IoffL in the news

bealtine

http://www.electricnews.net/article/10125558.rss

Is the tiger moving north?
09-12-2009
by Ralph Averbuch

Infrastructure investment in the north highlights the shortfall in strategic vision down south.

Infrastructure investment in the north highlights the shortfall in strategic vision down south.Some credit must go to those people at Ireland Offline for continuing to bang on their drum. Whilst most of us can be online in some fashion, it sometimes feels it's literally down to good luck, a fair wind and lots of sticking plasters. Those of us lucky enough to be in city centres or on the route of a cable network are fortunate. There's little incentive in the market to seek out diminishing returns by chasing low-density conurbations where the whole infrastructure needs root and branch updating, making each customer acquisition so expensive per capita as to make no business sense at all. That's why there needs to be some form of effective intervention to pick up where the free market can't (and won't) go. So to Ireland Offline's recent rant about the iniquity of a situation where Northern Ireland is expected to have something like 20 times more fibre than the Republic by 2011. That's 1,150 new BT fibre nodes across the north in the next 18 months. BT is coughing up a little over half the implementation costs with the rest coming from government and EU funding. When it's done there will be a minimum guaranteed connection of 2Mbps for all businesses in Northern Ireland. It does beg the question, will we see similar activity in the south? So far it's not looking too promising. Ireland Offline's Michael Watterson sums up thus, "The price of failure to compete with our peers in the Global Knowledge economy is economic oblivion. As our developed peers all move smartly towards the high speed ‘cloud computing’ future we in Ireland are left peering through a dark dank drizzle of failed green policies”. His language is definitely emotive and apocalyptic but he's got a point. Ireland is heavily reliant on its intellectual assets for economic success. Those assets can only realise their full potential if they have access to at least the same level of connectivity as our immediate European partners. Otherwise there really is a danger that we'll fall way behind once again. Is it worth risking all the hard-fought gains Ireland's achieved only to be lost for lack of strategic vision?

bealtine

http://www.tribune.ie/archive/article/2009/dec/13/tech-week-eamon-mcgrane-broadband-civil-war-points/

As rivals slug it out over who has the fastest product, the north leaves us all in the shade
Broadband: who's the fastest?

With the budget taking centre stage last week, a war of words (or press releases) between UPC (Chorus/NTL) and Magnet was pushed to the background. What sparked the spat was UPC's announcement that it has the country's fastest broadband – something Magnet found contentious to say the least.

UPC launched what it calls "fibre-powered broadband" with a new speed of 30Mb, priced at €50 as a standalone product or €42 combined with its other services.

Mark Coan, sales and marketing director of UPC Ireland said the company had Eircom in its sights "and wants to win". Its primary focus is on defining the difference between its fibre-powered platform and Eircom's DSL-based products. It is going "mass market" with its new offering – the result of a €410m investment in its Irish network with a further outlay of €90m set aside for next year.

Coan believes that the DSL platform is dying on its feet and pointed to a steep decline in customers taking up the DSL option while cable provision was enjoying an upward curve. "DSL has gone backwards and is only adding approximately 6,700 per quarter," he said.

"We're adding 90,000 more broadband subscribers next quarter. We're seeing a wholesale shift from old DSL copper to fibre cable." He also noted that research house Gartner posited that 30% of all broadband connections will be over 25Mb in the next four years.

However, UPC's announcement of its new product and its claims to be the fastest met with a twitchy reaction from Magnet chief executive Mark Kellett who said: "Terms such as 'fibre-powered' give the perception that customers are getting fibre all the way to their homes. In reality, UPC's connection from the street cabinet to the home is not fibre but coaxial. This is not about a battle between true fibre and cable technologies. It's about ensuring that a public already confused by broadband is not misled further."

Kellet said that Magnet had the fastest consumer broadband fibre product at 50Mb – directly challenging UPC's claims. The Magnet chief also said that UPC's product used a technology deployed by Virgin in the UK which was similarly marketed as being fibre-powered. This resulted in adjudication against Virgin from the UK's Advertising Standards Authority for misleading customers in relation to speeds.

Coan admitted he was unaware that Magnet had a 50Mb product. This is not altogether surprising when you compare the reach of both technologies. UPC's new high-speed offering is available to 500,000 homes whereas Magnet's is restricted to new or recently built houses estates. It is a very niche offering with a highly restricted geographic reach.

In relation to the judgement against Virgin Media misleading its customers and the use of the term 'fibre-powered', Coan said the Virgin case was about one specific advertisement. And it continues to use the term 'fibre-powered' in its advertising campaigns. "In fact the entire UPC group is using the fibre-powered message. And Ireland is the last country to do so. We're not any more out of line with this positioning than anyone else in the world."

Not only are we lagging behind our European neighbours in terms of broadband roll out and penetration, it seems we cannot keep up with our cousins north of the border, who will be getting 20 times more fibre cabling than the Republic by 2011. This week the north's political mandarins announced 1,150 new BT fibre nodes by May 2011, all to be completed within 18 months. This investment will ensure a minimum guaranteed speed of 2Mb for all employers by mid 2011.

The Ireland Offline Future Technologies Working Group chairperson Michael Watterson called on the government in the south to put a similar plan in place. "We need positive and realistic action on these issues immediately and that requires that fibre be in the ground and fully lit. The price of failure to compete with our peers in the global knowledge economy is economic oblivion."

I couldn't agree more.

While our government talks about smart economies and knowledge economies, at least one part of the island seems to be getting it right. Why would they ever want to reunify? A broadband nation once again?