"Ennis clocks up three times the average Net use"

Urban Weigl

A recent Irish Times article -- http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2001/0922/north8.htm -- claims that Ennis residents clock up 15 hours each month using the Internet, which is 3 times the national average of less than 5 hours (what a national disgrace)!

It actually sounds rather impressive, until you compare it to for example the UK's average of 30 hours.

All we have in Ireland is a half-assed cyber town, others have a cyber country (at least compared to Ennis). Need I say more?

flamegrill

30 hours or 15 hours per month .
i do that per week easily surely that cant be right.
and im a bloody dial-up.
ffs!


No More Excuses Eircom.
http://eircom.dahomelands.net
We have had enough of your Bull.

bkehoe

I'd almost use 15hrs per day at the weekends.

kendragon

Well thats what we get for making Ennis our Cyber Village instead of giving it to a county that would actually make use of it.

Actually thats a strange one, remember all the fuss that was made about Ennis being the first cyber town, was the results of that experiment ever made public? to me it seems to just have fizzled out.

yellum

Still it shows that if the general population were given the opportunity they'd use the internet more, boring as Soula tells us it is.

DM

Urban Weigl

Originally posted by flamegrill
30 hours or 15 hours per month .
i do that per week easily surely that cant be right.
and im a bloody dial-up.
ffs!


No More Excuses Eircom.
http://eircom.dahomelands.net
We have had enough of your Bull.

The average Internet usage in Ennis is almost 15 hours per month (!!!). This is compared to less than 5 hours (4 1/2 hours to be exact) per month in the rest of the Republic of Ireland. The thing is, if people have to pay by the second for using the Internet, that is a major barrier. Eircom could not care less though, and won't care until they are actually forced to do something.

mike65

15 hrs might be low but at least the difference over 5 hrs the
country as an average spends on line shows that a slightly
more progressive enviornment can make a small difference.

But as has already been noted eircom realy dont give a hoot one
way or the other, the interents' potential has'nt even dawn on them yet.

BTW can anyone in Ennis tell the rest of us whats
the futures' like?!


Mike.

sceptre

I know someone who used work directly for Eircom and now works for an implementation company (best way of describing it) owned by Eircom. Apparantly, according to him, the "information town" moniker is a joke among many Eircom staff that they find incredibly funny. An experiment that never happened properly, where the marketing department kind of forgot about it when they knew it was a balls-up from beginning to end.

kendragon

What about internet cafe's, we have quite a number of 'em in this country and they seem to be making there money (considering its a pretty expensive way of getting online)?
Have their usage been included in the national online usage surveys?

Straker

I don't understand. The average is 5 hours per month for the "average" user? Where do they get this figure from? How do they get it... total time online divided by the population?

I'd say I spend atleast two to three and a half hours a day off peak, more on weekends (naturally), and I consider myself an average user (based on info from friends and colleagues).

Well strange!

Urban Weigl

Originally posted by Straker
I don't understand. The average is 5 hours per month for the "average" user? Where do they get this figure from? How do they get it... total time online divided by the population?

First of all, I would like to clearly state that I am not an expert on this subject. However, from my understanding, they install a little program on for example 5,000 computers in Ireland. This program sends back the amount of time spent online by each user. They then divide the total amount of hours spent online by 5,000, providing some pretty accurate results. In Ennis of course, this sample would be much smaller.

I'd say I spend atleast two to three and a half hours a day off peak, more on weekends (naturally), and I consider myself an average user (based on info from friends and colleagues).

That's definitively above-average Internet usage. Most people here just use the Internet to fire off the occasional email, and maybe buy a book at Amazon, or catch the headlines at Ireland.com. Instead of looking at your friends, try looking at how your neighbours use the Internet. That should provide a much more accurate picture.

R. Daneel Olivaw

I can't believe that there is a small group of around 22,000 (judging by SNL numbers) people who are unique in Ireland in being users who want 24/7 flatrate broadband, and that for some strange reason Irish people are totally unlike the British and US people regarding net use.

I'm sure that if TV was charged on a per-minute basis, far less people would watch it. I don't believe that Irish people are any different to the people who live 4 miles over the border in Northern Ireland and that something magical and mysterious happens to those people at birth to cause them to want to be online 6 times as much as the average Irish person.

