RBS News

clohamon

The department has updated its website on the RBS.

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Communications+Development/Rural+Broadband+Scheme/Rural+Broadband+Scheme.htm

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Communications+Development/Rural+Broadband+Scheme/Participating+Internet+Service+Providers.htm

The Minister announced yesterday that a tender was underway, but it seems unlikely that that could happen before a list of 'valid' and unserved applicants had been finalised. And seemingly the 35 providers have to be given a chance to provide service on commercial terms first.

The European Commission decision estimates a period of nearly four months for that process to be finalised.

"For the purposes of the scheme, it is envisaged that service providers will be given a 21 day period in which to offer a service to a consumer who has applied for the measure and a further reasonable period of 3 month in which to actually provide the service in question."

So unless the department are prepared to issue an open-ended tender without knowing the final count, it looks like it would be the middle of May before a tender could be issued. Allowing say four weeks for the tender responses and another two for assessment that brings us up to the beginning of July before a contract could be issued.

There is also also an issue concerning whether satellite service is now comparable in terms of price with other "broadband" services. The Minister answered a question from Luke 'Ming' Flanagan as follows.

http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/2012/01/18/00038.asp

The Deputy refers to the cost of satellite connectivity. The technology involved with satellite internet has meant that connectivity has tended to be more expensive than connectivity via other means. However, with technological advances, I am pleased to note that tariffs for satellite connectivity are becoming increasingly competitive with other technologies.

This could be taken to mean that he believes that cost of satellite is now close enough to other services so as to require little or no subsidy, and in any case he has already stated that he is prohibited from subsidising monthly fees.

bealtine

clohamon wrote: »

http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/2012/01/18/00038.asp

Same oul ****e as Ryan used to spout, if his name wasn't Rabbitte I'd believe Ryan himself had written that reply.

watty

Obviously same civil servant.

bealtine

watty wrote: »

Obviously same civil servant.

And I naively believed that the government ran the country not some unnamed anonymous civil servant

watty

I *know* you are kidding. You have the secret documentary that exposes it.

bealtine

watty wrote: »

I *know* you are kidding. You have the secret documentary that exposes it.

what you mean documentary? The "Great Sky Fairy" told me

clohamon

The RBS is now down to 3700. Of the 5000 applicants, 1300 have either been disqualified or have withdrawn from the scheme.

The Department, having already received permission (in July) from applicants for providers to contact them, will now be writing to applicants again. And the applicants will have to write back giving their consent - again.

The Department will then write to the dwindling number of providers who are still engaged in this farce to advise them for a second time that they can contact the applicants.

The department is no longer sure if any financial help will be given at all.

The only question remaining is, what has happened to the EU money?

Pat Rabbitte (Minister, Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources; Dublin South West, Labour)
The Application Phase of the Rural Broadband Scheme (RBS) closed on 29 July 2011. The Department received 5,000 applications and of these, approximately 3700 qualified under the terms of the scheme.
The Verification Phase of the Scheme has now commenced. In this phase of the Scheme, the details of applicants have been passed to Internet service providers to assess whether a service can be offered to them without intervention from the State.
A total of 32 companies are participating in this part of the Scheme.
My Department will be writing to all applicants by the end of this month, including those in the areas mentioned by the Deputy, to let them know the position in relation to their application and asking applicants to give their written permission to enable the companies to contact them directly with a written offer.
It is expected that the companies involved will then write with offers to those applicants who give their consent.
I expect that a significant number of applicants may be served by commercial operators as part of this phase of the scheme. If any applicants remain unserved after this phase, a service will be procured by my Department which will be rolled out later this year.

http://www.kildarestreet.com/wrans/?id=2012-02-15.1111.0&s=%22Telecommunications+Services.%22

kevinmcc

Got a letter from DCENR today about our application for RBS. It says:

The technical specification should be for a service advertised as having at least the following standards:

2 Mbps download speed,
256 kbps upload speed,
max contention ratio of 48:1
minimum data cap (uncharged) 11GB (10GB download, 1GB upload)

The upfront cost for the service should not exceed 100euro inc vat and monthly cost should not exceed 40 euro inc vat. The term of the contract for the service should not exceed 12 months.

