Half Page on BB availability in Todays IT Business

Sponge Bob

Excellent half page on whats out there and where and for how much and from whom .

May I say what a pleasure it is to see a journalist check facts. Hats off to Laura Slattery for the piece and well done JWT too.

Hopefully Laura will be assigned to cover this subject in future seeing as she actually checks facts, understands her subject, and is notably less inclined to regurgitate complete crap than some of her predecessors and 'peers' elsewhere.

viking

Broadband stays in the slow lane

Availability and cost issues are hampering Irish take-up of high-speed internet and are keeping usage at lowest rate in EU, head of internet pressure group tells Laura Slattery

The news that Vodafone is to offer laptop broadband over its 3G mobile network may come as some relief to Irish computer users frustrated by the fact that Estonia, Slovenia and Lithuania have higher rates of broadband penetration than the Republic.

The latest figures from the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) show that, by the end of March, there were 270,000 broadband subscribers - around 120,000 more than there were a year earlier.

But ComReg's last quarterly report also showed that broadband penetration here remains the lowest among EU countries, at 5.34 per cent.

While almost one-third of all internet users have now made their "fat pipe" dream a reality, two-thirds are still coping or struggling with the now old hat dial-up internet services that make podcasting, teleconferencing and video blogging next to impossible and downloading photographs, music and applications something of a waiting game.

"Availability and cost are the two most serious broadband issues," says John Timmons, vice-chairman of Ireland Offline, a pressure group that campaigns for the availability of affordable broadband internet access. "In Ireland, the majority of people need a telephone line to get broadband, which means they have to pay line rental," he points out.

So while the table above shows broadband products that cost €20 a month, the true cost of securing broadband from most of these providers is actually €19.99/€20 plus the €24.18 a month they pay to their landline operator - usually Eircom - for line rental. Landline rental is higher in the Republic than in any other EU country.

Broadband prices have fallen over the past couple of years, and several providers offer deals where access is limited to 20 hours a month for €9.99.

Providers such as BT Ireland include line rental with their broadband packages, starting at €35 a month, meaning it can be cost-efficient for consumers to have the same provider for their broadband and landline. Smart Telecom also advertises a 3 MB broadband plus line rental product for this price.

UTV internet customers must have an active Eircom landline, but it will include its calls package UTV Talk, which offers free evening and weekend telephone calls, with its broadband packages, which are discounted for the first three months.

Although broadband is more affordable now than ever, value for money is not as good as it is in other countries, Timmons says. "In other countries like the UK and Germany, the same amount of money would get you more in terms of speed and usage limits," he says.

All of the providers in the table above give download speeds of 1 MB per second for €20 a month, but there are still big differences between what is on offer. By limiting usage to 20 hours a month, Eircom Broadband Time does what some providers offer for €10 cheaper.

Among the other providers monthly usage limits, or data transfer allowances, range from 12 GB downloading with unlimited uploading from Imagine to just 2 GB a month at NTL. If NTL customers exceed their monthly usage limit, they are automatically upgraded to NTL's next package and charged more. But NTL has a good history of increasing its download speeds for existing customers, Timmons points out.

It also has a lower "contention ratio" than the other providers shown, meaning fewer customers have to share a fixed amount of bandwidth.

NTL also offers broadband through cable modems, meaning that customers have no need for a phone line, although additional charges will apply if they are not signed up to one of its television packages.

Apart from using existing telephone and cable lines, homes and offices can connect to broadband using fixed wireless or satellite signals. "For wireless broadband, you need to have line of sight of a mast. If there are any hills or trees in the way, you won't be able to get it," explains Timmons.

For those who can get it, there are good deals on offer. For example, Irish Broadband's Ripwave product, which uses wireless technology and offers unlimited usage, costs €18.95 a month. There is no connection fee, no contract and no need for a phone line.

Outside urban areas, satellite broadband is often the only option, but these services are prohibitively expensive to set up. "The monthly fees start at about €100 a month and then it costs around €1,000 to get it installed," he says.

The set-up costs lock users into one provider and deter people in rural areas - those most likely to want to avoid commuting - from working at home.

"If you are out in the middle of the Sahara desert, nothing else beats it. But for a supposed EU hub country to be advocating satellite broadband as a solution doesn't make any sense," Timmons says.

