NBS Testing

clohamon

A bit of detail. No report coming so I guess we'll never know.

168. Deputy Willie Penrose asked the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the methods he will use to satisfy himself that the upload, download and latency standards described by himself and the national broadband scheme contractors (details supplied) are being met; the moneys committed by him in 2009 and separately in 2010 for this purpose; the competent independent assessment body which will be used to ascertain the actual performance on the NBS service; the date by which he will publish a report; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12606/09]

Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (Deputy Eamon Ryan): Under the terms of the National Broadband Scheme (NBS) contract, 3 Ireland has committed to defined service standards with respect to retail product speeds and contention ratio, customer interface, wholesale service, reporting and marketing. My Department, with the assistance of independent technical consultants, Analysis Mason Ltd, will actively monitor performance of the infrastructure, service availability, service delivery and customer experience as well as overall compliance with contractual obligations by 3 Ireland on a monthly basis throughout the contract term.

Monitoring activities will involve random testing to assess and monitor the availability and coverage of the services in the NBS coverage areas. Upgrades of the network and its capacity are automatically triggered at contractually agreed levels of traffic to ensure that the quality of the broadband service is maintained and enhanced over the period of the contract. 3 Ireland is obliged to address any issues arising and the NBS contract imposes a service credit regime on 3 Ireland with significant consequences in the event of proven failure to meet the contractually binding service standards.

The overall cost of technical, financial and commercial advisory services to support my Department in relation to the implementation and monitoring of the NBS contract over a 28 month period is expected to amount to €399,250 (exclusive of VAT), of which amounts of €175,000 and €80,000 are foreseen to be paid in 2009 and 2010 respectively. I do not propose to publish a report on performance by 3 Ireland under the NBS contract and no such report is provided for under the terms of the contract.

http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.aspx?F=DAL20090325.XML&Node=H17-99#H17-99

watty

400 Euro per District for Monitoring.

I'll bet there will be no proper monitoring of performance and no penalty if not met. Look at Eircom and line speed and line faults.

Sponge Bob

The three Aran Islands are a single district

A pack of consultants in Dublin are supposed to monitor compliance with the promised service levels for the 3 years of the NBS

Thats 3 islands for 3 years .

The government has given them just under €400 to ensure that the service will work properly during all of that time ( after activation) on the 4 Aran islands. Naturally they do not propose to visit any of these areas over the course of the three years.

In fact they only propose to certify that certain cells are switched on and generally left switched on. The consulatnts believe that this is money for old rope

cgarvey

If monitoring is simply based on base-station data, then no one need leave a seat. I can't imagine for €400/ED will have many people leaving seats, unfortunately!