First signs of Ireland’s digital divide emerge as Apple and Amazon jobs arrive

bealtine

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/digital-21/item/27614-first-signs-of-irelands-di

The first indication of a looming urban-rural digital divide in Ireland has arrived in the form of job opportunities from Apple and Amazon that unfortunately disqualify people who live in areas where broadband of less than 5Mbps is available.

As I've pointed out on many occasions, there is an intrinsic link between broadband quality and job creation.

But new jobs being rolled in Ireland out by companies like Apple and Amazon for customer support agents to work from home preclude people who have anything less than 5Mbps download speeds and 1Mbps upload speeds.

That means many people who live in rural - and some rural locations - won't be able to apply for certain jobs.

For example Apple, which is currently recruiting 500 new people in Cork, is also looking for at-home chat representatives. These are tech-savvy individuals who are passionate about Apple's products and who can talk to customers over Chat.
No broadband = no job

These 'home-shoring' positions are about to become very common and are ideal for individuals who are flexible, good at languages and can work with minimum supervision.

In the UK and other economies many home-shorers tend to be part-time students, stay-at-home parents and semi-retired professionals who can work flexibly and have the maturity to just get on with it.

However, as one positioned advertised on Jobs.ie for an 'At-Home Chat Representative' with Spanish skills shows, not only must the prospective employee have a flexible schedule, PC and Mac experience, a private workspace in their house, but they must also be able to demonstrate they have high speed internet services meeting minimum bandwidth requirements of 5Mbps downstream and 1Mbps up stream.

“This is a move that has been predicted for the best part of 15 years but is finally happening," Imogen Bertin, a part-time lecturer in social media skills and digital marketing at University College Cork.

“Apple are looking for 5Mbps minimum broadband connection, Amazon 4Mbps. That basically excludes rural dwellers because of the latency issues with satellite.

“This issue is going to cause a big urban/rural divide over the next few years," Bertin warned.

Unfortunately for the best part of the last decade successive Irish governments have failed to embrace broadband as a serious policy issue.

In the coming month Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte TD and the Next Generation Broadband Taskforce will unveil a long-overdue strategy to right the issue. But even so, according to industry, more than 50pc of Ireland's population will have access to at least 70Mbps by 2015. That leaves at least half the population that won't have what will be international standards of broadband by that date.

John Kennedy

watty

Some city dwellers and many suburbs can't get it either. Not everyone in the Cities and Suburbs has a UPC cable passing or good quality line to a near enough ADSL2+ exchange.

clohamon

Completely predictable and predicted.


Following from the Broadband Forum -Dublin Castle - 4 years ago

http://www.mulley.net/2008/10/08/minister-eamon-ryans-next-gen-broadband-forum-constructive-depressive-and-with-the-odd-spacer/

And then something odd happened, despite the whole general feeling of the day about needing of more speeds and better connections the Assistant Secretary General of the Department of Communications stood up and summarised the day and the state of Ireland and said that from the day we see people don’t need or use fast broadband connections and sure all they do is send emails anyway. Planet Nothere called and want their spacer back. Maybe he’s a nice guy, I hear he is but stating that nobody uses their 20mb connection for anything more than email is devoid of reality or just a plain ****ing lie and it’s obvious that the Department can do that very well.

bealtine

clohamon wrote: »

Completely predictable and predicted.


Following from the Broadband Forum -Dublin Castle - 4 years ago

http://www.mulley.net/2008/10/08/minister-eamon-ryans-next-gen-broadband-forum-constructive-depressive-and-with-the-odd-spacer/

Culchies don't need broadband, cows don't do netflix so why bother providing it down there?

This is the mantra from DCENR...

kippy

50% of the population will have access to 70Mbps by 2015 (if the so wish)

I wonder, by comparison what percentage of the population of UK, Germany,France, Spain, US, Australia, Canada will have the same access at that time?

I think its understandable that not all of the country will have access to the best broadband package out there, its just a matter of financial viability and I often think that we sometimes ask for too much.

I am sure there are rural and some urban parts of most countries where broadband is not up to speed, even the US has its major issues.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=competition-and-the-internet

watty

We ask for the wrong things.

It actually isn't expensive to have universal Fast Broadband.

Especially for a small country with Electricity and roads to everyone and no difficult geography.

Snickers Man

First signs? That's a laugh. John Kennedy has been banging on about this in Silicon Republic for years. Go on. Check the date.

Oh well. Might as well just recycle something I've written before too.

Rural Ireland doesn't want broadband. Not unless somebody else pays for it. They have made this abundantly clear down through the years, even expressing this forcefully at the ballot box.

Remember the "Deflector candidates" of 1997? One of whom even got elected.

Since the 1970s (at least) many people on the eastern seaboard have paid extra to install cable access to their homes. This was originally called "piped televison" if you go back far enough, ie to the 1970s where the cable was connected to a large communal aerial so that they could receive high quality British TV signals. The hard slog of laying the "last mile" of cable infrastructure was all done back then. Because individuals were willing to pay for it.

This gradually evolved so that Eastern Ireland had cable TV access long before most of Britain did. And of course this same coax infrastructure could, with a modicum of upgrade, be adapted to carry broadband digital traffic. aka The Internet.

In rural areas where exchanges are less concentrated and the cost of providing cabled broadband to every farmhouse and hamlet was prohibitive there were alternatives proposed. Wireless microwave transmission was licensed and made available. But the Luddites out Wesht thought they shouldn't have to pay for this and so demanded that cheaper, if illegal, "Deflectors", which merely detected and amplified TV broadcast signals were the way to go.

These of course had nothing to do with broadband transmissions and were only applicable to analogue TV broadcasts.

And now in 2012, as we all know, such broadcasts will be switched off for ever.

And rural Ireland is whinging about the digital divide.

Predictable and predicted. Hard to have any sympathy.

And isn't that nice Mr Quinn making satellite broadband available to anybody who can see the sky? Why not just shell out for a subscription to his company?

If you want to wait for the government to do it for you, then you WAIT for the government to do it for you. If you want to make it happen, then cough up. It's not that expensive and a few weeks working for Apple will pay for it easily.

Slutmonkey57b

Snickers Man wrote: »

First signs? That's a laugh. John Kennedy has been banging on about this in Silicon Republic for years. Go on. Check the date.

