Learning from other campaigns.

SkepticOne

A few people may have come across this campaign group in Britain:

Access to Broadband Campaign or ABC.

They organise seminars and workshops up and down Britain helping communities sort out their broadband needs.

In addition to directly helping to sort out the needs of communities, they also put far great pressure on BT to improve their services. Nothing moves an incumbent more than the threat of losing their monopoly (even if only slightly). I would attribute credit for BT liberalising its DSL limits as well as upgrading more exchanges to the pressure from campaigns such as this. However, ABC's focus is strictly on getting broadband to communities by whatever means. Theirs seems to be a very practical, results orientated approach.

It would seem to me that there is a huge need for such an organisation in Ireland. I'm not saying IrelandOffline should do this, but if it did, it would have far greater authority when dealing with DCMNR, ComReg etc. since its opinions would carry the weight of experience.

However, it may be felt that more progress can be made with the current IOFFL approach.

Perhaps others could link to other campaigns in other countries that have had some success.

DonegalMan

I think this is mostly a question of resources.

I've looked at their website and I see it is £15 p.a. to "join" their campaign. I can't see if they charge for their seminars though I see they do get sponsorship for them.

We've stayed away from becoming a funded organisation and relied on part-time volunteers; the results we've achieved to date are remarkable in that context, I don't know what more we would achieve if we could raise money, for example, to have some fulltime staff.

Would be interested in hearing other views on this.

Martin

(Note: this is something that's not even been discussed at committe level so there's no 'official' policy on it)

SkepticOne

Thanks for your individual consideration of it. I would not expect a committee discussion based on a single posting and I'm sure there are more immediate concerns that need to be dealt with.