comparative context is 1.8% and not 5%!
Please have a look at "There is something Rotten in the State of Broadband Ireland", downloadable from the main page of www.comwreck.com in a small and a print version.
And yes, the Danes have 12.69% of bb connections per 100 persons and SKorea has 24%.

P.

Ripwave

LoBo wrote:

Some very good graphics in your .pdf on comwreck.com (direct link) - exactly what I mean by a fact sheet for journos who are interviewing Eircom- eg:
<image deleted for brevity - see above>
I've helpfully labelled luxembourg there too

If you're emailing Morning Ireland, why not add a link to the pdf (see above) for further info.

That's all very well, but McRedmond will simpley point out that 6 month old statistics are totally meaningless in this game, given the rate of increase in the number of connections (if the "635 we signed up yesterday" is actually true, you're looking at 13,000 a month, even on a 5 day week basis).

Now I'm not supporting McRedmond here, I'm simply playing devils advocate. The metric "BB subscriptions per 100 inhabitants" shouldn't be expressed as a percentage (because it isn't a percentage), and it's obviously confusing when it is used that way (as evidenced by Richard Downes reference to Denmark and 12.7% "having access to Broadband". McRedmond clearly used misleading statistics, but even if you are extremely generous and say that he doesn't understand them himself, you still end up with the problem that the metric being used is not intuitive to someone like Richard Downes (hell, it's not intuitive to someone like me - I thought that Koreas score of 24 means that a quarter of the population had access to Broadband, but it actually means that over 2/3rds of Koreans have access to Broadband).

A large part of the reason we're having these discussions is because of eircoms refusal to actually release usable statistics. But if there really are 13,000 new connections a month, then we could easily be at 200,000 connections by mid-2005. That's not quite the 240,000 that would represent a 6 BB subscriptions per 100 inhabitants (note NOT 6%) but it would be a pretty impressive position to be in if the target set by DCMNR is 100,000.

So the statistic that I'd like to see explained at this point is - was yesterday just an exceptional day? Does this 635 only include "sign ups" to eircom, or does it include all connections to the eircom infrastructure, including connections sold through resellers? And what's the actual monthly target?

jwt

Uggggg I'm slightly confused now

See if I have this right

(I'm simplifying this leaving out businesses etc.)
If there approx 2.5 inhabitants per house then if 1 house in a hundred had BB then the reality is 1 in 100 houses but actually the score is 1 in 250 inhabitants

Multiplying this up a score of 24 actualy means 24 by 2.5 is 60 percent of lines assuming one line per house
Put another way a score of 24 in 100 inhabitants is 24 bb lines per 40 (100/2.5) houses again assuming 1 line per house.

Yes? no? maybe?

So for very rough calculations we can assume in future that when someone says say 6 bb per 100 inhabitants what is really meant is 6 bb per 40 possible bb enabled lines or actually 15 percent!



John

eircomtribunal

jwt wrote:

Uggggg I'm slightly confused now

See if I have this right

(I'm simplifying this leaving out businesses etc.)
If there approx 2.5 inhabitants per house then if 1 house in a hundred had BB then the reality is 1 in 100 houses but actually the score is 1 in 250 inhabitants

Multiplying this up a score of 24 actualy means 24 by 2.5 is 60 percent of lines assuming one line per house
Put another way a score of 24 in 100 inhabitants is 24 bb lines per 40 (100/2.5) houses again assuming 1 line per house.

Yes? no? maybe?

So for very rough calculations we can assume in future that when someone says say 6 bb per 100 inhabitants what is really meant is 6 bb per 40 possible bb enabled lines or actually 15 percent!

John

The official stats used as the primary figures by the EU and the OECD are simple and clear.
12.7% bb penetration for Denmark means: per 100 Danes there are 12.7 broadband connections.
It is a simple and clear percentage figure and I can't understand Ripwave's post questioning the validity of using %.

The beauty with this "Broadband penetration figure" is that it is clear and measurable and measured in this way by the other countries.

Other definitions, like percentage of households with broadband connections are sometimes used, but are not at all as clear-cut. Reason: You could simply multiply your bb penetration figure by the person per household factor (3 in Ireland) to get roughly the "households with bb percentage", but in reality you'd have first to subtract the business bb figures. The Swedish regulator, if I remember rightly, gives such detailed data. But it is much better to compare with data that is available in the same definition across the Eu or OECD.

P

Ripwave

jwt wrote:

Uggggg I'm slightly confused now

See if I have this right

(I'm simplifying this leaving out businesses etc.)
If there approx 2.5 inhabitants per house then if 1 house in a hundred had BB then the reality is 1 in 100 houses but actually the score is 1 in 250 inhabitants

Sort of - if 1 house in 100 has ADSL, and there are 2.5 people per house the "score" is actually "1 BB subscription per 250 inhabitants", or "0.4 BB subsriptions per 100 inhabitants".

The notion of using a standard metric is admirable in itself, but the actual metric used is a bit confusion because it sort of compares apples to oranges.

jwt wrote:

Multiplying this up a score of 24 actualy means 24 by 2.5 is 60 percent of lines assuming one line per house
Put another way a score of 24 in 100 inhabitants is 24 bb lines per 40 (100/2.5) houses again assuming 1 line per house.

Yes? no? maybe?

So for very rough calculations we can assume in future that when someone says say 6 bb per 100 inhabitants what is really meant is 6 bb per 40 possible bb enabled lines or actually 15 percent!

Yes. Sort of. If you ignore the fact that some of the DSL enabled lines are actually used by businesses, and aren't going to residences, so the numbers don't actually mean what they seem to mean, because "business lines" will mean different things in different countries. The US has a very strong entrepreneurial ethos, and there are a lot of home based businesses. And there are significant numbers of "home offices" for people who work from home a couple of days a week. This is probably not as common in many European countries, and I have no idea how common it is in Korea). But these particular "business lines" are often used by the rest of the family out of business hours for "residential" use, which isn't the case for the small business in Ireland that uses DSL in the office, to replace the ISDN and dialup access that they were stuck with until very recently.