Oh well. Might as well just recycle something I've written before too.

Rural Ireland doesn't want broadband. Not unless somebody else pays for it. They have made this abundantly clear down through the years, even expressing this forcefully at the ballot box.

Remember the "Deflector candidates" of 1997? One of whom even got elected.

Since the 1970s (at least) many people on the eastern seaboard have paid extra to install cable access to their homes. This was originally called "piped televison" if you go back far enough, ie to the 1970s where the cable was connected to a large communal aerial so that they could receive high quality British TV signals. The hard slog of laying the "last mile" of cable infrastructure was all done back then. Because individuals were willing to pay for it.

This gradually evolved so that Eastern Ireland had cable TV access long before most of Britain did. And of course this same coax infrastructure could, with a modicum of upgrade, be adapted to carry broadband digital traffic. aka The Internet.

In rural areas where exchanges are less concentrated and the cost of providing cabled broadband to every farmhouse and hamlet was prohibitive there were alternatives proposed. Wireless microwave transmission was licensed and made available. But the Luddites out Wesht thought they shouldn't have to pay for this and so demanded that cheaper, if illegal, "Deflectors", which merely detected and amplified TV broadcast signals were the way to go.

These of course had nothing to do with broadband transmissions and were only applicable to analogue TV broadcasts.

And now in 2012, as we all know, such broadcasts will be switched off for ever.

And rural Ireland is whinging about the digital divide.

Predictable and predicted. Hard to have any sympathy.

And isn't that nice Mr Quinn making satellite broadband available to anybody who can see the sky? Why not just shell out for a subscription to his company?

If you want to wait for the government to do it for you, then you WAIT for the government to do it for you. If you want to make it happen, then cough up. It's not that expensive and a few weeks working for Apple will pay for it easily.

Why were people on the eastern seaboard paying for cable TV in the 70's and 80's? They were the only ones with money, perhaps? I hear there's very little demand in rural Africa for Michelin 3 star restaurants, gold plated Bugattis and yachts. That's because they're not willing to pay up, I'm sure.

watty

Satellite Internet won't meet Apple/google/amazon etc demands. It's Internet, not Broadband.

oscarBravo

It's a nice caricature of the deflector story, but a caricature nonetheless. Most (not all) of the deflectors in the West were licensed transmitters. The fuss was not over the right to transmit illegally, but over the unfair withholding of licences that had been applied for. Most (not all) people who watched TV channels from a deflector paid the annual subscription when the collector called to the door, at least until recent years and the widespread uptake of Sky subscriptions, which people also pay for.

It wouldn't do to let facts get in the way of a rant though, would it?

watty

Also people in the East put up giant masts that in any other country would have needed planning permission. The Cable network was as much about getting rid of expensive dangerous masts.

Cable doesn't suit rural. Larger western places did get cable. Also if you tried to do Broadband direct on the cable the performance is terrible. Too much contention. Chorus and NTL were often worse than DSL. UPC has invested in infrastructure and chopping the cable into tiny segments driven by fibre.

It's not lack of people willing to pay but Poor Regulation (financial & comms) and Government strategy that resulted in Eircom having debts that would have paid twice over for Universal fibre beating UPCs performance. But UPC bought Chorus and NTL because they could see they could upgrade and charge premium prices due to poor regulation and lack of eircom investment and massively high Eircom pricing.

Snickers Man

oscarBravo wrote: »

It's a nice caricature of the deflector story, but a caricature nonetheless. Most (not all) of the deflectors in the West were licensed transmitters. The fuss was not over the right to transmit illegally, but over the unfair withholding of licences that had been applied for. Most (not all) people who watched TV channels from a deflector paid the annual subscription when the collector called to the door, at least until recent years and the widespread uptake of Sky subscriptions, which people also pay for.

It wouldn't do to let facts get in the way of a rant though, would it?

Poor old strawman is getting a pummelling here. I never said deflectors were "free". I said they were cheaper than MMDS subscriptions, which they were.

They weren't licensed until that monosyllabic moron Tom Gildea got dumped into a hung Dail and along with that other paragon of civic virtue Jackie Healy-Rae held the balance of power. And he was dealing with everybody's pal Bertie Ahern who couldn't take a tough decision if he thought for a second somebody would come to dislike him for it. "What do you want for a vote, lads? The complete stuffing up of the market for digital access to rural Ireland? Ah sure no problem. I'm yer man."

The simple fact is that people in the west of the country, for short sighted reasons, preferred an inferior, almost obsolescent TV transmission technology rather than choosing to invest in a superior one which might have been adapted, as cable TV infrastructure was adapted in the east, to cater for broadband.

And now they're living with the consequences. There are ways of getting high speed access to the West. But after the stuffing the MMDS guys got, it would be a brave private investor who would put the money up front to provide it. So you have to wait for the government to do it.

Which it will do eventually. But, er, it kind of has other priorities at the moment.

Bill Shock

In rural areas where exchanges are less concentrated and the cost of providing cabled broadband to every farmhouse and hamlet was prohibitive there were alternatives proposed. Wireless microwave transmission was licensed and made available. But the Luddites out Wesht thought they shouldn't have to pay for this and so demanded that cheaper, if illegal, "Deflectors", which merely detected and amplified TV broadcast signals were the way to go.

These of course had nothing to do with broadband transmissions and were only applicable to analogue TV broadcasts.

And now in 2012, as we all know, such broadcasts will be switched off for ever.

And rural Ireland is whinging about the digital divide.

Predictable and predicted. Hard to have any sympathy.



Fully agree. I've posted before that one of the biggest impediments to investment in high speed broadband is the uncertainty around demand. If telcos thought for one minute that there was a commercial return on such investment then they would make it.

Just because a vocal minority on this forum keep shouting for it does not reflect the generality of demand.

Sluggish demand is an issue in all countries, not just here. Even in exemplars like singapore, where investment has been made, the take-up is not what was expected.

At a time of serious economic hardship at both a macro and household level, spending on broadband is still considered by many to be discretionary.

Given the appalling mess our public finances are in and the fact that we have people dying because they cannot get to see a doctor, patients lying on trollies in hospitals, cutback in special needs assistants and teachers in schools, it never ceases to amaze me that we still have the same old voices here banging on about the State investing in ubiquitous broadband (and even claiming it can be done cheaply). This is simply untrue. Our thinly dispersed rural population and national love affair with building one-off houses up every boreen and hill in the country makes this impossible to do in a cost-effective manner.

watty

I've posted before that one of the biggest impediments to investment in high speed broadband is the uncertainty around demand. If telcos thought for one minute that there was a commercial return on such investment then they would make it.

