Irelandoffline Blasts Dublin BroadBand Infrastructure

Sponge Bob

International Broadband Quality Survey blasts Dublin.

IrelandOffline today received their copy of the "Oxford University Said Business School Global Broadband Quality Study" which is issued annually.


Commenting on the results of the study Eamonn Wallace of IrelandOffline said

"We are not quite sure whether this is Salvador in Brazil or Salvador in El Salvador but this city is now ranked as the 86th City in the world
for the quality of its Broadband Infrastructure and is one place ahead of Dublin in 87th place for the Quality of its Broadband" (1)

Cities ranked ahead of Dublin include Ankara, Ljubljana, Bratislava, Talinn, Budapest, Sofia, Vilnius, Riga, Prague, Athens and many Chinese cities. (2)(3)


Most of these cities are former Soviet states and not noted for their infrastructural achievements. Athens has always been many places below Dublin for the quality of its telecommunications infrastructure.


Wallace also added:
"The only notable European capital cities that score worse than Dublin are Warsaw and Rome and not by very much may I add.
I also note Soweto in South Africa is currently in 102nd place with a score of 25 and it scores nearer the Dublin score of 28 than Dublin scores against Lisbon with a score of 38.
We recommend that Minister Ryan should visit a Conference in Soweto next year rather than a Conference in Seoul ( score 65 ) as he did last year.

At least his phone might work in Soweto."

The survey shows Ireland frozen in broadband mediocrity. With the lowest Telecommunications Investment in the developed world (as a % of GDP) we are therefore guaranteed to remain in mediocrity.

The low Broadband Quality outside our major cities is also noteworthy.(3) 60% of our population currently live outside our major cities and while Ireland scores slightly ahead of Ukraine we are behind Greece, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary right now.

Furthermore, most of those countries have large scale fibre installation plans or installation projects in train where we have no concrete plan.

All of these future network plans are glibly entrusted to his "liberalised market" by Minister Ryan and his dysfunctional department.

1.http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/NR/rdonlyres/0353B17F-CAF7-4169-A294-9DAB696398A2/0/BroadbandQualityStudy2009Appendix.pdf Page 11
2.http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/NR/rdonlyres/99AAE7AC-C951-42CB-8F62-D43F51CEDE87/0/BroadbandQualityStudy2009PressPresentationfinal.pdf page 19
3.http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/NR/rdonlyres/99AAE7AC-C951-42CB-8F62-D43F51CEDE87/0/BroadbandQualityStudy2009PressPresentationfinal.pdf page 20
4.http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/news/media/Press+Releases/Cisco+BQS+2009.htm Link to Said Business School Press Release and Documents including 2008 Data .

spacetweek

Absolute toss from start to finish. This Eamonn Wallace chap is barely worth dignifying with an answer. Once I reached "Soweto" my "Exaggeration" alarm started ringing.

Mellor

Looking at the list on one of the first pages, is Ireland not 16th?

Sponge Bob

Mellor wrote: »

Looking at the list on one of the first pages, is Ireland not 16th?

Ireland is 16th and Dublin is 87th in the City list .

I see poor spacetweek is in slow learning mode again so below is the graph showing Dublin in 87th position with the words "Dublin in 87th position" helpfully WRITTEN on it for him .

This is entirely understandable when you realise all of three irelands poor customers are natted behind one ip address in Dublin ....for example .... .

In fact I do not understand how Ireland got 16th given the sheer number of speedtests seemingly emanating daily from Dublin at dialup speeds .

Ireland places too great a reliance on overloaded and unsatisfactory mobile midband tech and constantly cooks the official BB figures by quoting these in defiance of international reporting norms which do not count mobile because it ain't really broadband, too unreliable .

It is akin to counting rutted bog tracks as roads. This test was where the BS produced by Eamon Ryan and Comreg came back to bite them on the leg Soweto would do well because of the fibres being commissioned for the world cup next year .

Could Soweto overtake Dublin next year ??? Very possibly. ADSL has been in decline since last winter and is being replaced by mobile in many cases.

spacetweek

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Ireland is 16th and Dublin is 87th in the City list .

Ireland places too great a reliance on overloaded and unsatisfactory mobile midband tech and constantly cooks the official BB figures by quoting these in defiance of international reporting norms which do not count mobile because it ain't really broadband, too unreliable .

66% of Irish households have BB connection now (source) and availability is aimed to be 100% by Sep 2010 (source).

How is Broadband Quality measured? No one I know who uses mobile BB complains about it. I have heard bad things about stuff like Ripwave but the people that I know who used to use it just replaced it with something better immediately. Free markets are great.

Sponge Bob wrote:

ADSL has been in decline since last winter and is being replaced by mobile in many cases.

Presumably because it's usually a good product?

Sponge Bob wrote:

Soweto would do well because of the fibres being commissioned for the world cup next year.
Could Soweto overtake Dublin next year ??? Very possibly.

Spongie, you're a good laugh - I'll give you that. Soweto will get none of that infrastructure unfortunately, South Africa being what it is.

Sponge Bob

spacetweek wrote: »

How is Broadband Quality measured? No one I know who uses mobile BB complains about it.

I simply cannot believe that Spacetweek . One of the most viewed threads on boards apart from the 'counting to a million' one is This which sadly has over 3 views for every customer they have .

There is no comparison between proper low latency broadband and mobile/nomadic product like 3g and Ripwave . You cannot run VPNs and messaging technology on them . Access to fast low latency services is what quality is all about .

See if this video times out and freezes , as a test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d62jQ22w360

Amtmann

I saw an episode of "We Built This City" on Discovery a few years back where Paris was the focus. The plan under discussion entailed making the whole of the French capital a wireless hotspot by running cables along the city sewerage system. Are there any plans at all for Dublin to do something similar?

Sponge Bob

Furet wrote: »

Are there any plans at all for Dublin to do something similar?

There were but they were shot down by the Department of Communications nearly 2 years ago .

Wi-Fi is like 3g . It is useful to have if you are caught short but people should not be forced to rely on it which is the problem in Ireland .

loyatemu

ignoring 3G "broadband" (which I agree is flakey) what is the availality of proper broadband like in Dublin as a whole? I would've thought most of the city is now covered by DSL, Cable or Wireless options - am I wrong? (I'm aware of the problems elsewhere in the country).

Sponge Bob

Most of it is covered by dsl/cable and fixed wireless . However Dublin is the only capital city in Europe running ADSL and Docsis 2 technology with no upgrades being deployed.

Most comparable cities are already on (some or all of) Fibre and VDSL and Docsis 3 . Docsis 3 lets you do this !

It is not that UPC do not know what Docsis 3 is

http://www.tomfoley.net/?p=386

What caught my eye is the fact that Liberty Global charge €60 for 60Mbps internet service in the Netherlands. Meanwhile the closest offering they have in Ireland is €40 for a 20Mbps service.