Ireland Offline is frustrated that the Government has left broadband for Eircom and the rest of the private sector to sort out, leaving people in many areas without the telecommunications infrastructure they need.

"It is consistently said that 90 per cent of the country is covered by broadband, but that only means that the telephone line is connected to a broadband exchange. It doesn't mean that broadband is available on all of those lines."

People who live more than a few miles away from an exchange often encounter problems, he adds.

The actual percentage of the country covered by broadband is 63-68 per cent, according to Ireland Offline - far short of the 99 per cent rate achieved in Northern Ireland, which has a similar population dispersal between towns and rural areas.

The organisation is adopting a wait and see approach to Vodafone's 3G broadband product for laptops. At about €50 a month, it could prove popular with users on the move, as long as they don't keep losing their network signal.

In the meantime, Ireland Offline believes it will be new technology like WiMAX, which brings high-speed wireless broadband access to places where DSL (broadband-enabled telephone lines) and cable do not reach, that will eventually solve the Republic's broadband problems.

The table above shows only a selection of the broadband products on offer. For information about broadband and details on all of the services available in your area visit www.broadband.gov.ie

© The Irish Times

damien

Nice one.

jwt

WOW!

Quoted accurately and backing research done by the journalist, I'm mega impressed!

And very pleasant to talk to as well, despite me boring the ears off her for nearly 20 minutes


John

1huge1

very good report but the everage person wont have much of a clue of the technical part of it but should get the jist of it.
But to be honest weve been seeing reports about broadband in ireland being crap for years now and not much seems to have been done
i know it seems to be the easy answer but if it wernt for eircom it would be so muchh better!

nadir

yeah, I'm living in Dublin 3 and I'm 5 months waiting for an internet connection.
Good article though.

drogfood

check out this site for evry broadband provider in the country including <.cg snip>....

Blah blah .. has all the packages for all the areas. NOT.

uncle_sam_ie

drogfood wrote:

check out this site for evry broadband provider in the country including whats available where and for how much, deadly site, nothing hidden, includes all the download limits, traffic quotas, how much Eircom charge when u download 2 much etc - well worth a visit especially i ur in the market for a new provider - look em up <.cg snip>

Another website cruelly claiming that Ireland has 100% broadband coverage. According to this Website, Castletownroche were I live, I can avail of Digiwebs Metro Broadband. I only wish.

shoegirl

What worries me is that though IOFL have often raised the problem of the extraordinarily high line rental (which is likely to rise in view of the eircom takeover), the broadband problem is only a symptom of a greater problem with post-privatisation telecoms meltdown in Ireland.

Aside from a handful exceptions about 75% of all providers are simply reselling eircom wholesale products at a small discount or selling call bundles without line rental or other packages. Unbundling of the last mile has effectively shuddered to a halt and few providers seem interested in investing in services - yet there seems to be an insatiable demand from those in rural areas who are excluded from BB development for services that are not being met by any services. Aside from the obvious question of cost, its symptomatic of a deeper malise that even goes beyond telecoms: try tuning your TV to a local transmitter outside of a major urban conurbation and you'll see why new developments are rapidly followed by a neat line of satellite dishes - TV reception outside the bigger cities and towns is shockingly poor.

As for DAB radio - what DAB radio?

Digital terrestrial TV - what digital terrestrial TV?

The UK will start switching off analogue transmitters in 2008, nearly 5 years after starting the switchover programme to digital broadcasting, yet Ireland in 2006 has only a single, experimental digital site serving only a limited area.

The progress of these services contrasts dramatically with the rapid uptake of mobile telephony services - both analogue and digital - from the late 1980s.

Perhaps what we need is not only a pressure group for hi speed internet services, but for all new technologies, as almost all of these services are now appearing several years late, expensive and restrictive compared to other parts of the EU - as repeated surveys show, Ireland is rapidly joining the 3rd world, where the development and takeup of new technologies are concerned.

Sponge Bob

shoegirl wrote:

Perhaps what we need is not only a pressure group for hi speed internet services, but for all new technologies, as almost all of these services are now appearing several years late, expensive and restrictive compared to other parts of the EU - as repeated surveys show, Ireland is rapidly joining the 3rd world, where the development and takeup of new technologies are concerned.

My God shoegirl, did you not hear Noel announcing 2 Digital television transmitters (experimental) in Dublin and Louth so we can tesht away till after the election when he will be gone anyway.