Not as simple as that. In fact almost a lie.
1) Eircom didn't have money to invest
2) The Fixed wireless operators had great difficulty in raising the money to invest in increased roll out. Many wanted to
3) UPC wanted to add Broadband to MMDS but was prevented by Comreg.
4) Only eircom had a national fixed wireless licence (and no money to rollout more than 19k or 64 bps links!) Everyone else could only apply per site with a 10km radius (this is now extended but STILL no national licences.

UPC has proved that there is demand.
Digiweb Metro was / is about fully subscribed. But at 10.5GHz not all sites are suitable and they don't have money to roll out more or a national licence.

The Cross subsidy of Mobile data (150x more expensive to run for €19.95 Data package than €19.95 voice) and promotion of Mobile / NBS / Satellite as broadband has seriously damaged the ability of real fixed Broadband operators to raise funds to invest in rollout.

The asset stripping and poor regulation of eircom and high transit costs for Western Operators massively limited rollout.

Let's not have the tired old Eircom/Dept of Comms mantra that there is no demand. That's not true.
NBS take up is a lot poorer than envisaged because
1) Not a single Broadband connection is actually available. People want real Broadband at an affordable price, not badly implemented 3G Mobile and Satellite (with crippling T&C)
2) Coverage is terrible.

cgarvey

Bill Shock wrote: »

one of the biggest impediments to investment in high speed broadband is the uncertainty around demand. If telcos thought for one minute that there was a commercial return on such investment then they would make it.

You think eircom don't want to wipe the floor with UPC? There is the case for RoI on FTC/P (demonstrated in Ireland, never mind internationally), and I bet if eircom could afford to, they'd have fibre to every house in the greater Dublin area that is served by a modern UPC network!

In fact, eircom have demonstrated they're happy to invest in an area where they decided they wouldn't have a positive commercial return, just because another provider started serving that area. Many, many smaller towns only got DSL after a WISP had started operating in that area.

Nothing in eircom's plans for FTC/FTP about any uncertainty in demand. The message is very much get to as many homes as quick as possible (subject to funding; the key here).

Bill Shock wrote: »

Sluggish demand is an issue in all countries, not just here. Even in exemplars like singapore, where investment has been made, the take-up is not what was expected.

OK, if you say so. Plenty of companies have no complaints. No one is suggesting everyone wants broadband.

Bill Shock wrote: »

At a time of serious economic hardship at both a macro and household level, spending on broadband is still considered by many to be discretionary.

Same applies to roads/electricity/gas/sewage/water at some stage of their rollout history. It's about investing in the future. Broadband does lead to jobs (see recent media about Apple/Amazon and their BB requirements); it's no longer a myth or a "will lead to jobs some time in the distant future". Our dependency on broadband will grow quickly (in line with international trends), so it's important we invest for the future as we did for all the utilities and infrastructure. Sure, we could all do with more disposable income, but the government has to be a bit more forward-thinking (as they were with the ESB rollout, for example; a hugely-contested expensive plan at the time).

Bill Shock wrote: »

Given the appalling mess our public finances are in and the fact that we have people dying because they cannot get to see a doctor, patients lying on trollies in hospitals, cutback in special needs assistants and teachers in schools, it never ceases to amaze me that we still have the same old voices here banging on about the State investing in ubiquitous broadband (and even claiming it can be done cheaply). This is simply untrue. Our thinly dispersed rural population and national love affair with building one-off houses up every boreen and hill in the country makes this impossible to do in a cost-effective manner.

All about balance. People died when we had mountains of cash to spend on luxury projects like the Luas, the M50, and western corridor rail link. People were on trollies when the health service has the most available cash in decades, and when patients had the most available disposable income in decades. Throwing money at some problems (like trollies) doesn't solve the problem. Even if it did, it's still about balance. If we stop investing in future infrastructure, and less needed arts/cultural projects, during a recession, then we're just setting ourselves up for a worse future. Yes, we should be a lot wiser with our resources, but that doesn't mean ubiquitous broadband is some hipster-esque pipe dream.

It can be done cheaply, by the way, it just needs political will, and the cooperation of private operators. Our geographic conditions don't make us any different form other countries who have managed the same. One-off housing can still be served by a nearby fibre network (via FWA cheaply). Cheap is a subjective term, but in the context of the national telco's debts, a recent decline in pricing (of technology, and of the more labour-intensive processes), it's certainly a good time, comparatively to invest in telco infrastructure.

cgarvey

Snickers Man wrote: »

The simple fact is that people in the west of the country, for short sighted reasons, preferred an inferior, almost obsolescent TV transmission technology rather than choosing to invest in a superior one which might have been adapted, as cable TV infrastructure was adapted in the east, to cater for broadband.

Don't get the analogy, to be honest. There was plenty of short-sightedness in the east too. Cablelink and Telecom Éireann cable deliberately let rot led to many affluent (if that's what you're getting at; thicko culchies versus brainy D4s) areas not getting BB until the last few years. Short-sightedness on a national scale (nothing to do with geographic area, or social class) has led to the difficult position we're in now.

Snickers Man wrote: »

it would be a brave private investor who would put the money up front to provide it.

It would, and there are plenty of them already doing it (just on a disjointed local level; it would be in everyone's interest, bar the more under-handed local ISPs milking a monopoly for everything it's worth) to nationalise the plan, as well as some core network components.

Snickers Man wrote: »

So you have to wait for the government to do it [..] Which it will do eventually. But, er, it kind of has other priorities at the moment.

Investing in future infrastructure (at a time where the immediate knock on effects badly needed; such as job creation and local economy spending) should be a priority. As with all thinks governmental, it's about balance; but just because we are in a recession, or there are people waiting on trolies, shouldn't, and doesn't thankfully, mean spending on all other areas stops. We just need to be wise with how we spend it.

jmcc

Snickers Man wrote: »

First signs? That's a laugh. John Kennedy has been banging on about this in Silicon Republic for years. Go on. Check the date.