DonegalMan

Ripwave wrote:

The metric "BB subscriptions per 100 inhabitants" shouldn't be expressed as a percentage

That's the OECD way of doing it and they're the people that Comreg quote from

If Eircom want to play with figures, let them, we'll hit them on it, but if we go away from OECD then we'll have to explain it every time we make comparisons plus give Eircom a tool to hit us with, I can hear it now - ".. oh that IOFFL crowd, they measure things different from everyone else so their figures are meaningless ... "

(Plus EircomTribunal would have to redo his pretty charts every time the figures are released )

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

The official stats used as the primary figures by the EU and the OECD are simple and clear.
12.7% bb penetration for Denmark means: per 100 Danes there are 12.7 broadband connections.
It is a simple and clear percentage figure and I can't understand Ripwave's post questioning the validity of using %.

I'm pretty certain that the OECD does NOT express that as 12.7% bb penetration. There are no references to percentages on this table. for example.
http://www.oecd.org/document/33/0,2340,en_2649_201185_19503969_1_1_1_1,00.html

12.7 BB subscription per 100 inhabitants would imply a "broadband penetration" closer to 35%, assuming that most of those subscriptions were residential subscriptions. Otherwise you have the ridiculuous situation where you could have universal BB access with only 40% "broadband penetratraion", because there are far more people than there are phonelines, so it's statistically impossible to get 100 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants.

(And yes, I know that some media reports use this erroneous "broadband
penetration" label, but it is far from universal, and is clearlt misleading).

By the way, this ITU document is where I got the reference to "At a level of 30 per 100 inhabitants, more than 90 percent of households would have broadband":
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/papers/2004/ITU%20Statistical%20Activities%20by%20SP.pdf

Ripwave

DonegalMan wrote:

That's the OECD way of doing it and they're the people that Comreg quote from

Is it - where do the OECD express it as a percentage?

(I've looked - I might well have missed it, because there's a limit to the number of documents that you can read, but none of the obvious ones expressed this "BB subscriptions per 100 inhabitants" as a percentage, because a percentage implies that there is such a thing as 100%, and that clearly isn't true of this metric).

eircomtribunal

Ripwave wrote:

I'm pretty certain that the OECD does NOT express that as 12.7% bb penetration. There are no references to percentages on this table. for example.
http://www.oecd.org/document/33/0,2340,en_2649_201185_19503969_1_1_1_1,00.html

Ripwave,

What are you at? This is leading us astray.

per 100 = percent. It is not apples an pears. Each of the population could order one broadband connection, in theory.
On top of the OECD chart it says broadband connections per hundred inhabitants. That is the same as percent to me.

P.

P.S. And in the EU chart (in "There is something Rotten..."), which I got from the Danish regulator they use the % sign. I didn't include it.

jwt

Can our one and only mod seperate this out to a new thread please?

John

DonegalMan

Ripwave wrote:

Is it - where do the OECD express it as a percentage?

There seems to be two arguments here, let's try and put them to bed for once and for all

1. What are OECD actually measuring?
   They are clearly measuring subscribers per 100 population. They don't actually define that but if you go back to their very first report in Oct 2001 (pdf downloadable here) they state it indirectly in a number of places:

   P5: "At the beginning of 2001 just one person per 100 inhabitants, on average in OECD countries, was a subscriber to high speed Internet access"
   
   P12 Footnote: "This indicator shows the total number of households which are connected to cable"
   
   P13 Footnote: "DSL connections for Australia are an estimate based on Telstra's reported broadband subscribers and industry estimates for overall broadband connection."

   When you think about it, it makes sense, they know the number of subscribers, they know the population but they don't have any conversion figure to get an accurate total people with access, they would have to estimate it.
   
   
2. Is it right to quote this figure as a Percentage?
   The mathemetician in me says no, the pragmatist in me accepts that that is what is in everyday usage. OECD certainly refer to it as "Broadband Penetration" and I would stick with their definitions for the reasons I gave earlier.

Note to JWT - I endorse what you are saying about moving it elsewhere, it's a becoming a pedantic/distracting argument and this is my last input on it

sceptre

Split from the Morning Ireland thread.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

What are you at? This is leading us astray.

Where it's getting at is that if you try to play eircom at their own game by redefining what the statistics actually say, then eircom will win.

eircomtribunal wrote:

per 100 = percent. It is not apples an pears. Each of the population could order one broadband connection, in theory.

So we won't have "100% broadband penetration" in Ireland until there are 4 million seperate and individual DSL, wireless and cable internet connections in place? Any family of 2 adults and 4 kids, for example, would have to pay for 6 seperate DSL connections for it to count as "100% broadband penetration"?

Frankly, that's ridiculuous, and that precisely the sort of statistical tomfoolery that you're all accusing eircom of being guilty of.

There are about on the order of 2 million phone lines in the country. If every one of them was DSL enabled, you'd only have "50 broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants".

Now is that 50% "broadband penetration"? Even though it would include about 90% of all households in the country? What would 100% Broadband penetration be?

eircomtribunal wrote:

On top of the OECD chart it says broadband connections per hundred inhabitants. That is the same as percent to me.

It's not percent, because a single subscription can be shared between multiple inhabitants - so you can have 100% broadband access without having 1 bradband subscription petr person.

If it was per cent, then the OECD would say per cent - they sure as hell aren't using the clunky construction "BB subscriptions per 100 inhabitants" for fun.

eircomtribunal wrote:

P.S. And in the EU chart (in "There is something Rotten..."), which I got from the Danish regulator they use the % sign. I didn't include it.

Well then the Danish regulator doesn't understand percentages either.

Ripwave

DonegalMan wrote:

There seems to be two arguments here, let's try and put them to bed for once and for all

1. What are OECD actually measuring?
   
   They are clearly measuring subscribers per 100 population. They don't actually define that

What's to define, Martin? The description "Broadband Subscriptions per 100 Inhabitants" is a very clear definition, and I don't see anyone arguing over what it means. For the sake of simplicity, we can, for now at least, count it as DSL connections per 100 inhabitants (in Ireland), though that is slowly changing. As a metric for comparing countries, it's a perfectly reasonably measure. But it's not actually useful for understanding where we stand, because it's not necessarily obvious to peope that a "score" of 30 on that measure effectively means unversal broadband access.

