More lack of demand stuff from Dempsey

jwt

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=184&si=1633985&issue_id=14211

THE Government must now set a new target date for the widespread availability of open access broadband after failing completely to reach that goal as scheduled last year, Eugene McCague, president of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, said yesterday.

"We don't think business should have to wait any longer.

The latest figures from Dublin Chamber show broadband penetration amongst Irish SMEs is 32pc. Only Poland (28pc), Slovakia (25pc) and Greece (21pc) currently lag behind Ireland in this area.

The Minister responsible Noel Dempsey admitted this week that there is a serious broadband demand problem in Ireland in terms of citizens and businesses realising the productivity and cost benefits broadband can bring.

Mr Dempsey said he was confident that his target of 400,000 broadband users connected by the end of 2006 would be achieved. There are approximately 330,000 broadband subscribers in the Republic at present, Mr Dempsey said.

However, he said there is a significant problem in growing the numbers of citizens and businesses using broadband because of sluggish demand from consumers actually demanding broadband services.

"There is a vital need to increase awareness amongst the business community of the opportunities for growth presented by ICT adoption," he said.

So back in late 2005 when this chamber of commerce survey was published and claimed....

Three out of ten companies who had attempted an upgrade were unsuccessful. The lack of availability of the pertinent service in their area was the principal reason that companies failed to upgrade their connection.


Over 50% of SMEs had attempted a technical upgrade of their internet connection and 25% had tried to do so in the last 6 months.

Telephone costs, both mobile and fixed line were the main telecommunications costs faced by SMEs. 47% and 43% cited mobile and fixed line charges respectively as the most expensive telecommunication costs facing their business.

Email and web browsing are the most prevalent ebusiness applications for companies with Internet access. The use of online banking (58%) and revenue online services (41%) were also
to the fore.

P12
The different penetration rates across the regions, is further evidence of a technological divide as identified in previous surveys. The Midlands (79%), Mid West (80%), South West (83%) and West (83%) have the lowest levels of Internet connection, particularly when compared with Dublin (95%).

Over one in every two companies (51%) interviewed, who had access to the internet, had a broadband connection.

Broadband connection to the Internet was highest in the “Business Service/Real Estate” (76%) and the “Financial Services” (72%) sectors, with “Agriculture…” and “Construction” taking up the rear with 35% respectively of such companies with a broadband connection.

Two thirds of companies in the Dublin region, the highest in the country, had a broadband connection, compared to only 41% and 44% respectively in the Midland and Border regions.

60% of respondents were satisfied with the cost of their broadband connection, although close to two out of ten respondents expressed dissatisfaction with their connection charge.

A faster more efficient performance appears to be the fundamental improvement for companies with the introduction of broadband. It also enables companies to send emails and download material from the Internet faster than was previously feasible.

Seven out of ten companies who attempted an upgrade of their internet connection were successful, a nine percentage point increase on the 2003 figure (62%). Dublin (83%) and SMEs based in the West (81%) were the most likely to be successful in upgrading their Internet connection, unsurprisingly, these two areas have the highest levels of broadband connection. Businesses in the Border (55%), Midlands (60%) and South East (62%) had the lowest success rates in terms of upgrading their connection, two of these regions, Midland and Border, had the lowest percentage of broadband connection in the country.

this was all beside the point really wasn't it. The survey was wrong, its just a demand issue.

The logic in DCMNR seems to be BB available to 90% of pop and only 30% of SMEs use BB hence SMEs don't actually want BB.

John

dahamsta

Is there any way IrelandOffline could knock this on the head once and for all?

adam

paulm17781

Dial Up Dempsey wrote:

Mr Dempsey said he was confident that his target of 400,000 broadband users connected by the end of 2006 would be achieved.

Was this not 500,000 last year? Am I going to be imprisonned for doublethink?

Sponge Bob

paulm17781 wrote:

Was this not 500,000 last year?

It was 350,000 by the middle of last year and when it was obvious the target would not be met Noel replaced that with 400k by the end of this year.