They are using Qsat as the satellite provider.

clohamon

What are the specifications for ?
Is anyone obliged to meet them and for how long ?
Does the letter instruct you to contact Qsat. ?

How soon do Qsat have to confirm the deal and get you working?
What happens if they can't/won't?

Is the department undertaking to do anything further ?

kevinmcc

The specs it says are for ISPs participating in this part of the scheme have agreed to provide a service which meets or exceeds the criteria above.

It does not state for how long they have to provide the spec. The letter instructs me to sign and return a consent form within 14 days so that the ISP may send me a written offer of service directly.

It goes on to say that:

Please note that in this part of the scheme, the department is not endorsing or recommending any particular internet service provider - the department is acting only to provide information on potential service providers to applicants under the RBS and it is a matter for you to make arrangements for a service with a provider.

If the ISPs in this case are unable to provide you with a service, they will inform the department in due course and your application will continue in the scheme.

However if you decline and offer of service from all of these ISPs, it will be assumed that you are no longer seeking a broadband service and your application under the rural broadband scheme will be regarded as withdrawn.

If you do not return the consent form to the department, it will be assumed that you do not wish to be contacted by these service providers in connection with the scheme and your application will be regarded as withdrawn.

clohamon

kevinmcc wrote: »

If you do not return the consent form to the department, it will be assumed that you do not wish to be contacted by these service providers in connection with the scheme and your application will be regarded as withdrawn.

Is there a deadline for returning the consent form?

Is there any detail on the cap ? i.e. is it a rolling 30 day cap with interim limits?

bealtine

kevinmcc wrote: »

However if you decline and offer of service from all of these ISPs, it will be assumed that you are no longer seeking a broadband service and your application under the rural broadband scheme will be regarded as withdrawn.

.

Translation: Take satellite service or bugger off.

clohamon

Consent deadline.

I wonder how many will be late?

Letters have now been sent to all applicants to let them know the position in relation to their application. If you are an applicant, you may receive a letter indicating that there are service providers who are willing to offer you a service.

If you wish to remain in the RBS, please sign the Consent Form which is attached to your letter and return it to us as soon as possible to reach us by 2 March 2012 at the latest.

Your written permission is required to enable the companies to contact you directly with a written offer of service. Once we have obtained consents from the applicants concerned, we will be passing the relevant information to the companies and they will then write with offers to those applicants.

Please note that if you do not return the consent form by the deadline it will be assumed that you no longer wish to participate in the RBS and your application will be closed. It will not be possible to re-open an application once the deadline for return of consent forms has passed.



It is expected that a significant number of applicants may be served by commercial operators as part of this phase of the scheme. If any applicants remain un-served after this phase, a service will have to be procured by the Department and our target is to have this rolled out by the end of this year.

DCENR emphasis
http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Communications+Development/Rural+Broadband+Scheme/Rural+Broadband+Scheme.htm

watty

It's pointless as all they offer is Satellite which has been falling in cost the last 4 years anyway and will never deliver Broadband.

How many people on NBS satellite got the NBS contracted speeds, contention and caps? Most sold regular retail packages with crippling contention and cap rules.

clohamon

watty wrote: »

It's pointless as all they offer is Satellite which has been falling in cost the last 4 years anyway and will never deliver Broadband.

' just bemused by the cynicism of it.

If the specification at that price is already 'acceptable' to applicants and providers there's no need to offer any subsidy. In fact the winner of a reverse tender might even pay the department to pick up the remainder as a batch order. i.e. a negative subsidy. That's usually called a tax.

Bill Shock

clohamon wrote: »

Consent deadline.

I wonder how many will be late?



DCENR emphasis
http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Communications+Development/Rural+Broadband+Scheme/Rural+Broadband+Scheme.htm

THe logical conclusion of the letter sent is that if all of the applicants can be provided with a service by the participating commercial providers (even satellite) then there will be no Scheme (from the point of view that the dept will not need to seek a service provider). In essence what they will have done is undertaken a major data collection exercise for ISPs and not have to spend any money on procuring a service provider. that's my take on it anyway.

clohamon

Bill Shock wrote: »

THe logical conclusion of the letter sent is that if all of the applicants can be provided with a service by the participating commercial providers (even satellite) then there will be no Scheme (from the point of view that the dept will not need to seek a service provider). In essence what they will have done is undertaken a major data collection exercise for ISPs and not have to spend any money on procuring a service provider. that's my take on it anyway.