DonegalMan wrote:

[*]Is it right to quote this figure as a Percentage?
The mathemetician in me says no, the pragmatist in me accepts that that is what is in everyday usage. OECD certainly refer to it as "Broadband Penetration" and I would stick with their definitions for the reasons I gave earlier.

, No, Martin, the OECD do not quote this as a percentage. Some people, who obviously don't understand it, are misquoting it as a percentage (including the Danish regulator, it appears). But there is nothing pragmatic about using bogus statistics, especially when it plays into eircoms hands.

When eircom comes out next summer and claims that there are 120,000 residential DSL connections, and that this means that 10% of the population have access to broadband at home, the ordinary man in the street can pretty much recognize that this figure is reasonably accurate - he doesn't need any formal training in statistics to do this. If the Sunday Business Post and Morning Ireland and Ireland Offline have been busy publicising misleading statistics that imply that Denmark has 12.7% "broadband penetration", then eircom looks pretty good. This is an "apples to oranges" comparison, because 40% of the Danish population has broadband access at home, not 12.7%, but the average man in the street isn't going to have a intrinsic grasp of that.

Result? eircom 1, the real worl 0.

And all because you think it's pragmatic to lable something as a percentage, when it clearly isn't (because you don't need 100 BB Subscriptions per 100 inhabitants to have universal BB access).

jwt

So if Eircom claim 120,000 bb is 10% (not sure where that comes from*) connections in a population of 4,000,000 it actually means
3 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants. (120,000 / 4,000,000 = 0.03 0.03*100 inhabitants = 3)


So in that scenario Denmark is a factor of four ahead of us not a couple of points.

*
I assume were working on 1,200,000 lines in ireland?

John

P.S. Puting in the obvious maths in above is more for my benefit than casting aspersions on posters mathematical abilities

vinnyfitz

I thought Peter's correction of eircom, read out on Morning Ireland this morning, was quite helpful to the debate.

maxheadroom

vinnyfitz wrote:

I thought Peter's correction of eircom, read out on Morning Ireland this morning, was quite helpful to the debate.

Any chance of a transcript?

Ripwave

jwt wrote:

So if Eircom claim 120,000 bb is 10% (not sure where that comes from*) connections in a population of 4,000,000 it actually means
3 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants.

There are about 1,200,000 houshoulds in Ireland - I think most people would accept that if there's a BB connection in a household, it would be fair to say that everyone in the house has access to Broadband? (obviously, there will be exceptions). So if 10% of housholds have a broadband connection, is that 10% Broadband Penetration, or is it 3% Broadband Penetration?

(120,000 DSL connections would give a "score" of 3 on the "BB Subscriptions per 100 inhabitants" table).

Just answer the simple question - how many BB subscriptions does a country with a population of 4 million people need top have 100% Broadband Penetration?

Is anyone seriously claiming that you need 4 million Broadband subscriptions to achieve 100% Broadband Penetration?

jwt

Ripwave wrote:

Just answer the simple question - how many BB subscriptions does a country with a population of 4 million people need top have 100% Broadband Penetration?

Ah...Ripwave I'm not disagreeing with you, far from it. Just making sure that if I'm asked I have it dead straight in my own mind.

Is what I said in my last post right or wrong? Its an honest question, I don't want to go off half cocked with this to some reporter if he/she should ask.

If what I said is broadly right if simplistic fair enough. If it's wrong show me where. All I'm doing with the above post is putting my understanding of the situation forward.


John

eircomtribunal

jwt wrote:

So if Eircom claim 120,000 bb is 10% (not sure where that comes from*) connections in a population of 4,000,000 it actually means
3 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants. (120,000 / 4,000,000 = 0.03 0.03*100 inhabitants = 3)


So in that scenario Denmark is a factor of four ahead of us not a couple of points.

*
I assume were working on 1,200,000 lines in ireland?

John

P.S. Puting in the obvious maths in above is more for my benefit than casting aspersions on posters mathematical abilities

"Broadband penetration" is the the word we need to define whenever we use the word. It is used as the description for different things by different people internationally.

1.Broadband penetration, used by the OECD, the EU and others as the prime figure to compare the broadband status of countries is defined as:

number of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants or
percentage of broadband subscribers of population

That is the set of figures discussed on Morning Ireland. Denmark (January 2004) had 12.7 bb subscribers per 100 Danes (or 12.7% of Danes had a broadband subscription), Greece had 0.1 bb subscribers per 100 Greeks, and Ireland had 0.9 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Currently Ireland has 75 000 bb subscribers out of 4 000 000 inhabitants, which equals 1.875 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants(or 1.875% of the Irish have a bb subscription) – and not 5 (%), as McRedmond had claimed (and he specifically referred to that context: "Well, actually, where we are in that table is we are already now at five percent."

This set of measuring has two advantages: it is universally easily measured (data are available) which is very important for comparisons and it is as good an indication of the broadband status of a country as any other measure.

[Note about the % issue: Showing the above as %, as in the EU and Danish graph of my document "There is something Rotten in the State of Broadband Ireland", is correct if the definition of what is measured is given correctly. The EU and Danish percentage table and graph show us how many people of Greece, Ireland etc. have taken out a broadband subscription. Currently 1.875 out of 100 Irish people, or 1.875 % have taken out a bb subscription, in Jan 2004 12.69% of Danes, or 12.69 Danes of 100 Danes had taken a bb subscription.
Ripwave, you may find this set of figures not the most apt, as it does not directly say what percentage of a population is actually "using" broadband,(it's a bit like newspapers publishing a figure of copies printed, another figure of copies sold and another one of number of readers) but their is nothing wrong with the usage of %. 12% percent is nothing but shorthand for the fraction 12/100; important is that you use the same unit in top and bottom of the fraction: 12 Danes/100 Danes have a broadband subscription. As the unit is the same it cancels out and you arrive at 12/100 or 12%.
I thank you for your insistence as it forced me to look closer into this and will be extra careful with exact definitions in the future. It is always a tight line between being over-exact to the point of becoming unreadable and not being detailed enough.]


