Forfas 2005 Broadband Report

damien

http://www.forfas.ie/news.asp?page_id=361

Report attached.

Key Findings

* Broadband Availability At the end of Q2 2005, Ireland ranked 25th out of the 32 countries for broadband take-up. When the comparator group is limited to the 21 countries benchmarked in the 2004 study, Ireland’s position has actually deteriorated, from 18th out of 21 in 2004 to 19th out of 21 in 2005.

* Broadband Costs The cost of entry-level DSL in Ireland has decreased significantly since the launch of services in 2002. Based on the amortised monthly costs for 1Mbit/s DSL, Ireland currently ranks 7th cheapest of 32 countries benchmarked.

* SME Broadband take-up In terms of broadband take-up by SMEs, out of 20 EU countries included, Ireland ranks 17th out of 20 for take-up by companies with a workforce of between 10-49 employees and 19th out of 20 for take-up by companies employing 50-249 people.

* Broadband Availability Notwithstanding significant improvements in DSL availability in Ireland since its launch in 2002, DSL coverage in Ireland based, on population, stands at 72%, making it the second lowest of the EU-15 countries.

* Quality of Service (bandwidth capacity/choice of advanced products) A broadband innovation index, used to measure quality of service (bandwidth capacity/choice of advanced products) performance across the benchmark countries, ranks Ireland 21st out of 30 countries on this important indictor.

eircomtribunal

It could not be stated more clearly, than Forfas Chief Executive Martin Cronin stated at the launch:

“Although broadband take-up in Ireland is increasing, take-up in other countries is also growing and as a result Ireland’s relative performance has not improved. Broadband is of key strategic importance to economic growth in all sectors and particularly with respect to improving Ireland’s productivity performance. In light of this, continued poor broadband performance will have serious implications for our future economic success and competitiveness”

The Forfas report is also reported on in ENN, which also mentions that Forfas are looking for submissions by February, on why Ireland is lagging and what can be done about it.


Here's the simple answer: Stop the incumbent from pricing ordinary people out of using the Internet by ridiculous per minute dial-up;
stop discouraging the incumbent from rolling out dsl by letting him make a supra-profit from dial-up.

All this is years too late; we will not recover in a speedy way; but they are still the most important steps to be taken.

P.

Mr_Man

get a decent regulatory system in place with teeth and the staff who give a damm............


M.

Sponge Bob

its too late for DSL , the price of line rental is so high that many would rather go for wireless.

Sarsfield

Sponge Bob wrote:

its too late for DSL , the price of line rental is so high that many would rather go for wireless.

Not entirely true considering most people will keep a phone line regardless of line rental cost, and will therefore see the cost of broadband separately.

I agree line rental is too high, and I'm cancelling my line at the end of the month to move to cable, but most people won't link the 2 to the same extent.

Offers such as BTs where you can get bb for an effective line rental +€15 is fine to most people if they can get it and be persuaded it's worth having in the first place.

I know so many people who just aren't bothered about getting broadband I sometimes wonder if things will ever change.

oscarBravo

Sarsfield wrote:

Not entirely true considering most people will keep a phone line regardless of line rental cost, and will therefore see the cost of broadband separately.

s/most/many/

Sarsfield wrote:

I agree line rental is too high, and I'm cancelling my line at the end of the month to move to cable, but most people won't link the 2 to the same extent.

That depends how hard the alternative BB operators push the message that there is an alternative to the Eircom phone line.

It's something I can see changing over time. There was a time I got funny looks because I had a mobile phone in a pub. Now it's strange not to have one. Equally, I can imagine a shift from "what do you mean, you don't have a phone line?" to "you have a phone line? How... quaint!"

eircomtribunal

Not directly related to the Forfas findings, but worth to take notice:
Enn reports about the findings of analysts IDC predicting a substantial slide of Ireland's ranking with ICT skills.

The latest report from IDC predicts that Ireland by 2008 will have fallen from its current third place down to 21st in a European ranking of ICT skills. By that time the report states that Ireland could be facing a shortage of some 7,500 people equipped with the necessary advanced networking technology skills to continue to drive Irish business.