John's a relatively recent convert to the whole broadband thing. The pseudo-technology press in Ireland have been putting out the government line on broadband for years. The worst was that crap from Eircom and their press release recyclers in the Irish Times and elsewhere a few years ago about how people didn't want broadband. UPC showed that up for the lie that it was. UPC is massacring Eircom in the main urban markets - 8 Mb/512k Next Generation - try 100Mb/7Mb. Get your TV and phone service too. It is a no brainer. Unfortunately from its flotation by the pond scum intellects in government and the plundering aided by the same government, Eircom was screwed.

Since the 1970s (at least) many people on the eastern seaboard have paid extra to install cable access to their homes. This was originally called "piped televison" if you go back far enough, ie to the 1970s where the cable was connected to a large communal aerial so that they could receive high quality British TV signals. The hard slog of laying the "last mile" of cable infrastructure was all done back then. Because individuals were willing to pay for it.

Most of these early cable nets were somewhat more sophisticated than a communal aerial and a few amplifiers (CATV). The networks did require investment and it wasn't just "people paying for it".

This gradually evolved so that Eastern Ireland had cable TV access long before most of Britain did.

Again these early nets were quite concentrated with Dublin and Waterford having the larger nets. There were other smaller networks (Cork and Galway had their own too.) However the UK was quite a different situation. The franchises for the larger UK nets became available in the early 1980s. These nets really didn't really start to grow until the advent of premium channels ((movie and sports)often via satellite TV) in the 1990s. But consolidation of these nets into something approaching the Irish model took another few years. But during that time, satellite Pay-TV was becoming a major factor in the UK television market. Cablelink (and others) were in a position to offer some of the Sky channels so the growth of satellite TV in Ireland was somewhat slower.

And of course this same coax infrastructure could, with a modicum of upgrade, be adapted to carry broadband digital traffic. aka The Internet.

It would have required a lot of upgrading because the state of the nets varied considerably. In July 1998, Cablelink demonstrated cable internet to the press and it was considerably faster than ADSL. The problem was that it was owned by RTE and Telecom Eireann and they didn't want TE's core markets (the cities) being destroyed so it never launched to the public outside a few areas in Dublin.

Wireless microwave transmission was licensed and made available. But the Luddites out Wesht thought they shouldn't have to pay for this and so demanded that cheaper, if illegal, "Deflectors", which merely detected and amplified TV broadcast signals were the way to go.

Are these all just buzzwords that you culled from the Irish Times or Silirep or ENN? The situation was a bit more complex than these "technology" journalists could even understand. Firstly, MMDS is not a simple solution for the Irish terrain. Ireland has hills and a lot of trees and bushes. This makes complete RF coverage difficult. MMDS is, to a great extent, line of sight. Now with a two way system, (as would be required for two way internet), there are more transmitters involved (some of which are comparatively low power). The MMDS franchises were highly fragmented too.

Some of the rebeam operations were quite sophisticated and involved investment. They didn't just "detect" and "amplify" NI/UK TV broadcasts. It got to the stage where some were actually controlling their transmissions so that they would not encroach on cable network franchise areas.

Some MMDS franchises were always going to have difficulty based on the terrain and this did not sit well with a few of the companies that got the franchises initially. They were not the pot of gold that some of their franchisees expected.

One major spanner in the works was when John Bruton had a meeting with a number of rebeam operators in Cork and promised to examine their case. Bruton and FG were not in government at the time but the FF/Labour government fell and a few weeks later they were and this complicated matters. It led to rebeam operations competing with MMDS (and satellite TV) in some areas.

The thing that had the most effect on rebeam operations was not the law but the inclusion of the UK TV channels on the Sky satellite TV packages.

And rural Ireland is whinging about the digital divide.

There is a digital divide. Most of it is down to a bunch of pondscum intellects in government allowing Telecom Eireann to be plundered repeatedly and the management of Eircom screwing up. Eircom was plundered so many times that it didn't have money to invest in its infrastructure and it got overtaken by competitors.

Predictable and predicted.

Aren't you a great chap altogether? You could be a "technology" journalist with such an ability to predict the past.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

Snickers Man wrote: »

The simple fact is that people in the west of the country, for short sighted reasons, preferred an inferior, almost obsolescent TV transmission technology rather than choosing to invest in a superior one which might have been adapted, as cable TV infrastructure was adapted in the east, to cater for broadband.

The logic of this is weird. It displays a complete lack of understanding of how technology markets are created and evolve. It also is geographically suspect because rebeam operations were not confined to the West of Ireland. The big factor in all this is the size of the market. Investing in a very expensive backend and subscriber system for a few thousand users (who will require the antenna, the LNB and a settop box) where the investment may not be recovered is not viable. However upgrading a pre-existing network may be viable because the market is potentially larger (a large fraction of the telephone subscribers in a region) that will not require much more than an ADSL modem.

To change to a new system (and digital transmissions are effectively a new system) involves considerable investment on the part of the service provider. They have to pay for the transmission side of the system and fund the reception side of the system. Funding the reception side of the system is expensive and depending on the size of the market, it could work out very expensive for the end user. There has to be an overwhelming reason for the end user to switch. MMDS was a poorly chosen system for Ireland (great for the flat prairies of Canada and the US but lousy for the hills and valleys of Ireland). A hybrid UHF system would have been a far better solution.

Cheaper and widespread are almost always an unbeatable proposition. This is because the switching costs are high for a new system and something that takes advantage of the pre-existing market always does better than a completely new system in the short term. This is why Sky had an advantage over British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) - most TVs in use at the time both were launched did not have a SCART connector and could not take advantage of BSB's better quality picture. By the time SCARTs became commonplace, BSB was gone.

There are ways of getting high speed access to the West. But after the stuffing the MMDS guys got, it would be a brave private investor who would put the money up front to provide it.

Again with the rather narrow viewpoint? MMDS was an obsolete technology even as it was being rolled out in Ireland. Eircom had Fixed Wireless Access licences that it effectively sat on for years. Now Wimax is beginning to provide an alternative. However if Eircom had not been privatised, it might still be relatively debt free and Ireland might have had a modern comms infrastructure.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

Bill Shock wrote: »

Fully agree. I've posted before that one of the biggest impediments to investment in high speed broadband is the uncertainty around demand. If telcos thought for one minute that there was a commercial return on such investment then they would make it.