Yes and No.

There is a difference between what was agreed with EU and what is being proposed.

1. Is it affordable ?

In particular, (1) Ireland will verify that the targeted consumers cannot be reasonably served by existing service providers at affordable costs;

2. Does it meet all of the following ?

Service providers will submit bids and the granting authority will select a bidder who will be required to provide broadband services to consumers who qualify under the measure. The minimum required service will have the following characteristics: always-on service (no charge by connection time); downstream speed of minimum 2Mbps; upstream speed of minimum 256kbps; a maximum contention ratio equivalent to 48:1; minimum monthly limit on download capacity (uncharged) per retail subscriber connection of 10GB; latency requirements such that common Internet Protocol (IP) applications such as Virtual Private Network (VPN), Voice over IP (VoIP) and gaming may be supported by the broadband service.

http://ec.europa.eu/eu_law/state_aids/comp-2009/n607-09.pdf

If there's no one left in the scheme then there's no state aid so the EU conditions no longer apply.

One option for applicants is to reply to DCENR saying the conditions do not include latency and VPN requirements and threaten some kind of appeal to the EU Commission.

watty

But we know how well that worked with NBS. Three's tender response (And Eircom's rejected one*) didn't meet the spec for Broadband or the NBS spec.

(* Eircom was going to mostly use Meteor 3G/HSPA, but had priced the Satellite fill in with proper cap. Three had priced an imaginary-at-the-time satellite fill in and was cheaper. The eventually supplied Three Satellite element often doesn't meet Cap or speed requirements).

Unfortunately the NBS was never monitored properly and penalties for not meeting it secret. Also the the Dept accepted a Tender that had not had "due diligence" (the Satellite service couldn't be ready in time) and could never meet their own spec.

But even the creation of the NBS maps was a fudge. Insisting on a single vendor rather than regional ones and an single management company (as done elsewhere) killed any chance of WISPs entering. Yet they changed the spec after picking the winner to justify the selection.
Someone should be on trial for Stupidity and wasting taxpayers and EU money or for corruption. They have done this process better in Africa. The RBS is a similar con trick.

dkane

I signed my parents up for the RBS. It really is a farce that satellite providers are allowed to partake. QSat are going to say they have coverage at all 3,700 locations and therefore you either accept their offer or bugger off. There will be no tender as they will have qualified everyone out by that stage.

My parents are in Meath. The providers that have indicated that they may be able to provide service are O2, QSat and Ripplecom.

I know that there is no line of site from my parents' house to Ripplecom's transmitter and to be honest I wouldn't go near them anyway so this leaves mobile "broadband" from O2 or QSat.

What a choice!

clohamon

Deputy Nicky McFadden asked the following
http://www.kildarestreet.com/wrans/?id=2012-03-15.490.0&m=1064#g491.0.q

To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the number of qualifying applicants who now remain in the rural broadband scheme since the 2 of March deadline; and the length of time it is proposed to allow operators in which to provide services to those remaining and if any of the €17.9m budgeted for this scheme has been allocated to other projects or purposes..

and reply

.....Letters were issued to applicants on 17th February asking them to give their consent to be contacted by those ISPs who had indicated that they could offer them a service. The deadline for the return of consent forms has been extended to 16th March 2012 and reminder letters have been issued to applicants who have not yet responded. After the new deadline has passed, my Department will be providing further information to the participating ISPs to enable them to write to applicants with offers of service. I expect that these written offers will be sent out in April and, subject to final agreement with the ISPs concerned, the provision of services to applicants during this phase of the Scheme will be carried out over the period May to July this year. The response to date by industry suggests that virtually all premises in the country are capable of obtaining a broadband service from a supplier using one of the available technology platforms i.e. DSL, fixed or mobile wireless, cable or satellite. Where a commercial service has been shown to be available, the State cannot intervene with a subvention for alternative services. While it is not possible to say definitively at this stage what amount, if any, of the EU funding available for this project through the Rural Development Programme will be required, I can assure the Deputy that it is the intention of both the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to ensure that the fund is fully utilised for rural development measures and that there is no loss of funding for Ireland as a whole.

