Ireland as bad as Somalia!?

RuggieBear

Not sure this is the relevant forum but it kinda struck home to me, how poor our infrastructure is...

Just talking to a somali woman i met at a conference today and she was shocked at having to use a 56k dialup at her hotel. She told me she expected "this in Somalia but not in a first world country like Ireland" (her words).

rander00

I'm a bold boy.

Gadgie

rander00 wrote:

(snipped offensive quote)

Charming. :rolleyes:

eircomtribunal

RuggieBear wrote:

Not sure this is the relevant forum but it kinda struck home to me, how poor our infrastructure is...

Just talking to a somali woman i met at a conference today and she was shocked at having to use a 56k dialup at her hotel. She told me she expected "this in Somalia but not in a first world country like Ireland" (her words).

Somalia beats us hands down with an Internet growth rate of some 44400% from 2000 to 2004!
And they have 100% broadband coverage by satellite.

"Somalia

population: 11,555,300

Internet users year 2000: 200

Internet users, latest figure (?):89,000

usage growth 2000-2004: 44400.0 %

percent of population with Internet: 0.8 %"

P.

jwt

I vote that you take over as McRedmonds opposite number in Somalia.

You seem to have the gift


John

RuggieBear

eircomtribunal wrote:

Somalia beats us hands down with an Internet growth rate of some 44400% from 2000 to 2004!
And they have 100% broadband coverage by satellite.

I just found it a bit embarrassing tbh....I just spluttered out the usual eircom ****ing up the country spiel....

And Rander00, you make me embarrassed too... :mad:

Tusky

Rander00 you should be banned for that you ignorant muppet.

Saruman

And they have 100% broadband coverage by satellite.

Umm everyone has 100% coverage by Sat!!

Oh how can she compare ONE hotel and decide the same is for the rest of the country??? I have been in the states and they only had dial up ports... BUT they did have a crappy TV internet thing that was a horror to use.

pete

Rising from the ruins of the Mogadishu skyline are signs of one of Somalia's few success stories in the anarchy of recent years.
A host of mobile phone masts testifies to the telecommunications revolution which has taken place despite the absence of any functioning national government since 1991.

Three phone companies are engaged in fierce competition for both mobile and landline customers, while new internet cafes are being set up across the city and the entire country.

It takes just three days for a landline to be installed - compared with waiting-lists of many years in neighbouring Kenya, where there is a stable, democratic government.

And once installed, local calls are free for a monthly fee of just $10.

...

While the three phone companies - Telcom, Nationlink and Hormuud - are engaged in bitter competition for phone customers, they have co-operated to set up the Global Internet Company to provide the internet infrastructure.

Manager Abdulkadir Hassan Ahmed says that within 1.5km of central Mogadishu, customers - mostly internet cafes - can enjoy service at 150Mb/second through a Long Reach Ethernet.

Elsewhere, they can have a wireless connection at 11Mb/s.

...

"We are planning to introduce 3G technology, including live video calling and mobile internet, next year," says Mr Abdullahi.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4020259.stm

RuggieBear

Saruman wrote:

Oh how can she compare ONE hotel and decide the same is for the rest of the country??? I have been in the states and they only had dial up ports... BUT they did have a crappy TV internet thing that was a horror to use.

That's a valid point. but It came as a shock to her...so maybe hotels around europe (where she's on the conference circuit) and Somalia have better facilities...tbh i don't know....

Saruman

Hmm not sure myself.. any hotel people here who can shed any light?

tomk

A lot of hotels have WiFi - I was in Fitzpatricks in Killiney over the weekend, and they had the Bitbuzz 802.11b service. Very good it was, too.

BrianD

The comment of the woman from Somalia is hardly of relevance at all. It's up to the hotel to decide whether they wish to offer their guests data services and at what speed. What is more relevant is whether the hotel can get the aforementioned services in the first place.

DonegalMan

Saruman wrote:

Umm everyone has 100% coverage by Sat!!

Oh how can she compare ONE hotel and decide the same is for the rest of the country??? I have been in the states and they only had dial up ports...

We did a round world trip a year past in August and [showing off] we visited Singapore, Sydney, Hawaii, Los Angeles and Toronto [/showingoff].

I booked all the hotels myself over the Internet and when I was searching, I found the bulk of 3*+ hotels in all those locations offering high speed Internet access.

In LA we stayed in a 3* Radisson motel type place, as well as Broadband in the rooms it had WiFI in the bar area, can't remember the charge but it wasn't that dear.

d-j-k

Quite a lot of Irish hotels offer WiFi access thesedays, but it's often quite difficult to get any sort of broadband access in the bedrooms. The WiFi coverage's usually limited to one floor or one bar / cafe area.

Offering broadband in bedrooms over a fixed network would require quite an extensive rewire and installing structured cabling systems around an entire building.
There are many hotels around europe that will offer either Broadband or WiFi to some rooms, specifically aimed at business travellers but not very many that have ethernet ports throughout the hotel.

These services will come when they see the need for them

Also, having travelled in the UK.. I haven't seen anyone offering anything beyond limited Wifi either.

I've also had plenty of instances in the USA where I only had a 56K phone socket and dial up modem.

It just depends on what market the hotel's aiming at and how old it is.

You do tend to find that in rapidly devloping countries certain parts of infrastructure like communications can be bleeding edge while in a country that's been developed for longer the infrastructure's a bit more "seasoned" as it's been around a lot longer. This doesn't necessarily mean the DSL/phone network, but the actual hotels themselves. Not too many places are going to do a radical rewire ripping decor apart to provide net access to a few laptops. Particularly if they're catering to tourists mostly.

SkepticOne

d-j-k wrote:

Quite a lot of Irish hotels offer WiFi access thesedays, but it's often quite difficult to get any sort of broadband access in the bedrooms. The WiFi coverage's usually limited to one floor or one bar / cafe area.

Offering broadband in bedrooms over a fixed network would require quite an extensive rewire and installing structured cabling systems around an entire building.

And only a few years ago, business-class hotels already did extensive rewiring to install ISDN lines to rooms when, in Ireland, ISDN was being sold as the latest tech revolution by Telecom Eireann and later Eircom.

Many still advertise ISDN lines in rooms to business customers. I wonder how many travel with laptops with ISDN adapters these days? The few that do probably get a huge shock when they see the bill after checking out!

But this is a selfish view. We are forgetting that ISDN still represents huge revenue for Eircom which they need so that they can invest in the network.

d-j-k

I guess hotels will gradually upgrade ... these things take a while.