Eircom delaying rollout of Schools BB?

Mr_Man

According to informed sources Eircom, who only got the contract to supply routers under the Schools BB scheme, have installed only 80 out of 3000 schools.

Is this a case of sour grapes holding up the benefit of BB for our kids?

M.

jwt

More like not being able to organise a pi** up in a brewery than any malevolent intentions tbh


John

oscarBravo

"Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity."

Karoma

http://www.dcmnr.gov.ie/Press+Releases/Contracts+for+Delivering+Broadband+for+Schools+Now+in+Place.htm

Interesting..

watty

There is no commercial advantage in delaying, probabily the reverse. I'd say shortage of installers and possibly equipment. They seem to "run out" of even ISDN wall boxes regularly

RicardoSmith

jwt wrote:

More like not being able to organise a pi** up in a brewery than any malevolent intentions tbh

John

Having worked in there, thats for sure the reason. We couldn't get a phone or ISDN installed into one of their own buildings. Telephone house. :rolleyes:

Mr_Man

surely the contract they signed with the Department would have specified a timescale for the installs? It would be common sense to have a clause which says x% by Sept, x+y% by Dec and x+y+z% by Mar where the latter equates to 100% of the schools.

If such as clause is in place is it being enforced, if it is not why not? If there is no such clause why not?

The one thing which I'm still not clear on regarding the Schools BB program is whether the 3 years which the Government is paying for is from when the contract was awarded, or from when the schools have an actual working BB connection.

M.

TimTim

Its nice when your school is reliant on eircom for schools project.

As far as I'm aware my school just had Digiweb (Metro?) installed, but they only installed the connection, not intergrate it to previous networks.

Haven't got a chance to play around with it yet. Odds are it will be left to me to plugin to the network.

eircomtribunal

Mr_Man wrote:

surely the contract they signed with the Department would have specified a timescale for the installs? It would be common sense to have a clause which says x% by Sept, x+y% by Dec and x+y+z% by Mar where the latter equates to 100% of the schools.

If such as clause is in place is it being enforced, if it is not why not? If there is no such clause why not?

The one thing which I'm still not clear on regarding the Schools BB program is whether the 3 years which the Government is paying for is from when the contract was awarded, or from when the schools have an actual working BB connection.

M.

I remember having once flicked through a quite lengthy document on the DCMNR website, regarding the details of these procedures, but don't want to go searching for them now.
The cynic in my says: The later the technical connections for schools are functional, the later it will become evident, that the content side of things (curricular integration of the Internet as a tool) is not in place. Having a physical Broadband connection for schools is only half of the job.
P.

Mr_Man

Throwing broadband at the schools without a supporting infrastructure in place does lessen the effectiveness of the technology. However not having the technology available is frustrating in the extreme for those techers who recognize its potential and are willing to put their own time and effort into integrating it within their teching.

I know a number of teachers in this position, and the bizzare behaviour of some of the Eircom staff who turned up to do an install and then left again without doing it, is really annoying. The reason Eircom gave for refusing to do the install was that the Head Teacher was not around, even though Eircom never told anyone that they required their presence, and the head teacher had arranged for the school to be opened and a member of staff present on the day Eircom scheduled the install. Complete BS.

M.

Sponge Bob

One headteacher I know wants them to hand over the following or they wont sign for it

1. a working console cable , demoed, and hyperterminal set up on the Ht's laptop
2. the enable password