What points need to be addressed?

bealtine

I'm just attempting to get a brain dump of the various people who frequent this board, a straw poll if you will.

What things can we do get a better broadband service in Ireland?

My own list of things are:

Fix LLU
Put "Best effort" regulation out of it's misery.
Plan our NGN now
Finally do something about carrier neutral ducting
Press state fibre assets into service of the state


What others?

Fogmatic

I don't know what carrier neutral ducting is (or NGN), but;
FAS schemes in this high-unemployment time, to improve the phone line infrastructure for when things look up? Only a thought from a consumer viewpoint though (I realise it would require all the relevant people to talk to each other.....)

SkepticOne

bealtine wrote: »

Put "Best effort" regulation out of it's misery.

I suppose related to this: define and enforce basic decent minimum standard internet connection available to all.

watty

Carrier neutral ducting is ability for any operator to blow in fibre/pull in coax/cat5 etc from a street cabinet to each home.

Also to distrubute to each apartment from a cabinet on each floor and access to roof and basement cabinets.
Terrestrial TV, FTA Satellite, Pay Satellite, fibre/coax/cat5 TV

Broadband by coax/fibre/CAT5 etc.

Indeed absolutely "no best effort clause". Either they do it somehow or keep getting fined. "Best Effort" just allows the Telco to shrug and do nothing without penalty.

crawler

The Publication to Minister Ryan's overdue 10 point NGN Consultation response (which addresses many of the items raised) would be a nice start.....

bealtine wrote: »

I'm just attempting to get a brain dump of the various people who frequent this board, a straw poll if you will.

What things can we do get a better broadband service in Ireland?

My own list of things are:

Fix LLU
Put "Best effort" regulation out of it's misery.
Plan our NGN now
Finally do something about carrier neutral ducting
Press state fibre assets into service of the state


What others?

bealtine

crawler wrote: »

The Publication to Minister Ryan's overdue 10 point NGN Consultation (which addresses many of the items raised) would be a nice start.....

I hope he is writing it with the help of his shiny new 3g dongle...

crawler

bealtine wrote: »

I hope he is writing it with the help of his shiny new 3g dongle...

Being honest - I couldn't care less if it's in smoke signals or delivered using morse code - it just needs doing.

Thraktor

I wouldn't really be considered someone who "frequents" the board here, but I've been thinking about getting involved for a while, and after the demise of my previous avenue of political involvement (the PDs), I have a bit more time to help out. I'm not sure that this is quite the right thread for it, but I've got some suggestions on what IrelandOffline can do to better campaign for decent broadband in Ireland.

The first thing that needs to be done is to publish a full report on the current state of broadband in the country and exactly what needs to be done to bring us up to an international standard. The key aim of this report should be to shift political thinking about broadband to the long-term, and as such a long-term plan to bring FTTH broadband to every home and business in the country should be outlined, with a target date for the complete elimination of copper in our broadband network. Particular care must be taken to link the development of this network in importance to the Rural Electrification Scheme in the 50's or the development of a national road network. We have to emphasise that the development of a national telecoms network is the infrastructural challenge of the 21st century and has to be taken seriously. A cost-benefit analysis would be an important part of this.

Obviously researching, writing, publishing and publicizing a report like that isn't easy or cheap, which is why support should be obtained from organisations that would be looking for better broadband provision. A few worth talking to would be:
Chambers Ireland (who actually called for a national FTTH infrastructure 3 years ago)
Small Firms Association
Consumers Association of Ireland
ICT Ireland
I'm sure there would be quite a few others who would be happy to help out as well, both financially as well as by promoting the finished document. If possible, try to turn it into an annual report, which would both garner more publicity, as well as provide a way to track and comment on changes in government policy (or lack thereof) from year to year.

The second thing is to directly lobby TDs and Senators, including but not limited to those on the Joint Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. I'd pay particular attention to Simon Coveney and Liz McManus, the Fine Gael and Labour spokespeople on telecoms.

My experience dealing with TDs, Senators and Minsters is somewhat dual-sided. On the one hand, they are in general very poorly informed on telecommunications, with almost no understanding of the technologies involved or the need for long-term planning in infrastructure development. Let alone knowing how an NGN works, I wouldn't be surprised if most of them can barely operate a computer.

On the other hand, they're very receptive to actually getting an informed consumer's view of broadband in Ireland. If you talk to them one-on-one about what Ireland's current situation is, what the real situation in other countries is, and what we would have to do to bridge that gap, then they'll happily take that on board and give it due consideration. Talk to enough of them individually (particularly, as I have said, the committee members and opposition spokespeople), and the political discussion on the matter will start to shift in the right direction.

One important way to get across the situation in Ireland is through international reports on broadband infrastructure and usage. Obviously, the OECD stats are the first place to go, but they don't show the complete picture. For one thing, they go by 'advertised' speed, and don't compare contention ratios. More importantly, they get their stats off the CSO and Comreg. In a major report on ICT released last year, the CSO referred to Mbps as megabytes per second. They also count broadband as anything greater than 128Kbps, compared to 256Kbps for the OECD stats (and I believe 768Kbps in the US). Furthermore, they count 3G connections, which the OECD does not. How much these filter through into the OECD stats I don't know, but I specifically remember the government being particularly happy with how broadband penetration in that report compared to the OECD norm, despite the fact that it included vast numbers of connections that any other country wouldn't consider broadband.

