61pc of Irish farms have no internet connection

bealtine

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/24643-61pc-of-irish-farms-have-no/

Some 61pc of Irish farmers still have absolutely no internet access on their farms or in their homes. A further 19pc are on old-fashioned dial-up connections.

The survey by Onwave, formerly Satellite Broadband Ireland, was carried out at the recent National Ploughing Championships, to examine Irish farmers' use of broadband and online services for farm management.

Of all those farmers who don't have access to broadband services, more than 77pc believe there is no availability in their areas.

“It's astonishing to see such a large digital divide still in existence in rural Ireland and particularly among the farming community,” Sean Óg Brennan, technical director, Onwave, said.

“Our rural population, young and old, are missing out on all the opportunities that are being made available due to the digital age,” Brennan said.

A report conducted in 2010 by the Committee on the Uptake of Information Technology in Agriculture, on behalf of the Department of Agriculture, identified broadband availability and cost as two significant factors which have a bearing on farmers' uptake of online services and technology.

Access to broadband and the internet can provide important resources to help in the efficient management of a modern farm, such as information on current farming practices, prices and trends, EU directives and competition information. This can help farmers make more informed decisions about their business and keep up-to-date on any issues that may affect them.

The Onwave survey also found that 70pc of farmers who currently have some form of internet access use it for farm-related activities, such as banking, tender documents, returns to the Department of Agriculture, and livestock registration.

For those who don't have any internet access, 52pc admitted having asked friends, family members or agents to help them when they need to access relevant websites to fill in forms online.
Broadband for farmers will be more important in next three years

Looking to the future, the survey revealed that the vast majority of Irish farmers, 98pc, believe access to broadband for Irish farming will become more important in the next three years.

Whether it is for farm-related activities or leisure activities, such as planning and booking holidays, buying cinema tickets or searching local activities, farms and rural homes should be able to access top quality online services, no matter where they are.

“The results of this survey show that many Irish farmers are still not using the internet in any significant way for farm management activities. A number of agricultural bodies, such as the Department of Agriculture, offer services online to farmers which can provide assistance for farm-specific tasks.

“For Irish farmers, this may have a significant negative effect in the future, with their European counterparts having access to all the most up-to-date information and resources online.

“One respondent to our survey who I felt concisely summed up the current opinion in many areas of rural Ireland, said that he would prefer to submit forms that relate to his farming business online but just can't get broadband access where he lives so has to send them by post,” Brennan pointed out.

John Kennedy

bealtine

While this piece is pimping satellite midband it does raise a few important points that the vast majority of farmers cannot join the internet age.
This is a patently a failure of the " fully competitive market" so beloved of various ministers.

watty

You can't run cow shed cams over satellite, as the T&C forbid it and cap makes it pointless. Works on real broadband though.

jbkenn

bealtine wrote: »

While this piece is pimping satellite midband it does raise a few important points that the vast majority of farmers cannot join the internet age.
This is a patently a failure of the " fully competitive market" so beloved of various ministers.

"Of all those farmers who don't have access to broadband services, more than 77pc believe there is no availability in their areas."
Maybe if they went to the bother of finding out, they might be surprised to find that there is availability.
The reality, in my experience, is most farmers are simply not interested in broadband or internet access, there are very few farmers who cannot access broadband, and Onwave Sattelite is'nt going to improve their situation one little bit

jbkenn

watty

Probably of Farmers 15% to 30% can't get real Broadband. But who in Government or Comreg is interested in real figures excluding Satellite, Mobile and Imagine Wimax and any other non-Broadband solutions?

The NBS didn't add a single real Broadband connection anywhere.

PogMoThoin

Onwave have been showing live demonstrations of 10Mbit at the marts

bealtine

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Onwave have been showing live demonstrations of 10Mbit at the marts

With crap download allowances and caps? Do they point out that VOIP barely works on satellite and most games are a no-no? Probably not...

Stinicker

I would like to know what percentage of farmers have a computer and could even use one, the vast majority of Irish farmers seem to be over 55+ to me, it really is a dying profession.

Firetrap

That's a good question. What's the age profile of the farmers who aren't online? I'm thinking they'd be older and probably never use computers. Younger ones would probably be using computers or have spouses/kids who do.

watty

Age is not entirely relevant.

Personal Computing (CP/M and AppleII) predates 1981 IBM PC. Some people have been using online services for nearly 30 years.

I know 80 year olds quite happy with Computers.

The Farmers don't have to write the Programs. It's simpler than programming a VHS.

Sure you can have 10Mbps download (upload is a lot slower), but pathetic caps so at that speed you could be throttled in an hour. Latency is 0.5 to 0.8 second compared to 0.010 to 0.05 for real broadband.

It's criminal that Moldova has better Broadband than us and doesn't need to Promote Mobile or Satellite for Internet access.

thebman

Most farmers I know simply get one of the younger ones to do it for them.

They are simply not comfortable doing it or don't want to learn. They don't see the advantage to being able to do it themselves when they know someone who will do it for them.

bealtine

There is a lot of stereotyping going on here, for instance most of the farmers I know (admittedly not too many) are all young enough,certainly under 40 and fairly computer savvy. Certainly in the North Dublin area anyway, one even posts on boards:-)

I'd guess that there are an older brigade as well, however they can usually get their sons/daughters to do the necessary online stuff if only they had access to broadband...

bealtine

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15882852

clohamon

TALK of cloud computing highlights the communication gap between rural and urban Ireland.
While government sources talk of the cloud computing industry being worth €9.5 billion here in a few years, employing up to 9,000, many farmers have to ask friends, family members or agents such as solicitors to help them when they need to access relevant websites to fill in forms online.

The onwave satellite broadband company spoke to 80 people at the Ploughing Championships, and 50 of them had no internet access on their farm or in their home, and 16 were still on slow dial-up or narrowband services.

Nearly 40 said there is no broadband availability in their area.

Theres more here, including a plug for IoffL.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/business/farming/the-slow-road-to-broadband-175717.html