Broadband debate on LastWord at 5pm today

damien

First on will be IrelandOffline and eircom then followed by Noel Dempsey and Tommy Broughan.

Text comments to 53102 or email lastword@todayfm.com

Slaanesh

Doesn't appear to be on yet?

viking

Its on now....

Wertz

Usual rhetoric and nonsense being poured forth by the good minister....I don't think this guy understands the basic concepts of what's being discussed here. What a travesty.

jor el

By Jesus that Noel Dempsey is an awful muppet. I only wish that Matt had more of an idea about broadband and the technologies involved so he could pull Dempsey up on his BS. Good points made by Damien but it would have been nice if he could have rebutted Dempsey's comments about us being at the top of the EU league tables by July! Is he even on the same planet as us or what?

1huge1

did he say we would be top of european tables by july?? ahead of denmark and the netherlands... thats crazy talk

jor el

When he was talking about our uptake being high he mentioned something about being up at the top, not sure if he meant in terms of uptake or actual availability and subscribers. Pretty sure he said we'd be right up there with the top countries in terms of availability.

Another thing I seem to remember was when the issue of new houses and no fibre being installed was brought up. Matt mentioned the 600,000 houses built in the last 10 years of this government and practically none of them have fibre installed (or what Matt said was they had no broadband). Dempsey responded by correcting Matt on the broadband/fibre distinction and said all of those houses could have broadband. Now that's complete fud. What I guess he meant was that all houses in the last 10 years could get a phone line, which is a far cry from getting broadband. Even suggesting that all houses can get a phone line is incorrect as there are new housing estates being built right now that have no pre-wiring of phones or no connections to exchanges. In fact, eircom have been quoting people up to and over 1 year waiting times on getting a phone line.

If anyone got a recording of it I'd like a second listen.

If only any of the other parties had a spokesman with a clue too who could pull Dempsey up on his crap then debates like this might go a little bit different. The Labour guy didn't really do much to rebut Dempsey's statements, just kind of let him away with it.

spuddy

Nice to hear the BB issue being discussed. It was certainly better than previous discussions I've heard in the Irish media.

The only area where Damien where he could have elaborated more, was on the Matt's question on whether it matters about having higher speeds.
Being able to download movies faster is not as convincing as, for example, telling people they could have a few hundred TV channels & cheap VOIP telephony in addition to broadband, and all down one telephone line.
Other than that, a good performance. It's great to have someone speaking about this issue, who isn't pushing a political agenda.

On Dempsey's comment about it not being possible to have a universal service obligation for broadband is debatable, certainly as Switzerland is about to announce it.

viking

I ended up missing most of it due to phone calls but when talking about ducting and fibre to the home, wasn't the ducting meant to be (should have been) carrier neutral allowing any company to rent space and drop cable/fibre to everyone's house?

This would effectively mean no one company would have a monopoly on an estate or apartment building.

dahamsta

Did they throw Damien off before Narrowband came on, or was that just my imagination?

qwertplaywert

anything about small rural areas mentioned?

damien

dahamsta wrote:

Did they throw Damien off before Narrowband came on, or was that just my imagination?

Indeed they did. I was chatting to him before I went on and complimented him on his blog and said it was a great read. He didn't know he was the first Government Minister to have a blog. He never got what I meant by the videos on it.

watty

spuddy wrote:

On Dempsey's comment about it not being possible to have a universal service obligation for broadband is debatable, certainly as Switzerland is about to announce it.

Because that would quickly expose the lies about the % of availability.

Of course it is possible. It's just no-one wants to pay for it.

damien

Vermont, a rural enough state have done it too.

http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/05/vermont_gets_it.html

jack_christie

Thought Damien did a good job;)

Is Matt Cooper as dim in real life. Comes across as pretty stupid when talking about broadband. He's even more clueless about motoring issues and he hosts a drive time programme

FG and Lab seem to be Broadband parties where as FF and PD's are still Narrowband:mad:

kaizersoze

jack_christie wrote:

FG and Lab seem to be Broadband parties where as FF and PD's are still Narrowband:mad:

Where did you get that idea from? All I get from their respective manifestos are buzz words, aspirations and BS. Now I'm not the defending FF/PD record on comms, or anything close to it but ask yourself this question. If FG/Labour got into power at the last election, would the present comms situation be any different? My answer would be no.

thebman

Well we don't know because they weren't elected.

I think it would be different because they could admit the failures of the previous government.

jack_christie

kaizersoze wrote:

Where did you get that idea from? All I get from their respective manifestos are buzz words, aspirations and BS. Now I'm not the defending FF/PD record on comms, or anything close to it but ask yourself this question. If FG/Labour got into power at the last election, would the present comms situation be any different? My answer would be no.

Well if they aren't, then we're fecked either way:eek:

dahamsta

kaizersoze wrote:

Where did you get that idea from? All I get from their respective manifestos are buzz words, aspirations and BS. Now I'm not the defending FF/PD record on comms, or anything close to it but ask yourself this question. If FG/Labour got into power at the last election, would the present comms situation be any different? My answer would be no.

Damien posted critiques of all the manifestos in this very forum, I'd suggest you read them.

kaizersoze

dahamsta wrote:

Damien posted critiques of all the manifestos in this very forum, I'd suggest you read them.

I have already read the various critiques and I still think they're talking sh1te ( the parties I mean, not Damien).