So, providers will be allowed at least until the end of July to offer a solution. Then there will be more verification, consent etc which ought to sufficient for the remaindermen to do the decent thing and withdraw.

There is an alternative for those with stamina, and someone has a cunning plan.

clohamon

The Department's war of attrition against RBS applicants seems to be paying off. All the delays, multiple consents, low spec, high cost etc have reduced the number of applicants to just 2011 from the 5000 that applied last year.

They will now have to wait until the end of July to allow the providers a chance to offer a service. After that it's anyone's guess. Completion by 2012 is now only a target.

The companies involved will be seeking to provide services to applicants over the period from the end of April until the end of July 2012. Once this phase of the Scheme is completed, the companies will be returning data to the Department to inform us of the outcome.

It is expected that a significant number of applicants will be served by commercial operators as part of this phase of the scheme. If any applicants remain un-served after this phase, a service will have to be procured by the Department and our target is to have this rolled out by the end of this year.

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Communications+Development/Rural+Broadband+Scheme/Rural+Broadband+Scheme.htm

jbkenn

clohamon wrote: »

The Department's war of attrition against RBS applicants seems to be paying off. All the delays, multiple consents, low spec, high cost etc have reduced the number of applicants to just 2011 from the 5000 that applied last year.

They will now have to wait until the end of July to allow the providers a chance to offer a service. After that it's anyone's guess. Completion by 2012 is now only a target.



http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Communications+Development/Rural+Broadband+Scheme/Rural+Broadband+Scheme.htm

clohamon, are you surprised?, par for the course from these fcukwits, any official from a Government department that still believes Satellite is broadband, having been made well aware in the presence of the the then Minister, "Dialup" Dempsey, when he relaunched the then GBS on the 18th of January 2005, by some well known Boards contributors, of the unsuitability and limitations of Satellite as a broadband solution for rural Ireland, and yes, they are still there drawing the paycheque, and sees fit to pay €3,000,000 p.a. to rent a building in this day and age, should not be allowed responsibility for anything, unless under the supervision of a responsible minor, somebody definitely has to tie their shoe laces in the morning, before they venture off to work.

There is a way to solve this issue for once and for all, if Minister "Rabbitte in the headlights" could connect his brain to his ar$e.
We are in the process of rolling out 100Mb broadband to every secondary school in this fair isle, hair brain scheme no. 367,942. from said department, have a look at the displacement of these schools, what if, instead of delivering 100Mb, we delivered 200Mb, and allowed locally based Wireless ISP's to purchase the surplus 100Mb. at a competitive pricing structure, they would then be in a position to close to the rural digital divide, make sense?, to you maybe, but the Department, "you could'nt do that, if you did every child in Ireland would fail their Leaving Cert", or some such nonsense will be trotted out.

I know of one Secondary school about to be blessed with this bounty, meanwhile 400 metres as the crow flies from the school, is a business creating and sustaining real jobs, distributing Irish food products to Europe, who will have to struggle away with the embarrassment of trying to video conference with their European clients on a crappy DSL connection, but hey, they will be happy in the knowledge that their tax Euro's will be funding the schoolkids to watch Youtube at blazing speed, and said Department can be seen to be developing the famous "Knowledge Economy", whatever that is.

clohamon

The final group of unserved were due to be revealed after the end of July….

 The companies involved will be seeking to provide services to applicants until the end of July 2012. Once this phase of the Scheme is completed, the companies will be returning data to the Department to inform us of the outcome. - DCENR website 25/07/2012

….the latest is for the end of September.

The Department is now in the process of gathering data from the companies concerned giving the result of this exercise and the outcome of the Scheme will not be known until all of the data has been returned to the Department. This is expected to be around the end of September 2012. - DCENR website 14/09/2012

The cost of the scheme is holding steady at zero.

As the internet service companies participating in the scheme have offered services to applicants without the need for subsidy, there has been no disbursement of public money for the provision of services arising to date on the scheme. - http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/Debates%20Authoring/DebatesWebPack.nsf/takes/dail2012091800107?opendocument&highlight=Broadband%20Services