2.Broadband penetration, also used by the OECD, the EU and others as a figure to describe the broadband access of households.

percentage of households with broadband access

This percentage makes "more sense" or is more "real". As a rule of thumb you can multiply the figure of "bb subscriptions per 100 inhabitants", see above, with 3 (three persons in one household) to arrive at it.
I and many others don't like to use this figure as the prime figure for a few reasons:
It is not really measured as such in the same way by different countries, thus not the best basis for comparison. It is not as easily measured: you have to subtract the number of bb subscriptions of businesses from the overall figure, to arrive at a clean result. The Swedish Regulator has exact figures for Sweden in this regard.
But there is nothing wrong to compare with other countries in this regard, as long as the other figures are in the same category.
McRedmond on Morning Ireland of course compared the alleged Irish figure for bb household penetration of 5% (that would be assuming that of the current 75 000 bb connections some 46 223 are for households [46 223 equals 5% of the 924 464 "family units in private households"CSO] and 28 776 are taken by businesses.) with the figures for bb subscriptions per 100 inhabitants of other EU countries. Household penetration figures for Europe will arrive at around 20% by end 2004. See for example this


3.Broadband penetration, in the US is often defined as:

percentage of Internet user that use broadband

Only recently the US media said, "broadband penetration now over 50%", meaning, over 50% of Internet user now do so by broadband. Again, nothing wrong with it, as long as the definition is clear.


4.There are other Broadband penetration definitions, like

DSL subscriptions per 100 phone lines,

"The penetration rate in the country is three DSL subscriptions per 100 phone lines..." from this document about the bb development in the East Europenanhttp://www.polishmarket.com/next.php?id=6634
Again as long as we compare like with like, no problem, but for practical reasons the most widely available figures are preferable. The whole thing is confusing enough.

John, as you mention being prepared for answers etc,
Availability:
We've, according to the latest detailed CSO (2002, I think) figures:
924 464 family units in private households;
541 520 are in towns of 1500 of more, equals 58.57% of all households;
382 944 are in rural areas.

Any claims by McRedmond and others, that we have "over 70%" or "84%
availability by March 2005" as TIFF/IBEC's Tommy McCabe claimed in his recent silisconrepulblic interview (figures were supplied to him by Eircom), are outrageous and a deliberate misinformation of the public and should be refuted wherever they crop up. I do my best to do that and the publication of media reports etc on boards is of the greatest value.

So, even if all towns of 1500 and greater were dsl enabled and we had no bb line test failures, dsl availability would be under 60%. When you calculate a line failure rate of 20% (McRedmond) into the equation, we arrived at a dsl availability of some 46.856. With a more likely failure rate of 25% we'd a dsl population coverage of 44%.
End of 2003 the OECD average was a 75% broadband coverage.
Eircom have picked the raisins and dsl enabled the biggest 200 of their 1000 exhanges and we don't see plans published to enable the rest of them.

P.

Ripwave

jwt wrote:

Is what I said in my last post right or wrong? Its an honest question, I don't want to go off half cocked with this to some reporter if he/she should ask.

I thought I did answer your question.

You made a couple of statements in your last posrt ("eircoms 10% means 3 BB subscriptions per 100 inhabitants" and "Denmark is a factor of four ahead of us" both of which logically follow from what has already been discussed). You also asked the question "I assume were working on 1,200,000 lines in ireland?" and I answered that we're talking about (very) roughly 1,200,000 households. (There's closer to 2 million lines).

I'm not trying to be obtuse about this. You can have "100% Broadband Penetration" with only 30 or 40 "BB subscriptions per 100 inhabitants". If you are confused, it's because some people insist on misquoting the OECD.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

"Broadband penetration" is the the word we need to define whenever we use the word. It is used as the description for different things by different people internationally.

1.Broadband penetration, used by the OECD, the EU and others as the prime figure to compare the broadband status of countries is defined as:

number of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants or
percentage of broadband subscribers of population

No, Peter. That's not the OECD or the EUs definition. That's your redefinition (or your copying the Danish regulators redefinition).

The whole point of a percentage is that 100% means 100%. And it's clear that you do not need 1 broadband connection for every inhabitant to achieve 100% Broadband Penetration.

That is the set of figures discussed on Morning Ireland. Denmark (January 2004) had 12.7 bb subscribers per 100 Danes (or 12.7% of Danes had a broadband subscription),

There you go again, Peter. "12.7% of Danes had a broadband subscription" is a totally meaningless statistic, because a "broadband subscription" is a "shared resource" - it is not restricted to that single subscriber. The correct metric is, exactly as the OECD states it, "12.7 BB subscriptions per 100 inhabitants".

Greece had 0.1 bb subscribers per 100 Greeks, and Ireland had 0.9 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants.

The OECD metric is perfectly adequate for comparing 12.7 to 0.1 or 0.9, and doesn't need any spruious "percentages" tacked on. It is not a percentage, because that implies that the "target" is 100%. And Eircoms "5%" is "5% of 100%", which is precisely what percentage means.

Currently Ireland has 75 000 bb subscribers out of 4 000 000 inhabitants, which equals 1.875 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants(or 1.875% of the Irish have a bb subscription)

You see, even your own numbers come back to bite you, because we don't have 75,000 bb subscribers - we have 75,000 BB (DSL) subscriptions. But a significant number of these are for businesses, and don't represent "subscribers" as a portion of the population. If you want to compare that to the population as a percentage, then you have to allow the term "subscriber" to cover everyone that has access to a "subscription", because otherwise you aren't measuring on a metric that reaches as far as 100%.

– and not 5 (%), as McRedmond had claimed (and he specifically referred to that context: "Well, actually, where we are in that table is we are already now at five percent."

Yes, he did say that. And, apart from the fact that he works for Eircom, I don't have any evidence that he wasn't genuinely confused by the misleading us of the term "percentage" to describe the number of BB subscriptions per 100 population.

This set of measuring has two advantages: it is universally easily measured (data are available) which is very important for comparisons and it is as good an indication of the broadband status of a country as any other measure.