This is wrong on a number of levels. The major telco (Eircom) did not have the funds to invest due to being plundered by a succession of parasites and being loaded with debt. This whole "uncertainty around demand" thing was, to a large extent, created as a smokescreen to convince gullible "technology" journalists, and by extension the public, that the reason that they didn't have broadband was because they didn't want it. Naturally I don't have a high opinion of the shills who mindlessly regurgitated this propaganda.

The rapid uptake of UPC broadband in the urban areas showed that up as a lie, especially in the UPC nets. The "uncertainty around demand" also shows up how limited some of the technology journalists are when it comes to the basic principles of being journalists. Broadband is something that manages to create its own demand because the applications are always evolving. It has become essential for many businesses and markets are being built upon it. Apart from Eircom's "uncertainty of demand" propaganda, there's the reality of Eircom having its commercial heart ripped out in the cities where UPC is active. This is competition and competition is always a major factor for any business considering entering a market - it is one of the "barriers to entry" that has to be considered. If existing customers of other suppliers do not have a good reason to switch, then they will not switch. Eircom could really only compete by providing fibre broadband and that's where the investment problem arises. So it is not just a question of "uncertainty around demand".

Regards...jmcc

Snickers Man

jmcc wrote: »

The logic of this is weird. It displays a complete lack of understanding of how technology markets are created and evolve.
Regards...jmcc

Why the anger? I don't think you've contradicted a single thing I said. You seem to be adding to my arguments but in a most reluctant tone.

Just let me comment on a few points you made.

"Technology markets" whether you are talking about information technology, communications technology or the internal combustion engine work basically on the principal of "build it and they will come". Make this shiny useful, if initially quite expensive, new toy available and people will queue up to buy it.

You gave the example of UPC (through which this considered prose is being delivered to you) which, as you rightly say, is massacring eircom in Dublin because it can deliver broadband, TV and all-you-can eat national phone calls cheaply.

This is because it is building on decades of investment and returns in the main urban centres in the east. And the focus of this investment was the TV market. People were prepared to pay for a more expansive multi-channel TV service by paying above and beyond their TV licence to cable operators. Hence those who built the infrastructure saw a return on that investment. (This is capitalism 101)

Sadly, in the 1970s and early 1980s such a service was unavailable to the south and west of the country given the technology available at the time.

In the 1990s other technologies became available that brought the promise of multichannel TV and indeed the eventual delivery of other integrated communications services such as those now being enjoyed by UPC subscribers like me .

But instead of welcoming these new technologies the good people of the south, west and north west reached for their pitchforks (metaphorically speaking). They wanted "deflector" technology not this dangerous sounding "microwave" stuff.

Now you went into some detail about how line of sight technology is unsuited to the rolling contours of our rural counties but who was making this sort of argument back in the 1990s? Certainly not the likes of Tom Gildea who actually got elected to the Dail on the "Deflector" ticket.

You seem to be dismissive of many of those who write about technology in the national press. Are you seriously trying to tell me that Mr Gildea was an evangelist for the socio-economic benefits of the most apposite digital communications technology for rural areas? Or was he just a chancer manipulating, and failing to see that he was being manipulated by, a prevailing attitude that his locality was being pushed around by "them feckers up in Dublin" and determined to tweak their noses in response?

"Build it and they will come" mutated to "you build it and we will tell you to get lost" as regards digital delivery to rural areas.

Now people have the absolute right to elect whoever they want and to reject whatever technology offering they don't want. But they also have the responsibility to live with the consequences.

I don't deny there is a digital divide. The question is, how to go about closing it. "Build it and they will come" has a poor track record in this country on that issue.

cgarvey has alleged that I might be accusing rural dwellers of relative stupidity compared to those of us who live in urban Dublin. That is not so. In fact, his very sensitivity on the issue is part of the problem. As he, and you, and indeed I pointed out there were many mistakes and frustrations involved in getting even Dublin to the position it is in now with regard to broadband.

But Dublin, because of the size of its potential market, always gets another chance because the rewards are there for those who invest in what people want. Rural Ireland is not so easily forgiven.

In short, it's not that we are smarter than you. It's that you can't afford to be just as stupid as us. You've got to be smarter. And sadly, the evidence is, you're not. Voting for deflector candidates was a damned stupid mistake.

jmcc wrote:

However if Eircom had not been privatised, it might still be relatively debt free and Ireland might have had a modern comms infrastructure.

This wins the "Hot coffee through the nose" award for "I can't believe he said that" comments.

Quite apart from the fact that we didn't have a choice about privatising eircom (we were forced to do it by EU directives) the notion that we would be better off if it were still a public sector organisation is laughable.

You yourself pointed out the problems that Cablelink had because of its bastard parentage of eircom and RTE. The latter was afraid of the former cannibalising its content. This shows the problem with pervasive state bodies. You get the worst form of competition: not price or service competition to attract customers but the cancerous cult of interdepartmental rivalry.

Dublin could have had cable based broadband years earlier than it did. But, largely because of this conflict of interest between eircom and RTE it was delayed.

And you think the return to a state-owned comms monopoly would make things better?

For shame.

jmcc

Snickers Man wrote: »

Why the anger?

Seeing the mess that pondscum intellects have made of my country left me with a lot of anger. In a former time, I'd have had their heads decorating the walls of a city but this is a more civilised time and killing such useless oxygen thieves is frowned upon.

"Technology markets" whether you are talking about information technology, communications technology or the internal combustion engine work basically on the principal of "build it and they will come". Make this shiny useful, if initially quite expensive, new toy available and people will queue up to buy it.

You are mixing up two factors. The usefulness of a network growing in proportion to the number of people using it and a situation where a market that delivers something quicker or more efficiently and at a lower cost replaces a previous market.

You gave the example of UPC (through which this considered prose is being delivered to you) which, as you rightly say, is massacring eircom in Dublin because it can deliver broadband, TV and all-you-can eat national phone calls cheaply.

It seems that you don't have much experience outside of Dublin. I pointed to the urban areas rather than Dublin specifically. In the 1990s Dublin was one of the largest cable nets in Europe but the rapid uptake of cable in the urban areas (the cities Waterford, Cork, Limerick, Galway and some towns like Dungarvan, Co. Waterford (which had cable broadband before Dublin)), meant that the infrastructure and potential for a digital divide was in place and was developing rapidly at the expense of the rural areas.