Ambition, doggy style. See 'targets' dicussed here

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054931424

jwt

Was this not 500,000 last year? Am I going to be imprisoned for doublethink?

That depends on whether its a negative comment about telecoms in Ireland.

If it is a negative comment prepare to have sharpened bamboo slivers inserted under your nails, electric shock torture/treatment, interned in a political prison ...oh no...wait that’s north Korea. Always get us and them mixed up, what with our similar political stances on talking your country up.

In future all posts should ignore any negatives and only focus on the positives of broadband in Ireland. If no positives can be found feel free to use statistics liberally rounding up percentages to the nearest 10% i.e. 71% becomes 80% or 51% can be the majority etc etc.

Failing that feel free to make it up as you go along.

But whatever you do don't try to use reports from sources such as the OECD, Forfas, The Oireachtas. Those people are putting Ireland down, ruining our international competivity and doing Ireland a disservice.

Instead reference those well known totally unbiased sources such as Comreg, eircom, the DCMNR. Here you will find mounds of statistics all guaranteed to show how fantastic Ireland is doing in Broadband, how we are not only doing well, but catching up so fast and increasing broadband penetration so much that soon all of Ireland will have been penetrated.

John

eircomtribunal

This "we will reach the goal of 400 000 bb subscribers by end 2006" nonsense of Dempsey should not be repeated by any journalist in the country, like it is also in Jim Aughney's Indo article:

Mr Dempsey said he was confident that his target of 400,000 broadband users connected by the end of 2006 would be achieved. There are approximately 330,000 broadband subscribers in the Republic at present, Mr Dempsey said.

Every journalist doing so should be contacted and made aware that the 400 000 Dempsey goal is the goal of Ireland staying at second last place in the EU–15 league.
The DCMNR had previously directed the regulator to achieve for Ireland to be at least at the average of the EU-15 countries with regards to broadband take-up by mid 2005.
At the end of 2005 (no mid 2005 figures available, so rather go to end 2005) the EU-15 had a broadband penetration of 14.2 subscriptions per 100 population, which would have required of Ireland to have at least 582 000 broadband connections at the end of 2005!
So our minister is now proudly confident that we will reach "his" new goal of reaching 400 000 subscribers by end 2006. And most of the journos are printing this blatant nonsense.
P.

damien

We'll email journalists on our mailing list on an individual basis if needs be to explain it to them.

Anyone want to start work on a congratulatory website for our second last position?

www.stillsecondlast.com ?
www.2ndlastforIreland.com ?

Sponge Bob

......and the goal of 350,000 by the middle of 2005 (not 2006) that was not his goal but was the goal set by a slightly more ambitious predecessor of his.

Ahern set the target

http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=9552896

Dempsey dumbed it down and considered himself to be setting a challenge as he did so. ?????? at a Tommy McCabe gig in 2004.

http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=9560995

Speaking at the TIF Annual Conference, entitled Telecommunications for Education, Minister Dempsey set what he termed a "realisable" target of 400,000 broadband customers nationally by the end of 2006. The minister went on to say that the industry should challenge itself and aim for 500,000 by the same date.

"Forget about 100,000 broadband subscribers as a target -- forget about 200,000. I want to see an industry target of a minimum of 400,000 broadband subscribers achieved by the end of 2006 -- that's 28 percent of the customer base -- if industry PR is accurate that must be a realisable challenge," said Minister Dempsey who appears determined to make his mark on his new posting.

Considering that in September of this year Ireland had just 70,000 DSL broadband subscribers and industry players were pessimistic about meeting former Communications Minister Dermot Ahern's target of 350,000 broadband customers by mid-2005, minister Dempsey has certainly thrown down the gauntlet to broadband providers with this latest goal.

"We fully endorse and share Minister Dempsey's vision for broadband in delivering benefits to all citizens," said Esat BT CEO Bill Murphy in a statement. "While take-up is growing at a fast pace, our starting point was so far behind that additional measures are now necessary to ensure accelerated competition and take-up, particularly in the area of Local Loop Unbundling (LLU). We look forward to working with Minister Dempsey in his new portfolio to achieve the broadband targets he has set."