I have consistently said that it's a perfectly reasonable metric. That doesn't make them a percentage.

[Note about the % issue: Showing the above as %, as in the EU and Danish graph of my document "There is something Rotten in the State of Broadband Ireland", is correct if the definition of what is measured is given correctly. The EU and Danish percentage table and graph show us how many people of Greece, Ireland etc. have taken out a broadband subscription. Currently 1.875 out of 100 Irish people, or 1.875 % have taken out a bb subscription, in Jan 2004 12.69% of Danes, or 12.69 Danes of 100 Danes had taken a bb subscription.

Peter, that's a post-hoc arguement if ever I saw one. The Danish graph is mislabeled, plain and simple. Redefining the label after the fact doesn't change the fact that it is wrong. The chart is labeled "Broadband penetration rate in the EU (% of population)". I'm perfectly happy to accept that Denmark had a "score" of 12.7 in a measure of "Broadband Penetration", but it is not a score of 12.7%, because that would imply that the "top score" would be 100%. To suggest that Denmark needs 8 times as many Broadband subscriptions as it has today to reach 100% penetration is, frankly, ludicrous.

Ripwave, you may find this set of figures not the most apt, as it does not directly say what percentage of a population is actually "using" broadband,(it's a bit like newspapers publishing a figure of copies printed, another figure of copies sold and another one of number of readers) but their is nothing wrong with the usage of %. 12% percent is nothing but shorthand for the fraction 12/100; important is that you use the same unit in top and bottom of the fraction: 12 Danes/100 Danes have a broadband subscription. As the unit is the same it cancels out and you arrive at 12/100 or 12%.

Peter, I know what a percentage is. And if you want to say that 12% of Danes have a Broadband subscription, go right ahead. (I have no problem with the the use of "this set of figures" as the basis for comparing different countries, as I have said again and again in this thread) But don't say that "Broadband Penetration in Denmark is 12%", because that's not the same thing, unless you state that Denmark won't have 100% Broadband penetration until every single Dane has their own personal BB connection. And if you want to accuse Eircom of using misleading statistics, then you need to be very careful about not using misleading statistics yourself. 12.7 isn't misleading, 12.7% is.

[snip all the rest about different measures, which aren't relevant to the question at hand, and about which I have no particular argument]

dahamsta

There you go again, Peter. "12.7% of Danes had a broadband subscription" is a totally meaningless statistic, because a "broadband subscription" is a "shared resource" - it is not restricted to that single subscriber. The correct metric is, exactly as the OECD states it, "12.7 BB subscriptions per 100 inhabitants".

I'm sorry, I'm lost. This makes zero sense to me. Could you please explain the difference between a single subscriber and an inhabitant? If I'm to take it that you mean that the subscription is shared between several inhabitants in one habitation, surely that would simply mean that the Danish metric is absolute nonsense? Is that what you're saying?

adam

eircomtribunal

Ripwave,

would you look to the left top description on the OECD graph - Lobo posted it on some thread I cannot find right now - it's on page three of my pdf "There is something Rotten..". it says:

"Broadband Subscribers per 100 inhabitants"

Note: It does not say "broadband subscriptions" . I took that doc straight from the "Information Society" and perhaps they are as stupid as the Danish regulator, or even the OECD don't know what they are talking about...

You may not like that this is called "Broadband Penetration", but there is nothing wrong with expressing the number of people who subscribe to broadband, or the Irish Times etc as a percentage of all the people.



Look at it as well in a pragmatic sense, this is the type of figures that will be used: Demot Ahern his MorningIreland appearance also talked of 3% Irish Broadband penetration (the figure should have been 1.8% of course, as it's 75 000 who have a broadband subscription out of 4 000 000 people)

P.

Ripwave

dahamsta wrote:

I'm sorry, I'm lost. This makes zero sense to me. Could you please explain the difference between a single subscriber and an inhabitant?

For a start, any business that has a DSL line is a subscriber, but isn't an inhabitant.

That doesn't really matter when you just want to compare two different countries, and be able to figure out whether 2 million DSL connections in a country of 27 million people is better or worse than 350,000 DSL connections in a country of 5.4 million. The metric "BB Subscriptions per 100 inhabitants" makes that comparison easy (7.4 is better than 6.4).

If I'm to take it that you mean that the subscription is shared between several inhabitants in one habitation, surely that would simply mean that the Danish metric is absolute nonsense? Is that what you're saying?

I'm saying that it's absolute nonsense to say that Denmark has a "Broadband Penetration rate of 12.7%". That implies that Denmark needs to install 8 times as many BB connections to reach a "penetration rate" of 100%.

The 12.7 number isn't the problem - I have no problem with the claim that Denmark has a "Broadband Penetration Rate" of 12.7 compared to Irelands 1.8 or 2.5 or 3, or whatever the number of the day is. That's a perfectly valid way to compare the two countries. But to express it as a percentage of the population, when you don't need "one for every member of the audience" is simpley wrong.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

Ripwave,

would you look to the left top description on the OECD graph - Lobo posted it on some thread I cannot find right now - it's on page three of my pdf "There is something Rotten..". it says:

"Broadband Subscribers per 100 inhabitants"

Peter, make up your mind. You're the one who is insisting that Irelands 75,000 DSL connections represent 75,000 "subscribers", giving Ireland a "score" of 1.875%.

Unless you want to make the case that the OECD is only counting BB connections that are paid for by individual people, and totally discounting BB connections to businesses, then I don't think it really matters whether you use "subscriber" or "subscription". And I believe you already presented the case against trying to seperate residential and business connections out, when you're trying to compare performance between countries).

And once again, the OECD does NOT state this metric as a %. That's not an accident. They don't state it as a %age, because it isn't a %age.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

You may not like that this is called "Broadband Penetration", but there is nothing wrong with expressing the number of people who subscribe to broadband, or the Irish Times etc as a percentage of all the people.

Peter, I'm going to quote my own post, just for your benefit.

RipWave wrote:

And if you want to say that 12% of Danes have a Broadband subscription, go right ahead.

