Minister Dempsey to Appear on Newstalk on Sat 15th

damien

Just heard that Minister for Communications Noel Dempsey will be on the "Down to Business" show at around 12.40 tomorrow.

You can contact NewsTalk 106 in the following ways:

by phone: 1890 946 106
by fax: 01 6611602
by email: info@newstalk106.ie
by text: 086 6000 106

I'd urge you to ring, email or txt tomorrow with any questions.

If I get any more details I'll post an update.

damien

The direct email for the show is downtobusiness@newstalk106.ie

shinzon

mail sent, i just pasted my story from the broadband horror stories section, took out the off hand comments spruced her up a bit and sent it with this as a header

To whom it may concern

My name is **** and I live in *******, ive listed below my battles with eircom that have gone on for a year and a bit now to get broadband enabled on my line here in waterford, thanks to the information supplied to me by Irelandoffline i heard that Minister Dempsey was on your radio programme on Saturday morning, i realise my story is quite a long one, but it isnt an isolated incident as you would see if you went to the Irelandoffline board on www.boards.ie

I would like for you to pass on this story to minister dempsey or to discuss it with him on air as this issue needs to be highlighted and dealt with in an open forum like your programme

Your Sincerely
******

Ps im in work tomorrow so wont be able to listen to it could somone post up a recording of it

damien

They're going to send us an mp3 copy I believe.

You can listen in here too: http://62.25.96.7/newstalk

cgarvey

It's just been on .. I've got a rip from the stream .. just waiting to confirm there'll be no more...

Quote from the minister ...

"Very often people who are coming to this new don't know the technical details; they don't know about the, you know, the ehm, the quality issues; you know that it's better if you can get a.. a megabyte.. ehm.. broadband at ..ahh.. a megabyte of broadband rather than you know..ah.. DSL, perhaps, on it's own"

shinzon

well what was the gist of it, was it the usual government approved twaddle

Shin

damien

Sounds interesting...

Can't wait to hear it.

cgarvey

Rips are up ..
16Kbps (~900KB) and 8Kbps (~450KB), on IoffL website.

Peter, apparently, made a "pretty serious allegation" against ComReg!!

damien

Well done to Newstalk. In the timeframe they had they asked quite a lot of good questions. Noel stated that the 350,000 set by Dermot is now but a pipedream.

eircomtribunal

"Can you ask the Communications Minister this:
Is he more concerned about
a) the fact that the already extremely low Irish home internet penetration figure has declined by 5% from 37% of households end 2003 to 35% of households by the end of 2005 [awful typo mistake from my side here: should have been 2004](when all around us Internet and broadband penetration is soaring, even in the hitherto "slow" southern countries like France, Spain and Italy)

or b) the fact that the Irish Communications regulator is trying to hide this extraordinarily damaging development (solely caused by complete regulatory failure) from the December 2004 Quarterly Report? (They have not mentioned this development in the two main reports, with the pathetic excuse the figure could be looked up by interested parties in the soon to be published CSO documents. In their "Trendwatch" document they try to hide the figure away on page 19 under a misleading headline – still using the cover of a misleading statistical subgroup figure, in breach of very clear OECD guidelines, which demand to report home internet penetration as the percentage of all households and not of fixed line households)

Remark: Since years ComReg misleads the public about the poor Irish home internet penetration figures by publishing the irrelevant statistical subgroup figure of fixed line households (orange columns) as the prime figure. The OECD has set out clear guidelines to use the percentage of all households (green columns) as the figure for home internet penetration. ComReg has, after my continued complaint was taken up by the national media last year, agreed to publish the correct figure (percentage of all households) in future, but has never done so."

P.

seamus

eircomtribunal wrote:

Remark: Since years ComReg misleads the public about the poor Irish home internet penetration figures by publishing the irrelevant statistical subgroup figure of fixed line households (orange columns) as the prime figure. The OECD has set out clear guidelines to use the percentage of all households (green columns) as the figure for home internet penetration. ComReg has, after my continued complaint was taken up by the national media last year, agreed to publish the correct figure (percentage of all households) in future, but has never done so."

P.

Well, it's certainly much more misleading now that you don't require a phone line by default if you want to access the internet. Certainly at the turn of the millenium and even as late as 2001 in this country, it would have been slightly fair to say that the amount of households who had no phoneline, but *did* have Internet access was statistically negligible. Not any longer.

damien

Transcript of this, thanks to Peter M:

NEWSTALK:This new county and region b/b scheme.

Noel Dempsey:Yeah its is a good reach from the point of view of the b/b scheme, we had first call for group b/b schemes around the country, this was an effort by the government to ensure that, to counteract if you like the digital divide that was emerging. The commercial companies were very slow to roll out the b/b. The government made the decision to try and put in place municipal area networks for larger cities and towns and they decided then afterwards that rural towns and rural villages should have broadband because it is absolutely essential going into the future, from an economic point of view, from a social point of view that we have b/b everywhere.

That first call for community b/b scheme was very successful. Over 50 communities applied. Over 30 now have theirs or are in final stages of providing b/b. The new scheme is even more extensive that the last one. We have removed some of the red tape, some of the plutocracy that usually ties up some of these schemes. We've increased the grant amount, we've were going to be much more flexible about groups coming together and aggregating their schemes and we've also listed in a great way the local authorities and the regional authorities.