One annual report that's particularly worth looking at is the World Economic Forum Networked Readiness Index. In last year's report we ranked 23rd, the lowest we've ever been placed. The overall score, though, is considerably inflated by such categories as our business and financial environments, property rights and judicial independence. Of much more interest are the broken-down statistics:
In the category ‘Importance of ICT to government vision of the future’, the WEF ranks us only 34th, just trailing Gambia and Burkina Faso.
In ‘Internet access in schools’ we place 38th, behind Thailand and the Slovak Republic.
In ‘Government prioritization of ICT’, we come 52nd, tied alongside Benin and Madagascar.
In ‘Government success in ICT promotion’ we share 50th place with Uganda and Tanzania.
In ‘Quality of competition in the ISP sector’ we come 68th, behind Bulgaria and Azerbaijan.
These are absolutely damning statistics, but I didn't hear a whisper about them when they were released (aside from the headline stat of 23rd place overall). When this year's rankings get released towards the end of April, it's very important both to have a press release ready as soon as they come out, as well as feeding the opposition spokespeople the most important points so that they can run with them and get further publicity on the topic.

The Economist's E-Readiness Rankings are also worth a look.

I'm sure you guys know all of this stuff already, but it's important to get it across directly to politicians at absolutely every available opportunity.

It would also be worth running campaigns on specific issues. For example, it would be worthwhile running a campaign to have broadband speeds and contention ratios advertised more appropriately. For instance, call to eliminate the advertising of 'best case' broadband speeds, and replace it with regulation that the speed advertised must be achievable for sustained downloads 90% of the time. You need publicity-grabbing press releases to launch these sort of campaigns, so use phrases like "grossly misrepresentative broadband ads" and "taking advantage of uninformed consumers".

Slutmonkey57b

#1 on the list for me is pushing some form of accountability in the Department and Comreg. Every problem we have in this country has little to do with geography, demographics, or economics and everything to do with unaccountability, ineptitude and laziness in our policy setters.

PogMoThoin

Yes, firstly we need a regulator who actually regulates

leoc

Here's one overall question: if the government was serious about wireless (fixed or mobile) Internet, what could it do with the spectrum, at what cost or difficulty? Some specific questions:

1. MMDS buyout:

   Sponge Bob wrote: »

   LTE (theoretically much faster 3g ) is highly problematic here because MMDS is using half of its supposed spectrum until 2014 . Other countries can go ahead ( or have) right now.

   
   In that case, should the government buy out the MMDS licenses so it can free up some or all of the spectrum dedicated to MMDS TV broadcast, well before 2014?
   
   (We've been here before, if I recall correctly. The government sold the MMDS licencees exclusive rights to rebroadcast British telly. Then the cowboy rebroadcasters and their customers kicked up a stink, and the government realised that it wasn't willing to shut them down. A lawsuit or two later, it realised that this meant it would have to buy out the MMDS providers' exclusivity. Not to mention other precedents like the West-Link debacle.)
   
   There are two obvious hitches here. The first is the cost of buying out the MMDS providers (again). I'd guess that the government ought to be able to recover some of that cost - maybe even make a profit? - by selling new LTE licenses and/or selling LTE upgrades to existing 3G licensees. The second is British TV reception for people who are currently on MMDS. It should be possible to offer them an alternative using either satellite or digital terrestrial TV (in a narrower and/or different bit of spectrum). (Though the politics involved could be knotty.)
   
2. Fixed wireless spectrum: What's happening to the spectrum allocated for fixed wireless services that Eircom was squatting? Is it possible to induce Eircom to give it up or do something useful with it? When does Eircom's license expire naturally?
   
   (Given that B&B is even broker than the government, this might actually be a good time to offer it (or its administrator) cash in hand for the fixed wireless allocation.)
   
3. White spaces: What if anything could we hope to get from an Irish equivalent to the "white spaces" technology currently in FCC hell in the US?
4. TV: Do we need analogue terrestrial TV until 2012? Do we still need terrestrial TV broadcast at all? What else could we do with the spectrum?

watty

1) MMDS buy out for LTE won't help.
Billion to roll out a truely national LTE that still can deliver fixed Broadband performance. I doubt anyone wants to roll out LTE for another 5 or 6 years. They are in the middle of 3G rollouts.
However the MMDS infrastructure would be more efficiently leveraged as part of a FIXED wireless rollout.

2) Fixed wireless is a good solution for those that can't be reached by a FTTC/VDSL hybrid. The existing Rural WISPs and Digiweb etc need to be involved and funded. The Rural WISPs where excluded from tendering for NBS

3) White space is wishfull thinking.
They have given up on making it work automatically. Each device will have to interogate a central database. It's just a cheaper but poorer quality version of Mobile/Ad Hoc WiFi. Less use than HSDPA or LTE

4) Ireland needs Terrestrial as we have NO satellite service at all. (Though it might seem like we have).

thebman

If LTE licenses haven't been given out yet then how can 3 say they will use this technology as part of an upgrade?

Wouldn't that assume they get a license which is subject to bidding presumably.

In which case, isn't th government basically saying they will award one to 3 regardless in public when they go on about LTE.

Could this be used as an argument to shut them up about it?

watty

LTE is not an upgrade.

• x4 more masts
• different Modems
• different RF gear & Aerials at masts
• x4 bigger sized channel
• New licence on new Spectrum
• x10 more backhaul to cope with peak traffic

And still won't deliver Rural Broadband.