You are expressing a measure of the number of individual Danes who have subscribed to Broadband. But it isn't a measure of "Broadband Penetration", because you do not need to be personally responsible for a "Broadband Subscription" to benefit from BB.

I'll ask you again - how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself) does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration?

eircomtribunal

Ripwave wrote:

any business that has a DSL line is a subscriber, but isn't an inhabitant.

That is indeed a good point for your argument to use the metric expression "Broadband Subscribers per 100 inhabitants" of the OECD instead of the percentage of the Danish/EU "percent of population that have a bb subscription" (as it disproves my argument that percentage is mathematically correct).

Many in the media are not as mathematically correct and use the percent version as you will have noticed, even analysts like here, simply because % is shorter than "Broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants".
[You still fail to convince me that your other argument against the % use, as expressed in your latest post holds any water, but it is not relevant now to tease that one out really]

A comparison using "household" broadband penetration rates gives a good graphic description of Ireland's place amongst the nations.

P.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

[You still fail to convince me that your other argument against the % use, as expressed in your latest post holds any water, but it is not relevant now to tease that one out really]

how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself) does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration?

eircomtribunal

Ripwave wrote:

I'll ask you again - how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself) does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration?

Ever thought what's the reason for your aggressive style of arguing? Are you aware of it?

You write "how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself).." when in fact the OECD has "subscribers" and you had made "subscriptions" out of it.

I readily acknowledge that for the mathematical argument about percentage usage this does not make much of a difference, as a business can be a subscriber without being an inhabitant, thus it is no longer the same unit divided by the same unit and hence not really a percentage in the strict mathematical sense..)

To your question:
It all depends on the definition of "broadband penetration".

If you use the OECD definition, as it is expressed in metrics,

it is probably not proper to answer your % question from those metric data.
SKorea does it, and yes it looks funny, 29% of households and 9% of population:

7.2* Subscribers of Broadband Internet Service

This graph clearly shows the continuous increase of broadband subscribers in 2000 and 2001. In*
2000, the number of ADSL subscribers exceeded 2 million, CATV 1 million, and the total number of*subscribers was over 4 million. These figures reveal that the penetration rate of broadband services in*
2000 was about 29% of the total households and about 9% of the total population.
P.

eircomtribunal

ripwave, they're all at it, calling it %.Here's a forfas doc. You have to write to a lot of institutions, to remind them of their sloppy use of maths.

How would you call the OECD figures? Broadband usage index or the likes?I don't see the original OECD document anywhere.

Added by edit:
Here's how the OECD shows it.

P.

eircomtribunal

The EU Information Society has no problems using the "subscribers per 100 population" method, here with mobile phone penetration, and expresses that as a percentage.

I am just showing that to demonstrate that we will have to live with this method.

P.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

Ever thought what's the reason for your aggressive style of arguing? Are you aware of it?

Ever thought what's the reason for your evasive style of arguing? Are you aware of it?

I'm not agressive, I'm frustrated. Frustrated that you would rather chase around trying to redefine the question rather than answer it. I really don't have a lot of patience with people who wave their hands about and avoid the question. (You know, people like Dave McRedmond from eircom, George McGrath from e-net, and now Peter Wiegl from Comwreck. You're really putting yourself in some illustriuos company there).

You write "how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself).." when in fact the OECD has "subscribers" and you had made "subscriptions" out of it.

Sigh. Peter, again, in very simple terms, as far as I can tell, there is no difference between "subscribers" and "subscriptions". (at least in terms of the way you are using the terms wrt to eircom). The term "subscribers" is somewhat ambiguous because it could imply that you are excluding business subscriptions. In countries where business subscriptions don't amount to a significant fraction of the total, that doesn't matter. In Ireland, it does.

To your question:
It all depends on the definition of "broadband penetration".

If you use the OECD definition, as it is expressed in metrics,

Oh, so now the OECDs definition is good enough for you, is it? Even though it doesn't mention percentages anywhere?

Again, I'll repeat myself:

RipWave wrote:

The 12.7 number isn't the problem - I have no problem with the claim that Denmark has a "Broadband Penetration Rate" of 12.7 compared to Irelands 1.8 or 2.5 or 3, or whatever the number of the day is. That's a perfectly valid way to compare the two countries.

7.2* Subscribers of Broadband Internet Service

This graph clearly shows the continuous increase of broadband subscribers in 2000 and 2001. In*
2000, the number of ADSL subscribers exceeded 2 million, CATV 1 million, and the total number of*subscribers was over 4 million. These figures reveal that the penetration rate of broadband services in*
2000 was about 29% of the total households and about 9% of the total population.

That is, once again, not a quotation from the OECD. It is a misinterpretation of the OECD data. And when you say

SKorea does it, and yes it looks funny, 29% of households and 9% of population:

you're like someone trying to ignore the Elephant in the fridge - it "looks funny" because you are misrepresenting what the data actually stands for.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

ripwave, they're all at it, calling it %.Here's a forfas doc. You have to write to a lot of institutions, to remind them of their sloppy use of maths.

Peter, it's not a sloppy use of Maths, it's a sloppy use of English. Which might excuse the Danes and the Japanese. As for Forfas, they claim that the graph represents "Population penetration of broadband access technologies", and quote the OECD as the source, even though the OECD doesn't use the term "population penetration" anywhere.

How would you call the OECD figures? Broadband usage index or the likes?

It obviously isn't a "usage" index, if you're only counting "subscribers", and not users. I'm perfectly happy with Broadband Penetration Index, or Broadband Penetration Rate.

I don't see the original OECD document anywhere.

http://www1.oecd.org/publications/e-book/9303021E.PDF (This makes some effort to define "subscriber", but it's a protected document, so I can't cut and paste from it, so just read how they define it on page 120).

Added by edit:
Here's how the OECD shows it.

Oh look - another OECD document that doesn't refer to percentages! Who'd a thunk it?

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

The EU Information Society has no problems using the "subscribers per 100 population" method, here with mobile phone penetration, and expresses that as a percentage.

Peter, I think most people would agree that a mobile phone is a "personal" communication device, and that you would need 4 million mobile phones to have 100% Mobile phone penetration in a country with 4 million inhabitants.