People were prepared to pay for a more expansive multi-channel TV service by paying above and beyond their TV licence to cable operators. Hence those who built the infrastructure saw a return on that investment. (This is capitalism 101)

Again you miss the efficiency element in that for an urban environment, cable delivery is actually more efficient than a forest of rooftop antennas. Its uniformity of delivery (a cable) makes it easier to implement a Conditional Access system and with that a more efficient subscription management system.

Sadly, in the 1970s and early 1980s such a service was unavailable to the south and west of the country given the technology available at the time.

Well I recall some rebeam operations in the early 1980s. Some parts of the South were able to pick up signals from Wales. There was an overlap with some of the pirate radio people at the time and the rebeam operations but the big thing was pirate radio.

But instead of welcoming these new technologies the good people of the south, west and north west reached for their pitchforks (metaphorically speaking). They wanted "deflector" technology not this dangerous sounding "microwave" stuff.

They had a solution that worked. They had a solution that delivered what they wanted at what they considered a reasonable price.

Now you went into some detail about how line of sight technology is unsuited to the rolling contours of our rural counties but who was making this sort of argument back in the 1990s?

Most people who knew anything about RF transmission in Ireland were aware of it. The same kind of "one size fits all" thinking reemerged with the short-lived Wifi ISP approaches between 2002 and 2008. Some of these WISPs had to resort to repeaters and other solutions to get reasonable coverage and this was down to the terrain, line of sight and the low power transmissions involved.

You seem to be dismissive of many of those who write about technology in the national press.

I am. This is because few if any of them have any technology or technology business backgrounds. Recycling press releases is not journalism. Some are just Arts types without any deep understanding of technology or the business of technology. That means that the public is not well informed because these people can't tell the difference between rubbish and fact in the press release they are recycling as "news".

Are you seriously trying to tell me that Mr Gildea was an evangelist for the socio-economic benefits of the most apposite digital communications technology for rural areas?

Mixing technology and politics? You seem to have some resentment about Gildea's election.

"Build it and they will come" mutated to "you build it and we will tell you to get lost" as regards digital delivery to rural areas.

Again with the naive DotBomb approach to technology markets? The people there had an existing system that was cheap and delivered what they wanted. The digital system would have involved more costs for the user and potentially a higher subscription.

A low subscription system with a low entry price (a TV antenna with an amplifier) that delivers the bulk of the channels that people want to watch will beat a more expensive system with a higher installation cost and a higher subscription. The two systems are targeting the same market and they cannot both survive. MMDS (as originally planned for Ireland) was meant to operate without any competition. The rebeam operations were meant to be shutdown so that MMDS would have been the only option other than satellite. The whole MMDS idea was a 1970s idea and the planning for the Irish version took place in the mid 1980s when satellite TV was not a major player in the Irish TV business. (Dishes were bigger back then (1.75M to 2.2M depending on what programming was required.) The specifications and licence conditions for MMDS in Ireland were published in the late 1980s and they really were meant to be adjuncts to the existing cable TV franchises. The problem was that technology had advanced faster than the intellects in the Dublin government and ASTRA launched with free premium movies from a small (90cm dish) and cheap satellite TV receiver. (Sky movies was actually transmitted in the clear as this was during the Sky/BSB war when Sky was trying to take the bulk of the UK market.) Sky managed to grind BSB down in a war of attrition and then took it over. But it had its own CA system in place. This gave Sky a clear run at the UK and Irish satellite TV market. This type of monopoly situation (with negligible outside competition) was what was envisaged for MMDS. Cablelink (and by extension RTE) had to compete with Sky in the urban areas and did so by carrying some of the Sky channels but it wasn't until the UK terrestrial (BBC/ITV/C4) channels began to be carried on satellite TV that satellite became a major competitor to cable TV in Ireland and by that time Cablelink had been sold.

I don't deny there is a digital divide. The question is, how to go about closing it. "Build it and they will come" has a poor track record in this country on that issue.

Your "build it and they will come" approach was used by Telecom Eireann and its Potemkin Village (its "Information Age Town", Ennis) but it failed because of a complete misunderstanding of how things were developing at the time.

cgarvey has alleged that I might be accusing rural dwellers of relative stupidity compared to those of us who live in urban Dublin.

Well there is obviously no monopoly on stupidity and given the population density in urban Dublin, there will be concentrations of stupidity that would not be found in the sparse rural populations.

But Dublin, because of the size of its potential market, always gets another chance because the rewards are there for those who invest in what people want.

This gets back to the size of the market and the efficiency of the market.

Rural Ireland is not so easily forgiven.

And this highlights the issues of the potential size of the market and the efficiency (how easily that market can be serviced) of the market.

This wins the "Hot coffee through the nose" award for "I can't believe he said that" comments.

Quite apart from the fact that we didn't have a choice about privatising eircom (we were forced to do it by EU directives) the notion that we would be better off if it were still a public sector organisation is laughable.

Obviously the logic was too sophisticated for your brilliant mind. The most logical thing would have been to split the retail and network components.

You yourself pointed out the problems that Cablelink had because of its bastard parentage of eircom and RTE.

This all happened before Eircom - when it was Telecom Eireann. The fact that cable, even at that stage could cut the heart out of TE's urban markets by offering the famous Triple Play (TV/Phone/Internet) at a time when TE was struggling to figure out ADSL scared a lot of people in government and TE. The simplest way to consider it, if you weren't around at the time, would be seeing UPC's offer of TV/phone/and broadband at around (300Kb/s though I'd have to check that) when the best that TE could do at the time for most areas was per minute 56Kb/s dial-up. The Cablelink offering could have hit TE in its core Dublin, Waterford and Galway nets. While broadband wasn't as big an issue for a lot of people then, the prospect of people being able to get phone service with their cable TV unnerved TE management because they knew people would switch.

The latter was afraid of the former cannibalising its content.