Can't find the report on the IDC web site. But there is another report on the IDC site with the title "Telecoms – Trends and Expenditure in Ireland, 2005 Edition" which contains useful information. Link is http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=SR14M&pageType=PRINTFRIENDLY

Example from the above report:

Fixed Telecoms Operator Profiles

eircom

As we have seen elsewhere, far from losing further share in the business market, our survey shows that eircom has actually gained customers in the last year. However, it cannot avoid the fact that fixed-line revenues are falling and will continue to do so. The fact that local-loop unbundling has not yet been forced upon the company gives it breathing space to maintain its share of the fixed-line market but this will not last forever. Competition will increase when unbundling does arrive. The company needs to use the intervening time well and look elsewhere for growth opportunities.

The most prominent of these is, of course, the mobile market and the company's recent purchase of Meteor provides a great opportunity to take a significant share. Its first and best target is the business market, as it already has a majority of Irish organizations as fixed-line customers. Things will be more difficult in the consumer market, where eircom will have to undertake considerable branding effort to maintain and expand on Meteor's existing customer base. This is all within eircom's power, but will take investment in marketing. As stated above, however, the most interesting component of its push into the mobile market will be in the business sector. There is considerable scope for price cuts, for example, to undermine the two dominant players, Vodafone and O2.

The other growth area for eircom is the broadband market and it recently claimed to have 156,000 customers. There is considerable scope to increase this figure but eircom is aware that there are parts of the country where the cost of making broadband available will be prohibitive in relation to the potential rewards, at least in the short term. It will also face increased pressure from competitors with their own broadband offerings, notably BT Ireland, Irish Broadband, and NTL.

If shareholders agree to finance the Meteor purchase through a rights issue this will not result in increased debt for the company at a time when it can ill afford any addition to the debt burden. Overall, however, given that revenues are falling already and with local loop unbundling sure to increase competitive pressures when it comes, and finite opportunities in broadband provision, eircom really needs to make its acquisition of Meteor work in order to ensure the company's continued status as the major telecoms player in the long term.

P.

eircomtribunal

Another low ranking mentioned by Labour's Tommy Broughan; from ENN:

New survey highlights Ireland's disappointing broadband and ICT performance

In the latest in a long line of surveys highlighting Ireland's poor broadband performance, the 2005 World Knowledge Competitiveness Index has placed Ireland 74th out of 125 countries assessed. "While Ireland has a slightly improved standing this year, it is disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising, to see that Ireland has yet again ranked very far down in an international league table in the ICT sector," said Labour's communications spokesperson, Tommy Broughan, who went on to point out that Ireland is significantly outperformed by many European countries, most especially Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the UK

P.

1huge1

Sponge Bob wrote:

its too late for DSL , the price of line rental is so high that many would rather go for wireless.

what has dsl got over wireless anyway
its not like you can walk around with a laptop with dsl?

watty

1huge1 wrote:

what has dsl got over wireless anyway
its not like you can walk around with a laptop with dsl?

Most Wireless Broadband are nearly as fixed as adsl.

If I move to another house within range of same base station, I can reinstall.

Satellite TV is "wireless" too, but not very portable. Worldspace Satellite Radio is "nearly" portable.

IBB Ripwave I suppose can be moved around, but not reliably.

Cryos

watty wrote:

Most Wireless Broadband are nearly as fixed as adsl.

If I move to another house within range of same base station, I can reinstall.

Satellite TV is "wireless" too, but not very portable. Worldspace Satellite Radio is "nearly" portable.

IBB Ripwave I suppose can be moved around, but not reliably.

When they say its a Wireless service its not like "oh great i can sit on the bog and look through autotrader on my laptop" which would be a wireless network.

eircomtribunal

According to point topic analysts DSL is going from strength to strength, especially in Europe, which added another 15 million DSL subscribers in the last 12 month (from September 2004 to September 2005).

And we now need to watch those Turks. They added 850 000 subscribers in the year. This is still somewhat behind us adding 82 000 subscribers in that time (as they have about 16 times the population of Ireland) – but we are vulnerable at the rear end.

See Deirdre McArdle's article on ENN

DSL continues to outgrow other broadband access technologies, clocking up 40 million new subscribers during the year to the end of September....

P.