NBS is finished

semper fidelis

It would appear that this has slipped by without anybody commenting. It would appear that Ireland Inc. has paid out 80 million and in return has got 27,000 (bad) connections. That leaves 208,000 people out of the designated areas (me being one of them ) without any kind of broadband. Why have none of the opposition picked up on this ?

Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)
Question 374: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if he will confirm if the national broadband scheme has completed its work in County Westmeath; the number of connections both mobile and satellite made to date in each named electoral division within the scheme; if these divisions are now deemed to be fully covered by the NBS contractor and have been verified as such by the Department’s monitoring consultants; if he will specify the named divisions for which full payment of allocated Irish and EU subsidies has been made to the NBS contractor; the total payments made to date to the NBS contractor including any forward payments made in 2008; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41482/10]
Eamon Ryan (Minister, Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources; Dublin South, Green Party)
Broadband services under the National Broadband Scheme (NBS) are available, since October 2010, to all premises within each of the 1,028 designated NBS Electoral Divisions (ED), including those in County Westmeath.
The detailed information sought in relation to the numbers of connections within each of the 1,028 EDs in the NBS Coverage Area is voluminous and not to hand. My officials have sought this information from the NBS Service Provider, 3 and will forward it separately to the Deputy. However, in summary terms, customer numbers continue to grow and to date, 26,721 customers (comprising of 24,834 mobile wireless and 1,887 satellite customers) have subscribed to the Scheme nationwide. There are approximately 235,000 fixed premises and residences in the NBS coverage area. The key factor is that as a result of the NBS broadband infrastructure is now available in areas where a service was not previously available.
Under the terms of the NBS contract, all EDs have been designated as Enabled by my Department, signifying that the NBS Service Provider 3 has complied with the specified contractual criteria, including the provision of the minimum specification broadband service to 100% of the fixed businesses and residences within each of the NBS EDs. The coverage verification exercise carried out by my Department’s consultants, Analysys Mason, as part of the formal enablement of each ED, is complemented by the ongoing monthly measurement of coverage within the NBS EDs to ensure that the minimum specified service is being provided.
The total maximum Exchequer and EU contribution to the NBS amounts to €79.8m and payments take place over the period December 2008 to August 2014 upon satisfactory compliance by 3 with specified milestones. To date, subsidy payments made to 3 amount to some €62m which cumulative rollout payments corresponding to the milestone relevant to 85% of the total EDs Enabled. Invoices in respect of the remaining milestones up to 100% of the total EDs Enabled, amounting to some €8m, are on hands for processing for payment by my Department. Further payments will arise within the limit of the total minimum contribution €79.8m, under the contract, in 2011 and 2014.

oscarBravo

Three grand per subscriber.

Bargain.

Our man in Havana

Finished my backside. Ryan has not heard the last of this.

watty

IMO the NBS hasn't started yet.

I told Minister Ryan to his face that it was subsidising a Mobile Phone Rollout.

http://irelandoffline.org/2010/12/broadband-now-available-in-every-district-in-ireland-minister/

http://irelandoffline.org/2010/12/irish-broadband-speeds-continue-their-decline/

http://irelandoffline.org/2009/08/is-mobile-midband-in-ireland-destroying-broadband-infrastructure/

It has not gone unremarked.

clohamon

There's a video of the announcement including interviews with Robert Finnegan and Minister here.

Our man in Havana

clohamon wrote: »

There's a video of the announcement including interviews with Robert Finnegan and Minister here.

That will be all evidence for the prosecution.

William Powell

Interesting figures . Anyone know how many IP addresses 3 have? I've only seen the Proxy IP addresses somewhere in the range 92.251.255.0 - 92.251.255.12 and the true internet addresses in the range 178.167.128.0 - 178.167.159.25 thats under 8k addresses so if these "always on" nbs customers all decided to use the 3internet APN then 16k of then won't have an IP address .

Maybe 3 have a massive block of addresses I've missed, and don't forget I've not included non nbs customers who use exactly the same network.

oscarBravo

They're using NAT. I'm pretty sure all the mobile operators do this, so they're sharing IP addresses among active customers.

William Powell

oscarBravo wrote: »

They're using NAT. I'm pretty sure all the mobile operators do this, so they're sharing IP addresses among active customers.

I haven't checked which APN a brand new out of the box 3 modem will use by default but you can use either the 3ireland.ie APN which uses NAT from a private IP address range or the 3internet APN which gives you an internet address in the range 178.167.128.0 - 178.167.159.25.

Edit>Ignore my crap, just got a different IP address today in the range 178.167.192.0 - 178.167.223.255 so there's another nice sized block, I'll keep an eye out for any more.