Are you a recent addition to the Irish comms business? The statement hints that you may not have been around for these events. What RTE was more concerned with at the time was the incursion of Sky into the Irish market and the rights issues surrounding sports and soccer events. The RTE channels (and I think the BBC/ITV channels) were "must carry" channels in that they were supposed to be the basic channels carried. However the Sky channels (Sky One, the movies and sports channels) were premium channels and getting people to pay for those was a major headache as it involve implementing a Conditional Access system. Initially Cablelink tried the Philips RITC Discret system which spectrum rotated the audio and used a pseudo-random video delay to scramble the video. It was hacked to hell and back (1984) before Cablelink even got the brochures. They dumped that in favour of Cryptovision which was somewhat more secure. The take-up on the premium channels wasn't great and most people stuck with the basic tier. It was Telecom Eireann that was completely freaked out by the prospect of Cablelink offering phone and broadband (unmetered internet access for which TE was charging per minute), not RTE.

Dublin could have had cable based broadband years earlier than it did. But, largely because of this conflict of interest between eircom and RTE it was delayed.

RTE was very much a bit player. It was TE who stood to gain most from the degradation of the Cablelink nets and the stifling of any attempt to introduce phone and broadband via cable. Even more importantly, a viable cable broadband and telephony competitor in TE's major urban nets would have impacted any flotation of TE on the stockmarket.

And you think the return to a state-owned comms monopoly would make things better?

As you can see it is not as simple as your single operator idea. Discussion about splitting the retail and network sides of TE was common pre-flotation but that might have made the floated company less attractive.

Regards...jmcc

oscarBravo

Snickers Man wrote: »

In the 1990s other technologies became available that brought the promise of multichannel TV and indeed the eventual delivery of other integrated communications services such as those now being enjoyed by UPC subscribers like me .

You seem to subscribe to the belief that turning a broadcast MMDS system into a bidirectional unicast broadband network is analogous to doing the same thing on a cable network.

The engineering challenges are not merely dissimilar, they're not even comparable.

Now you went into some detail about how line of sight technology is unsuited to the rolling contours of our rural counties but who was making this sort of argument back in the 1990s? Certainly not the likes of Tom Gildea who actually got elected to the Dail on the "Deflector" ticket.

And again, you don't seem to understand the difference between high-power broadcast transmission in the UHF spectrum and low-power bi-directional unicast transmission, and how that impacts on line of sight considerations.

MMDS was never going to be a broadband platform. Deflectors had nothing whatsoever to do with the digital divide.

jmcc

Just checked some notes and what Cablelink proposed in 1998 was a 256Kb/s system for 25 pounds per month.

Regards...jmcc

Snickers Man

oscarBravo wrote: »

You seem to subscribe to the belief that turning a broadcast MMDS system into a bidirectional unicast broadband network is analogous to doing the same thing on a cable network.

The engineering challenges are not merely dissimilar, they're not even comparable.

MMDS was never going to be a broadband platform. Deflectors had nothing whatsoever to do with the digital divide.

MMDS can be, was and is being used as a "broadband platform" in many parts of the world. Not least in the US. That it is being superseded by newer technologies such as WiMAX does not change that fact.

Now I am NOT saying that buying an MMDS subscription in rural Ireland in the 1990s automatically gave you access to a broadband Internet service. It would have needed further investment from both service operator and consumer to effect that. Just as it required further investment from both parties to convert the medium that was originally used to deliver "piped television" (I remember the early 1970s even if you're too young to ) in Dublin into the broadband triple-play delivery mechanism we enjoy today.

But making marginal improvements to existing infrastructure is always more feasible than starting a whole new round of capital investment from scratch. (I think in his blizzard of soundbite replies even jmcc tries to make that point).

Rural Ireland by and large rejected MMDS technology as being too expensive and too spooky, for want of a better word. Round about that time when there was public disquiet about the harmful effects of cellular telephone masts, any transmission service which was known to depend on "microwaves" was viewed with great suspicion by anybody looking for an excuse to delay its deployment.

Fair enough. You don't have to buy anything you don't want to. But what did people demand as an alternative? TV deflectors. What this did was, rather than pave the way for widespread deployment of TV delivery infrastructure that might have been tweaked sooner or later to provide broadband data services, it instead tied many parts of rural Ireland into a dead-end technology with limited lifespan. It's being euthanised this year with the ending of analogue TV transmissions.

Nor am I saying that people should rush out and buy MMDS subscriptions now. There are better alternatives to consider and to demand. Such as WiMAX.

But you've lost a good ten years. Plenty long enough for a Digital Divide to take shape.

And it's largely your own fault. Ultimately you get the broadband services you deserve.

To paraphrase the singer Dolly Parton who memorably quips about her trashy dress sense "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap!". Well, it takes a lot of nous to live in the digital age in Irish hicksville.

We D4s don't have to be so clever.

Fortunately

watty

Comreg refused to add the spectrum needed for the uplink on FWA using the MMDS and even reduced the size of the MMDS band.
It will cease and spectrum auctioned in 2014 or so for MOBILE LTE, which will not be Broadband.

The kind of MMDS used in Ireland was an obsolete analogue kind. The MUCH smaller NTL area belatedly changed to DVB-c for Digital, compatible with DOCSIS Broadband, but Comreg never approved uplink spectrum.

The much larger Chorus operation added DVB-T (the wrong technology for 2.5GHz).

The opportunity was missed for Comreg to mandate a MUCH earlier and rapid changeover to Digital using DVB-C and release spectrum as part of licence condition. Instead nothing was done. UPC inherited a rubbish MMDS network from Chorus and a very small ex NTL one but with reduced downlink spectrum and no uplink spectrum.

DOCSIS over Wireless might not sound as sexy as fixed Wimax, but it does exist in Ireland on 3.5GHz and 10.5GHz. It's more efficient than Wimax at 2.5GHz and above and more flexible in channel size (0.8, 1.6, 3.2 and 6.4MHz on uplink and 2MHz to 8MHz on downlink). DOCSIS 3.0 allows bonding of up to 5 downlink channels.

There are many different incompatible technologies called "MMDS". It's a generic term for 2.5GHz to 22GHz Point to Multipoint Broadcast. Ireland has/had three formats of MMDS and only one of them was suitable to expand to Broadband.

I've actually tested and compared DOCSIS and other Wireless Internet technology on 800MHz, 900MHz, 3.5GHz, 10.5GHz and 12GHz.

The SCTV people ran MMDS using DVB-s at 12GHz. They were offered opportunity to add Broadband and turned it down.

Government and Comreg seriously damaged ability of FWA to compete with Mobile by refusing to remove Eircom's unused national licence, nor issue anyone else with national licences. Again the NBS was a complete con job that actually promoted Mobile Internet and held back real Broadband.