Current broadband figures stand at 75,000 DSL subscribers, according to Minister Dempsey, with an additional 6,000 customers accessing broadband by cable modem, and over 4,000 using fixed wireless access.

"These figures place Ireland favourably in the league tables for broadband, and indicate that the government's objective of a top 10 percent OECD position is within early reach," said Minister Dempsey.

Then there was the 500,000 target set a year back at the TIF gig would you believe

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single5160

it has not stopped him from setting targets — and sticking to them. Soon after he took up his new portfolio last Autumn, he made an address to the Telecoms and Internet Federation’s (TIF) annual conference where he reiterated the Government’s target of having 400,000 broadband customers by the end of 2006 and then moved the bar higher by challenging the telecoms sector to sign up half a million customers by the same date.

So its a target/challenge of 400,000/500,000 by the end of 2006. Is that right Noel ????

eircomtribunal

Sponge Bob wrote:

Is that right Noel ????

I think that is the worst thing Dempsey has ever mentioned:

"These figures place Ireland favourably in the league tables for broadband, and indicate that the government's objective of a top 10 percent OECD position is within early reach," said Minister Dempsey.

The OECD average for end 2005 stands at 13.6 broadband connections per 100 population, that would have required Ireland to have 557 000 broadband subscribers by end 2005 to be at the OECD average! We are indeed in a favourable position to reach the top 10 percent OECD! To reach the top ten of the OECD (forget the top ten percent, which would mean being on no 1, 2 or three) we would need to have a much higher take-up again.
P.

Foxwood

There's a certain irony in reading about this lack of demand on the day that RTE apparently had to borrow facilities from HEAnet to webcast a state funeral.

Someone must have been watching.

eircomtribunal

And what a headline on John Kennedy's siliconrepublic article.

Dempsey concedes broadband demand problem

15.06.2006 - The Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources Noel Dempsey TD yesterday admitted that there is a serious broadband demand problem in Ireland in terms of citizens and businesses realising the productivity and cost benefits broadband can bring.

Dempsey was addressing yesterday’s Chambers Ireland launch of Vodafone’s new flat-rate of €49 for 3G broadband.

He told delegates that he was confident that his target of 400,000 broadband users connected by the end of 2006 would be achieved. There are approximately 330,000 broadband subscribers in the Republic of Ireland at present.

However, he acknowledged that a significant problem in growing the numbers of citizens and businesses using broadband has been people actually demanding broadband services.

“I haven’t talked so much about demand. Demand is not great at the moment and we need to stimulate demand.

“We will need to bring home to people the benefits of broadband and what it can achieve.

“There is a huge audience out there that don’t know or understand the benefits of what broadband can do for their business,” Dempsey said.

“We need to get that message across and stimulate demand and help to expand the number of people using broadband.

“Broadband reduces costs generally and is an opportunity for business to access world markets from any location,” Minister Dempsey said.

Commenting on Vodafone’s flat-rate charge for 3G broadband services, he said: “Vodafone has opened a new chapter for telecoms in Ireland.”

Sean Murphy, director of public policy at Chambers Ireland, told delegates that use of information and communications technology in Ireland range from “middling to good to poor”.

He pointed to a recent Chambers Ireland e-business survey in which 56pc of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Ireland claimed they had broadband. “However, when questioned further it transpired that only 29pc of SMEs had broadband and that many respondents were using ISDN and not a broadband connection.”

By John Kennedy

P.

jwt

The reason for the confusion was that many SMEs thought "Highspeed" was a broadband product. Just shows that eircoms marketing works.

Thats the same survey I referenced at the start of the thread.

The logic in DCMNR seems to be BB available to 90% of pop and only 30% of SMEs use BB hence SMEs don't actually want BB.

Availability and cost (total cost) are the factors, solve them and demand will solve itself.

How sodding difficult is it to look at Northern Ireland.

99.x% availability, similar geographical dispersion of population, if anything their physical geography. Look at what happened.

John