You still haven't said how many BB connections a country of 4 million needs to reach 100% Broadband Penetration.

eircomtribunal

Ok, back to you question.
how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself) does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration?

The OECD measures "Broadband Penetration" in metrics in terms of "subscribers per 100 inhabitants", hence your question about the number of subscribers to reach 100% Broadband Penetration cannot be answered.

Give me your definition of "100% Broadband Penetration", please.

P.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

Ok, back to you question.
how many BB subscriptions (or subscribers - whatever you're having yourself) does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration?

The OECD measures "Broadband Penetration" in metrics in terms of "subscribers per 100 inhabitants", hence your question about the number of subscribers to reach 100% Broadband Penetration cannot be answered.

Peter, you're not using the OECDs definition, so don't try to hide behind it now. I have a vague recollection that, way back in the mists of time when this thread started, I pointed out that the OECD metrics would give 100% Broadband penetration at a "score" of 30 to 40 on the "per 100 inhabitants" metric.

Give me your definition of "100% Broadband Penetration", please.

Peter, just use whatever definition you used to decide that ireland has a rate of 1.875% today.

jwt

To my mind 100% (percent deliberate) penetration would require bb for every inhabitant regardless of whether one person in a house had a single bb line or a family of 10 in a house had a single bb line.

However if we went from the absurd to the ridiculous and had a country with 100 inhabitants and 100 companies and all the companies had 1 bb line and none of the inhabitants had bb. Technically that country would have 100 bb in 100 inhabitants


John

eircomtribunal

Ripwave,
I have come along with your arguments, discovered and acknowledged that the penetration rate definition the OECD uses (subscribers per 100 inhabitants) is not mathematically a percentage figure (while stating that the Information Society of the EU and many others, including the figures in our current political/media discussion do use the underlying OECD-type measurements as percentage figures) and now you want to drag me back before that stage.

My point is that you cannot ask a percentage question on the basis of the non-percentage OECD BB penetration data, without defining what you mean with percent.
When you say I pointed out that the OECD metrics would give 100% Broadband penetration at a "score" of 30 to 40 on the "per 100 inhabitants" metric., then my question is still not answered: What is your definition of 100% BB penetration rate?
You must have a definition in your head, when you say you reckon that 30 or 40 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants would give 100% BB penetration.
100 out of 100 persons living in a household that has a bb subscription? 100 out of 100 persons living not further than 5 miles from a public broadband access point? What is your definition?
Depending on your definition of 100% Broadband penetration, it may be possible to answer your question or not, or to some degree from the metric OECD data.
P.

spongebob

I am staying out of this one .... in general.

The average Irish household has 2.85 Inhabitants or so . (source CSO census 2002) .

Thats about 35% by pop to get one in every house and also assume that we share them and do group hugs once a week , is that what you mean Ripwave ?

M

eircomtribunal

Dermot said on RTE today, that a Comreg guy had told him the Irish bb penetration was now at 3 (%) and the EU was at 5(%). What do we make of those figures?

For Ireland to have a 3(%) BB penetration, as in 3 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants, we would need 120 000 BB lines. Redmond claimed 75 000 dsl, Dermot 80 000 lines. Could there be an additional 40 - 45 000 other BB connections like cabel and wireless? Doubtful?

For Ireland to have a 3 % of households with bb connection, we would only need 27 733 BB households (=3% of the total of 927 464 households). Could it be that our 75 000 or 80 000 are 27 733 taken by domestic users and the rest by business? But in this case, the 3% being the household penetration percentage, the comparatively used 5% for Europe would not fit, as Europe's household bb penetration is currently at over 20 %.

P.

DonegalMan

eircomtribunal wrote:

For Ireland to have a 3(%) BB penetration, as in 3 bb subscribers per 100 inhabitants, we would need 120 000 BB lines. Redmond claimed 75 000 dsl, Dermot 80 000 lines. Could there be an additional 40 - 45 000 other BB connections like cabel and wireless? Doubtful?

God only knows, we don't

1. Do the 75000/80000 include business?
   
2. Are these Eircom subscriptions only or have IOL/UTV to be added?
   
3. Staying with the mathematics theme, if you're rounding off to nearest percent then 3% is anything >= 2.5%

Questions, questions ... wish we could get some answers for a change.

BTW - I myself think it's probably 2) above - Eircom couldn't really include IOL/UTV is their subscription figures ... but then again, I wouldn't put it past them.

spongebob

DonegalMan wrote:

God only knows, we don't
Eircom couldn't really include IOL/UTV is their subscription figures ... but then again, I wouldn't put it past them.

IOL and UTV are all supplied in their entirety by Eircom Wholesale as Bitstream product as are Digiweb and Netsource and others.

The total number of currently active DSL lines in the state equals everything supplied by Eircom Wholesale and some hundreds (absolute max 2000) of the ESAT Business DSL added to it.

email the 'head' of Eircom Wholesale to get that latest figure, that would be Herb Hribar .....who in turn could be herb.hribar@eircom.ie or herb.hribar@eircom.com or herb.hribar@eircomwholesale.ie or hhribar@eircom.com or hhribar@eircom.ie or hhribar@eircomwholesale.ie or even all of the above given his key role in Eircom .

M

eircomtribunal

DonegalMan wrote:

God only knows, we don't

1. Do the 75000/80000 include business?
   
2. Are these Eircom subscriptions only or have IOL/UTV to be added?
   
3. Staying with the mathematics theme, if you're rounding off to nearest percent then 3% is anything >= 2.5%

Questions, questions ... wish we could get some answers for a change.

BTW - I myself think it's probably 2) above - Eircom couldn't really include IOL/UTV is their subscription figures ... but then again, I wouldn't put it past them.

Eircom recently stated they are not differentiating between domestic and business with their dsl figures, when a journo questioned the assumption that all that many households were connected, as it would mostly be businesses making he dsl figures.

IMO Eircom's 75 000 dsl figure includes all Irish dsl, as Eircom say this with the wholesaler's hat on. Esat/Bt has a tiny few dsl subscribers on their own exchanges.