The problem was not people in Rural areas but lack of Regulation and Government policy.

jmcc

Snickers Man wrote: »

Now I am NOT saying that buying an MMDS subscription in rural Ireland in the 1990s automatically gave you access to a broadband Internet service. It would have needed further investment from both service operator and consumer to effect that.

Different subscriber equipment, different headend equipment and often different CA systems.

But making marginal improvements to existing infrastructure is always more feasible than starting a whole new round of capital investment from scratch. (I think in his blizzard of soundbite replies even jmcc tries to make that point).

You obviously missed the point about replacement where the new system (digital) replaces the older and less efficient analogue system. That's not a marginal improvement - it is a complete replacement. Sometimes it is more cost-effective to completely replace an old technology with a new one.

In your model, the UHF rebeam operations were marginal improvements because they took an existing market/technology (analogue PAL and UHF rebroadcast) and added a communal antenna headend and rebroadcast system. However MMDS was a complete replacement as it replaced the headend and the subscriber equipment and the UHF rebeam operator. That's a complete replacement and not a set of marginal improvements.

Rural Ireland by and large rejected MMDS technology as being too expensive and too spooky, for want of a better word.

This seems to be more to do with your attitude to areas outside Dublin than any reality.

The reason that MMDS largely failed was because it had a cheaper competitor that provided much the same service for a lower price and it was easier for the rebeam operator to service the market since these systems rarely involved a Conditional Access system. The equipment required was simple and freely available (a UHF antenna and an amplifier). The expertise required to install the equipment was already there and no expensive training courses for installers were required. And most importantly, expensive and problematic MMDS could not beat a cheap and nasty system. MMDS could not survive such competition.

Fair enough. You don't have to buy anything you don't want to. But what did people demand as an alternative? TV deflectors.

You still don't get it! TV rebeam operations were not the "alternative". They were in fullscale operation and it was MMDS (an overpriced, inadequate and outdated system with no upgrade path) that was the "alternative".

What this did was, rather than pave the way for widespread deployment of TV delivery infrastructure that might have been tweaked sooner or later to provide broadband data services,

Might have been tweaked? A two way transmission system involves a lot more than a one way transmission system with a single (or a set) high power transmitter. The MMDS LNBs that were available in the early 1990s had a lot in common with S-Band satellite TV LNBs. However they were receive-only. They would have had to have been replaced with new subscriber equipment. That's not a mere tweaking of a system. It means reinstallation for each participating subscriber.

it instead tied many parts of rural Ireland into a dead-end technology with limited lifespan. It's being euthanised this year with the ending of analogue TV transmissions.

The technology still works and fifty years or so of operation is a good run.

But you've lost a good ten years.

Again there's a misunderstanding of how technology advances. Sometimes not funding the development costs of a new system is a good thing.

Plenty long enough for a Digital Divide to take shape.

There was even a Digital Divide twenty years ago with Telecom Eireann being allowed to switch to per minute metering from single charge local calls. It was also difficult for ISPs back then because they required virtual points of presence (VPOP) in cities and counties to make accessing these services viable for most users.

The funniest thing is how you consider Dublin to be the centre of the universe in technological terms when globally it was little more than a second world backwater run by third rate intellects.

And it's largely your own fault. Ultimately you get the broadband services you deserve.

That just bypasses the concepts of markets and demand and is idiotic enough to have its own column in the Irish Times "technology" section.

We D4s don't have to be so clever.

Well aren't you lucky then?

Regards...jmcc

watty

MMDS did have over 120,000 customers once.

It was crushed between Sky (far more quality and content) and near "free" Deflectors.

Once UK TV started going FTA on satellite (BBC & ITV by 2005, then c4 and recently Five) then only Sky Sports kept MMDS alive and the Deflectors were doomed even without an ASO.

UPC seriously wanted to turn MMDS into the Wireless equivalent of Cable when they took over but the ENTIRE ex Chorus Digital customer base would need replaced before adding a single Broadband customer, the much smaller ex NTL could have had Broadband added without affecting existing TV customers.

But Comreg wouldn't allow it.

Chorus actually had a Wireless Broadband Licence and Wireless Phone licence with rollout in parts of Rural Limerick. They managed to lose the licence due to missing roll out targets (broke). AFAIK the only other loss of Irish licence has been RLO, both the FM Radio licence and amazingly their deflector licence (doing local opt outs on C5!).

OTDR/Comreg/Government incompetence and failure to regulate eircom is the main reason for the current Digital Divide. If UPC had not bought out Chorus and NTL (who both had no money to chop up the coax cable and add fibre for decent speed and contention) there would be no digital divide.

jmcc

watty wrote: »

OTDR/Comreg/Government incompetence and failure to regulate eircom is the main reason for the current Digital Divide.

That's it in a nutshell.

Regards...jmcc

Solair

I'm confused - what has MMDS got to do with broadband policy?!

MMDS as used in Ireland was exclusively for the delivery of low-capacity television service. It was essentially just encrypted broadcast TV (PAL) at 2.5Ghz.

When it went to digital, Chorus used DVB-T the same as basic digital broadcast television and NTL used DVB-C cable type encoding.

Neither system were ever setup for broadband nor had they any intentions of providing broadband.

Television in rural areas is more than adequately provided using satellite dishes which provide a vastly superior solution than MMDS ever could.

Cabling rural areas with scattered populations is basically impossible and is not done anywhere in the world. So, I don't really see why there's a comparision being made between rural Ireland and cable areas like Dublin, Cork etc.

We need to look at good quality fixed-point wireless solutions. There are some good providers out there in some areas, and some lousy ones in others. That type of technology is absolutely perfectly suited to Ireland's scattered populations.

In towns/villages there's no reason why eircom (or someone else) can't offer VDSL / fibre to kerb technologies using street cabinets or cable tv networks the same as they're rolling out in larger urban areas.

I really can't see why broadband options in a small town should be any worse than a large city. It's just similar to wiring a single small suburb. We just need the fibre links to backhaul the traffic.

The problems we have at the moment are down to

1) Lack of proper planning and regulation. There's been zero joined-up thinking when it comes to broadband.
2) Complacency.
3) Eircom's financial situation has a big role to play too and that's largely down to poor regulation again!