NEWSTALK:Ok, but the previous minister said that (in terms of access) to b/b that 350,000 homes, (for June 2005) at the moment we have about 130,000 b/b connections. Do you think it is realistic to expect that this target can be met?

Noel Dempsey:I think that was set some time back id love to see it being achieved and it would be a great achievement if we were to do it, but I don’t think it is realistic. What I've said consistently since coming into office and after having had a look at the situation, that’s more realistic target is the 500,000 by the end of 2006 that is the aim now,

I honestly don’t think we are going to reach that target by mid 2005 despite the fantastic growth rates that were seeing at the moment, were gone from the situation in march 2003 of about 10,000 people on bb up to as you say about 130,000 / 135,000 households at this stage. The rate of connection has accelerated, it’s faster than any where else in Europe, and we are playing catch up.

NEWSTALK:Some people say that that rate may actually slow down as people go, because its boosted at the moment by people who are taking up 3 month or 6 month free trials

Noel Dempsey:Yes it is difficult I suppose to get a true picture and a true figure in relation to that with the various offers. But then if these offers weren’t being made it probably wouldn’t be attractive either. I'm absolutely confident that we can reach those figures I think with the roll out of what are called municipal area networks around the country with the group bb schemes, and in particular something we announced during the week, the roll out of bb to every school in this country 1 st and 2nd level schools 4,500 of them. B/B going into every community.

I have no doubt and i've said this that will cause a revolution because when children in schools see and get to use and see the benefits of b/b they are going to do their own selling on it. We only have to see what happened with mobile phones to see what effect that can have and I have no doubt that were going to see a huge acceleration in demand for b/b and a meeting of that demand.

NEWSTALK:Every time we have bb on this show, and it’s a hugely important issue, every time, we get a great reaction. people are saying, first of all they are angry at the rate of connection, but also with the quality of service, just because the infrastructure is there doesn’t mean I can get access to a company and even when I can the quality in Ireland is so much lower in Ireland than in other countries. Are you happy with the quality of Service?

Noel Dempsey: Well I think it depends on who u get it from. I think it is a case of consumers really shopping around and again there were about 25/30 companies/service providers operating here 2 years ago. There is about 130/140 at the mo.

There are allsorts of varieties and so on. I think very often people who are coming to this new don’t know the technical details they don’t know about the quality issues, that it better to get 1 megabyte b/b rather than you know DSL perhaps on its own. I think perhaps there are issues there; there is an education thing for the department and for the ser/pro themselves.

NEWSTALK:We have an email in from Peter Weigl and he pointed out that the internet penetration figure has declined by 5% from 37% households at the end of 2003 to a projected 35% of households at the end of 2005. His point is that the communications regulator is trying to hide the fact that internet penetration is actually on the way down. Do you think that the regulator (who is coming in for a lot of flak over this) is in any way culpable?

Noel Dempsey: Well, the regulator is independent and I doubt if comreg have any vested interest in trying to hide things or act against the interests of the consumers, that’s a fairly serious allegation o be making. But you can use whatever statistics you like. I presume there could be validity in the statistics.

He is using the fact that there is about 80k new houses being built every year and doing his calculation on this and that. I've seen, Tom so many different calculations and we were 18 out of 21 countries in Europe in relation to b/b, but if you look at some of the figures in relation to this. Some countries statistics include ISDN, flat rate, dial up you know. If we use those figures we would be among the highest in Europe.

NEWSTALK:Ok noel Dempsey, minister for marine, communications and natural resources thank you for joining us.

bealtine

damien.m wrote:

that it better to get 1 megabyte b/b rather than you know DSL perhaps on its own

Says it all really...

eircomtribunal

damien.m wrote:

Transcript of this, thanks to Peter M:

Noel: "I've seen, Tom so many different calculations and we were 18 out of 21 countries in Europe in relation to b/b, but if you look at some of the figures in relation to this. Some countries statistics include ISDN, flat rate, dial up you know. If we'd use those figures we would be among the highest in Europe."

It is not the first time Noel uses this line of pathetic argumentation.

The Forfas broadband report, which stated this "Ireland to be 18 out of 21 countries table" is absolutely clean and should not be smeared be Noel.

The only reference to ISDN in it is this: "ISDN is not normally considered a broadband technology; however it can be used to substitute for DSL where the service is not available in Ireland. However, since the monthly charge for the service varies with usage, it is an expensive alternative to DSL."

But I know of one communications regulator, who tried on various occasions to sell ISDN connections as broadband connections to the public. It is the one which Noel thinks has "no vested interest".

P.

eircomtribunal

damien.m wrote:

Noel Dempsey: "...and in particular something we announced during the week, the roll out of bb to every school in this country 1 st and 2nd level schools 4,500 of them."

Noel surely knows as a former education minister, or from the DCMNR school broadband tender document, that the number of schools in question is 4,029. Students would not get marks if they rounded that number to four and a half thousand.
Have politicians to use these little exaggerations or will only people carrying this exaggeration gene make it as politicians?

P.