Could be Comreg have added a figure in for existing big pipe businesses, the cable bb users and there must be a number of wireless users by now, too. 100 000 would be 2.5(%) and they could call it 3(%). Then they compare it with the EU figure, which was at 6 (%) in January 2004, but has probably decreased since, because of the new entrants. (Of course Dermot has excluded the new entrants in the directive to Comreg for the mid 2005 goal of reaching the EU average, but such things would never hold back the likes of Comreg to use the conveniently lower EU-25 figure whenever it suits them)

P.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

My point is that you cannot ask a percentage question on the basis of the non-percentage OECD BB penetration data, without defining what you mean with percent.
When you say I pointed out that the OECD metrics would give 100% Broadband penetration at a "score" of 30 to 40 on the "per 100 inhabitants" metric., then my question is still not answered: What is your definition of 100% BB penetration rate?

Peter, it doesn't matter what I consider 100% Broadband Penetration, the question is what you, the great proponent of the "1.875% Broadband Penetration" statistic, consider 100% Broadband Penetration.

Your attempts at "the dog ate my homework" style excuses are getting pretty lame. Once, again, I'm going to repeat myself for your benefit:

RipWave wrote:

Peter, just use whatever definition you used to decide that ireland has a rate of 1.875% today.

Here's a snippet from Morning Ireland on Thursday morning, reporting the comments of a certain Peter Weigl, that might jog your memory - [URL=rtsp://streaming2.rte.ie/2004/0916/16092004rte-morningireland.rm?start=1:51:31&end=1:52:02]Mr McRedmond steamrolled factually false messages across the airwaves, claiming that Ireland had a current 5% Broadband Penetration rate, ... in fact the Irish rate is 1.87%.[/URL] (that's a RealPlayer link directly to the streamed clip from RTE).

Just in case you've forgotten what the question is, I'll repeat it, yet again:
How many BB subscribers does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration, using your own definition of "Broadband Penetration", and your own definition of "subscriber".

eircomtribunal

Ripwave wrote:

Peter, it doesn't matter what I consider 100% Broadband Penetration, the question is what you, the great proponent of the "1.875% Broadband Penetration" statistic, consider 100% Broadband Penetration.

I am not at all the great proponent of the % statistics. I've acknowledged that the OECD definition of BB penetration as "subscribers per 100 inhabitants" is not a percentage figure.
On the other hand the Information Society of the EU, as used by the Danish regulator, has used the underlying OECD figures and expressed them as a percentage figure. Mathematically not correct, but nevertheless they've done it and this % figure is getting used in interviews and discussion, as you know.

Here's a snippet from Morning Ireland on Thursday morning, reporting the comments of a certain Peter Weigl, that might jog your memory - [URL=rtsp://streaming2.rte.ie/2004/0916/16092004rte-morningireland.rm?start=1:51:31&end=1:52:02]Mr McRedmond steamrolled factually false messages across the airwaves, claiming that Ireland had a current 5% Broadband Penetration rate, ... in fact the Irish rate is 1.87%.[/URL] (that's a RealPlayer link directly to the streamed clip from RTE).

You do not suggest I should have tried to explain to them that it is not really a percentage figure etc.? I was not in the know about the "difficulties" with these figure sets then, so ok you can blame me for that. And sometimes a pragmatic approach has to override absolute exactness. No use in being totally exact but nobody listens any more or is sidelined by to much complexity etc. So, yes, in the context of a reply to the above RTE piece, I think it would still make sense to use the false % unit. Of course it'd be preferable to correct the misconception.

Just in case you've forgotten what the question is, I'll repeat it, yet again:
How many BB subscribers does a country with a population of 4 million people need to have 100% Broadband Penetration, using your own definition of "Broadband Penetration", and your own definition of "subscriber".

Repeating your question does not change the impossibility of the question. It cannot be answered.
You cannot ask this percentage question on top of its metric figure base of "subscribers per 100 inhabitants".
I've acknowledged that the OECD figures are metric and not %.

Example: A statistic shows that he "car penetration rate" in Ireland is "40 cars per 100 inhabitants". You would not ask: How many "cars per 100 inhabitants" does a country with a population of 4 million need to have a "100% car penetration".

If you now define "100% car penetration" for example as "each adult has his/her own car", then the metric stats of "X cars per 100 inhabitants", can help you answer your question, but you'd have also to know the figure for company cars and the figure for the adult population.

For other definitions of "100% car penetration" like "every family has their own car", the metric figure set of "X cars per 100 inhabitants" can be helpful, but only with other additional figures like number of company owned cars, number of families in the state, number of families that have 2 or more cars etc

Don't try to make me look like a fool with bringing up things I thought were right days ago.

When two monks that had sworn absolute chastity, found a woman at a swollen river unable to cross it, one of the monks took her on his shoulders and carried her across. The monk who had not touched the woman accused the other one: "You have broken your pledge and carried a woman". The other monk replied: "I've carried that woman – you are still carrying her."

So, Ripwave, what is you definition of 100% Broadband penetration?
Only then can we assess if and how the OECD "BB penetration" figures can help answer your question.

P.

Ripwave

eircomtribunal wrote:

Don't try to make me look like a fool with bringing up things I thought were right days ago.

Does this mean that the figure of 1.875 is no longer correct?

Repeating your question does not change the impossibility of the question. It cannot be answered.
You cannot ask this percentage question on top of its metric figure base of "subscribers per 100 inhabitants".
I've acknowledged that the OECD figures are metric and not %.

Peter, go back and read the question again. You'll note that I'm not asking it on top of any metric figure base. I'm asking YOU to tell me how many BB subscribers are needed to provide 100% Broadband Penetration, by any definition of Broadband Penetration you choose to use.

(When I first asked the question, I expected you to be sufficiently consistent as to use the the same definition of Broadband Penetration that you used to arrive at the figure of 1.875. I no longer have any expectation of consistency, so feel free to use whatever definition you think works best for you).

So, Ripwave, what is you definition of 100% Broadband penetration?
Only then can we assess if and how the OECD "BB penetration" figures can help answer your question.

Eh, Peter, why would I ask you to do the calculation based on my definition? I'm perfectly capable of ding simple arithmetic myself.