Has anyone from Eircom suggested reasons why Irish people in Ireland specifically are "bored" with the net compared to Irish people in the UK or US?

o_donnel_abu

Originally posted by Urban Weigl
It actually sounds rather impressive, until you compare it to for example the UK's average of 30 hours.

Urban, where did you get 30 hr figure for UK ?

In OECD report earlier this year, UK was only marginally more than Ireland at 5 hours but they said that indications were that the fairly recent introduction of nationwide unmetered was already showing a rapid increase. I'm interested to know what current UK figure is - more ammo to hit Eircom and politicians with.

Martin

Urban Weigl

The 30 hour figure came from AOL UK customers I believe. Also the OECD figures are quite old, and it will be quite interesting to see the new ones. In the past, I've just remembered stuff in my head or scribbled notes with pencil, which was certainly a mistake. I've started keeping proper notes and magazine cut-outs now.

R. Daneel Olivaw, good point about the TV. Just think about RTE launching their new prices: 5p for 5 minutes, 6p for 6 minutes, 7p for 7 minutes. Actually, that might be a good thing: people watch too much TV these days.

Edit: I think one good weapon which can be used against Eircom is that no matter what statistics are manufactured, Internet usage rates in the UK increased quite considerably after the introduction of FRIACO-based products.

Boston

Originally posted by Urban Weigl

Edit: I think one good weapon which can be used against Eircom is that no matter what statistics are manufactured, Internet usage rates in the UK increased quite considerably after the introduction of FRIACO-based products.

To which they reply, feic England, bunch of black and tans, where’s your national pride.
Actually this is partly true, ill never forget the way they butchered national pride to sell eircom shares, keep Eircom Irish they said, I wonder how people would have reacted if they had know it was just 20%

The real response is, the average user spends 5 hours online a month, that’s a fiver p/m, they will never go for something that charges them £25 p/m.
As you can see a per minute based system is more cost effective for Irish people.

Now do you see how hard it is to argue with their logic.
Edit, this is also good, because they can claim they only make a fiver a month from internet access each month P/U, therefore the market is to small, therefore theres no need for anything better

R. Daneel Olivaw

Originally posted by «Bo§ton»



Now do you see how hard it is to argue with their logic.
Edit, this is also good, because they can claim they only make a fiver a month from internet access each month P/U, therefore the market is to small, therefore theres no need for anything better

Arguing with their logic is one thing, but the blatant numbers problem with pricing comparisons with other countries ADSL services are blindingly obviously, regardless of how much net access is consumed by each user, compare like for like, and Eircom are not providing *comparable services* with UK and US and general EU countries.

The difference here then is that the less time spent online, the less likely Irish people will shop, etc., online. So we are cought in a state of permanent technological underdevelopment, like some sort of eternal 1970s. New technology happens in other countries, but not here. And if you look back to the 12p unlimited access of the 1980s from TE, the service is actually getting worse.

Also this bandwidth talk is crap; Sky Digital on satellite is MPEG2 stream, if I am not mistaken (you can see the artefacts if you look real hard). Essentially it is like broadcast DVD video, blindly transmitted all over the UK and Ireland, picked up by tiny non-targetted dishes.

It's not about saying "Irish people don't use the net". Why are we so unique then? All IOffline wants I think is comparable services for communications in line with the EU/UK and US. It doesn't require any argument, it just is.

o_donnel_abu

Originally posted by R. Daneel Olivaw
All IOffline wants ...is comparable services for communications in line with the EU/UK and US.

Precisely

Martin

JANER

Fri night/sat morning finished a 13 hour session and 95% of that was playing HalfLife.....................True

kamobe

"Ennis clocks up three times the average Net use"

Only proves that given the opportunity the Irish public will use the internet far more. Currently we are charged by the minute, and the usage is fairly low.

THE FIRST TOWN IN THE COUNTRY to be given broadband uses the internet three times more then the rest of the country...

And eircom claims there is no interest?

The fact that the one village that has been invested in, boasts three times the net usage of the rest of the country speaks for itself (imho)

neverhappen

Originally posted by o_donnel_abu


In OECD report earlier this year, UK was only marginally more than Ireland at 5 hours but they said that indications were that the fairly recent introduction of nationwide unmetered was already showing a rapid increase. I'm interested to know what current UK figure is - more ammo to hit Eircom and politicians with.

