Uptake of Broadband in Ireland Survey

Diana

Folks - I am undertaking some research on behalf of Trinity College and the Idea Group on the possible reasons why Ireland still lags behind other European countries on the low uptake of broadband (OECD, 2006). To this end, we have a very short questionnaire to back up interviews with key players. It's accessible at

Survey URL

The password is br0adband

Thank you in advance to all who participate - if you are ever passing Trinity, I owe you a pint (that's one pint between you all ). And to those of you who think oh no, not another survey, my apologies. However, if you would prefer to proffer your own reasons as to why you think Ireland is lagging behind, particularly those reasons which you feel are unique to the Irish context (and there are some emerging) without completing a survey, please feel free to contact me.

Kind regards

netwhizkid

The link to the Survey is not working, The reason there is no uptake is hardly no one can get it. The main problem dates back to 1999 when Telecom Eireann was Privatised and all this mess was created. See my signature to see the culprits.

damien

Working link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/CheckPassword.asp?SID=2398212&U=913472398212&C=

Can a mod sticky this thread?

cgarvey

Can we get a committment to the published results before "endorsing" it?

Fixed link in OP

watty

The password is br0adband (With a Zero)

cgarvey

Stickied, coz we can get the results

davork

netwhizkid wrote:

The main problem dates back to 1999 when Telecom Eireann was Privatised and all this mess was created. See my signature to see the culprits.

If you think that things would have been better with no privatization you have a short memory

Back 15 years ago, the company I worked for used to pay for 64K leased lines to London as it was cheaper for us to run our voice calls over them than pay for (the then) Telecom Eireann charges. If memory serves, we paid IEP 6K a month for the leased line vs over IEP 10K for the telephone charges - and these were *internal* intra company calls!

And don't get me started on the level of service we experienced - like the times when a TE engineer just pulled cables from the cab in the basement because he needed a few inches of wire. Thankfully the service level has improved since those days.

As for DSL, the main problem was the long-term use of line sharing (and in the recent past, Eircom putting LLU under the slow finger). This effectively made two telephones lines non broadbandable. This, er, "technology" was blessed as a cost saving measure - and the fact that the offices were over staffed by jobs-for-life civil servants was never addressed (heck it still hadn't been).

Also, if you compare the # lines per employee vs other European countries you'll see what I mean. Or go working in some of these offices as a temp and it'll be fairly obvious the 'added value' that most if these office based staff are adding. I'm not taking anything aware from the installation, service and R&D guys - they are *not* the overmanning problem (until we get reasonably priced (viz-a-vee the rest of Europe and the world) triple and quad play from Eircom...

As for the privatisation itself, it would have happened in some form or other regardless of what political party was trying to run the country. For instance ESB has been split into network and generation - and the same would have happened to TE in order to follow EU directions (and directives) - and as Ireland isn't France or Germany, the split would have happened

Would FG have done things differently? We simply don't know! Needless to say Kenny has not committed to buying Eircom back into public ownership so there is little point crying there. However Comwreck should have been created with a legal framework that had real teeth (as opposed to the gummy bear things it currently has). It wasn't and none of the other parties (FG, SF, Labour) have bothered trying to introduce legislation to do give it teeth... so in my mind they are all as bad as each other!!!

davork

Diana wrote:

if you are ever passing Trinity, I owe you a pint (that's one pint between you all ).

... the PAV or the Buttery? I guess it'll be a thimbleful by the time we all respond LOL!