Martin

http://www.europeprofile.com/downloads.html

This site has some stats from February/March 2001

including (from the May 2001 edition)

The amount of time European at-home Internet users spend online has risen dramatically in the past nine months.

The total monthly online time increased by 94 percent in Britain from June 2000 to Feb 2001. During the same period, it increased by 225 percent in France and 226 percent in Germany.

The favourite online destinations of Europeans include not only portals and ISP Web sites, but also 60 percent of Europe's at-home online population visited entertainment sites such as windowsmedia.com, rtl.de and mp3.com in 2001.

Source: Jupiter MMXI Feb 2001.


The British population spends an average of 6 hours, 48 minutes surfing the Web every month.

Source: Jupiter MMXI, Mar 2001.

sceptre

Originally posted by R. Daneel Olivaw

Also this bandwidth talk is crap; Sky Digital on satellite is MPEG2 stream, if I am not mistaken (you can see the artefacts if you look real hard). Essentially it is like broadcast DVD video, blindly transmitted all over the UK and Ireland, picked up by tiny non-targetted dishes.

Yes it is. And it's the same on Chorus (even with the analog service for the Sky channels as opposed to the terrestrial channels that Chorus receive via beam benders)

gurramok

In OECD report earlier this year, UK was only marginally more than Ireland at 5 hours but they said that indications were that the fairly recent introduction of nationwide unmetered was already showing a rapid increase. I'm interested to know what current UK figure is - more ammo to hit Eircom and politicians with.

Net usage For Rep. Ireland for July are at :

http://epm.netratings.com/ie/web/NRpublicreports.usagemonthly

for UK at :
http://epm.netratings.com/uk/web/NRpublicreports.usagemonthly

for other countries net usage :
http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/hot_of_the_net_i.htm

pork99

obviously everyone in IOffL should move to Ennis immediately

then Eircom can build a big fence around the town and contain us, problem solved

I believe they have that new-fangled hi-speed 256k ISDN down there. I can't wait.

Lemming

Originally posted by kamobe
THE FIRST TOWN IN THE COUNTRY to be given broadband uses the internet three times more then the rest of the country...

And eircom claims there is no interest?

The fact that the one village that has been invested in, boasts three times the net usage of the rest of the country speaks for itself (imho)

Couldn't we use that little fact as a very large stick (with rusty nails ) to beat Eircom with at the next public meeting? (assuming of course Eircom are willing to face the public's ever-growing wrath again).

Eircom's own proverbial "hole" that they've dug for themsevles. They claim there's no net interest, yet their own experiement completely contradicts that rather stupid statement.

azezil

Ennis doesn't have broadband!?! i started work here under that pretense but oh no! i work for the council n they're connect to remote sites via 64k isdn dialups... i wan't impressed.

The comps they got were p166's ... the whole thing was a joke!

SkepticOne

Originally posted by azezil
Ennis doesn't have broadband!?! i started work here under that pretense but oh no! i work for the council n they're connect to remote sites via 64k isdn dialups... i wan't impressed.

Out of interest, what are people attitutes to the Internet and Eircom in the "Information Age" town?

azezil

I'm not actually from Ennis (BARD IS! HA HA LMAO )
It doesn't seem to me ppl are overly impressed with it or anything... as far as i can tell there's not féckin cyber café!!!

I don't think they care all that much... where as kilkenny, who came second, have 2 cybe café's n we want broad band dammit!

dahamsta

Ennis doesn't have broadband!?!

Doesn't the local library have a DSL line, and a few other NGO's around the town? And didn't they connect a lot of residences to high-speed connections (I don't know what they were, but there you go). I always found the lack on technical information on the site a bit dodgy though, it has to be said.

adam

SkepticOne

Originally posted by dahamsta
Ennis doesn't have broadband!?!

Doesn't the local library have a DSL line, and a few other NGO's around the town? And didn't they connect a lot of residences to high-speed connections (I don't know what they were, but there you go). I always found the lack on technical information on the site a bit dodgy though, it has to be said.

adam

High speed or "hi-speed"?

azezil

oh yeah! woops ... ya the council has DSL alright