Postal campaign! Bombard the ODTR/Departments/TDs

d-j-k

I wonder if it would have any impact if every member of this group sent a letter expressing why the lack of broadband is holding up the economic development of ireland, why it is dammaging your business or why it it putting you at a compeditive disadvantage to the following people:

1)
Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation
Block DEF, Abbey Court,
Irish Life Centre,
Lower Abbey Street,
Dublin 1.


2)
Mary O'Rourke TD, Minister for Public Enterprise,
Department of Public Enterprise,
44 Kildare Street
Dublin 2
(This department has responsibility for Telecommunications deregulation in Ireland and the ODTR is answerable to it.)

3)
The Taniste, Mary Harney,
Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment,
Kildare Street,
Dublin 2.
(This department has responsibility for encouraging employment, entreprise development and promotion of science and technology projects. The Taniste is also very pro-technology generally and is more likely to be interested in this issue than some more "traditional" FF ministers.)

4) to all of your local TDs


Write your letters in non-technical terms explaining why you think that this is putting Ireland's future prosperity at risk, why it is dammaging your business or costing your unreasonable amounts at home and if you can make some suggestions as to what could be done about it.
Try to avoid technical jargon as it tends to confuse people who are non-technical. If you must use it, at least offer an explanation in brackets.

Perhaps Ireland Off Line could produce a standard letter in the form of a word file and distribute it via their website? and we could start a very serious mail campaign.

It's only going to take you 20 min and cost you at most £1-£2 in stamps!
so go on! do it!! it could save you a fortune!!

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Its been discussed and I thinks its a very good idea- especially if theres a standard letter-
I've been waiting to contact my 5 local TD's and if I was to get a standard letter or "official pitch" I'd definitley present @ one of their clinics!

Cmtee intervention here please

dahamsta

I'll make it part of the "blackout" stuff and develop a skellington for it this evening.

adam

P R O F A N I T Y

A letter writing campaign isnt jsut a once off, you will have to send one every week, and there would have to be a fair few of us. also a record needs to be cept so we could use our own figures to challenge those presented by someone else.

Personally i think its an extremely good idea, and i could get afew people involved.
It wouldnt be worth it with less then 100 imho, but since theres over 1000 members, it shouldnt be hard to get that number.

sceptre

Good idea.

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Originally posted by P R O F A N I T Y
A letter writing campaign isnt jsut a once off, you will have to send one every week,

This might have worked for Andy Dufraine(SSR ) but we have to be careful not to upset the ppl we're trying to appease!

Sentiment taken though

gandalf

Yeah this is something that I suggested .

What is needed is a sactioned Irelandoffline offical downloadable letter that we all can use.

Send it to your local TD's, Mary O'Rourke, the ODTR, Leaders of all the Political Parties.

There also should be a separate media oriantated letter which can be sent to local & national print, radio & Television Media.

I do not think a mail bombing campaign would work it would be counterproductive but if we get enough people mailing this letter in once then maybe we can get the odd TD or polital party to take notice, maybe the media will take this up and start to ask Eircom and the ODTR some difficult questions and not treat them with kid gloves as they are at the moment.

Gandalf.

d-j-k

I don't think you can really upset the ministers/departments by sending them letters.
1) they're public representatives they are payed by us (the public) to represent our interests. We just have to tell them what our interests are.
2) I don't think that they really see what the issue is, we need to make them aware of how its impacting on real people, real businesses etc.

The government seems happy with its policy on broadband it has looked at the supply side of it to and between telecom companies. Creation of digital corridors etc. all of which just increases the size of the broadband backbone infrastructure. The problem that they don't seem to see is that there is NO access to this infrastructure for anyone other than the largest companies in the country. It would be a bit like building motorways between large cities with no slip-roads to let cars on to them, they don't seem to understand this
at all. They also may see this as only being of concern to a small group of people and there for not an issue in terms of votes. That attitude has to be challenged.

The taniste in particular is very good at dealing with high-tech issues. We just need to make sure that we make some of the polticians who actually know what we're on about aware of what's going on. Don't forget that eircom, ntl etc feed the government with endless marketing crap saying how great they are and how much they're doing for the economy.

d-j-k

To make sure that you're taken seriously put your own contact details on the letters. It gives them more credability! and perhaps include a link to Ireland Off Line

PiE

How's about a link on the IoffLine website, "Click here to send an email to...blah" where you can put your name on it, hit "Confirm" and the site automatically sends the mails off to various TD's and Groups?

More people'd be bothered doing it if they didnt have to open up Outlook or Hotmail.

P R O F A N I T Y

It should be in a format that each user can put in their own info.

Halo, my name is....... my connection is..... i spend..... a mounth of the interent, my last bill was.....

Rpobably need to be better worded, but you get the point, why miss the opertunity to should the odtr and others that, given the chance the internet could work here, and disspell the believe that the internet is "that thing"

d-j-k

Also make sure it's in a format that everyone can use and edit. MS word is pretty good, but it excludes a lot of Mac and Linux users.

Maybe we could produce a few different file types with the same content it would be a bad idea to make them exclusively openable in windows as there are a lot of linux and mac users out there.

Microsoft Word™ (covers most Windows PCs and a lot of Macs)
Appleworks™ or Simpletext™ (Mac)
Star Office™ (Linux)
and plane ASCII text (anything else)
RTF is also a good cross platform format.
or even HTML that people could just cut and paste to their word processor.

rardagh

From experience at having to help answer such letters, the most effective letter written to a TD is from a constituent.

Writing a letter adhoc to a minister/taoiseach will get a reply, but will most likely be in the form of acknowledgement of receipt of your letter.

Similarly, if you send a letter to a TD, you should follow up to her office with a phone call, explaining that you are local - that this is a problem that impacts on us all locally - and that the issue needs to be addressed by her Parliamentry Party.

All the parties are currently drafting their 'policy' statements, and programmes for government, for the next general election. If the issue is considered as urgent/important your local TD should raise it at her weekly parliamentry party meetings.

One aspect of policy making that needs to be raised, is that there seems to be a natural tendancy to relax into fuzzy, warm, terms about being e-Commerce friendly, Information Age Society, E-Learning etc. instead of a hard hitting, directive statement of a goal, for example similar to the Swedish one:


"Sweden should build a completely new IT infrastructure, designed for digital
communication. A fine-meshed fibre optic network needs to be constructed
throughout the country, so that all households, enterprises and authorities can
obtain a direct network connection at low cost within five years. The fibre optic
network shall be accessible to everyone within one hundred metres of all
buildings.
Within five years, everyone in Sweden can have a dedicated Internet connection of at
least 5 Mbit/s in true capacity, end-to-end between communicating parties, at a
monthly cost of a few hundred Swedish crowns. Everyone has a self-evident right to a
dedicated network connection, regardless of geographic location.
This can be achieved by systematically building a physical infrastructure, i.e. conduit
systems and fibre optic cables throughout the country which - in contrast to the
existing infrastructure - are capable of accommodating advanced future needs and
which all players can gain access to on equal and competitively neutral conditions.
There is to be no competition concerning the physical infrastructure. Nor shall it be
possible for any individual player to be an owner of infrastructure and at the same time
a service provider. Those wishing to lease dark fibre in the network will be able to do
so, at a cost which is known in advance. The price shall be capable of balancing
regional differences. All services, applications and content will be open to
competition.
In this reality, every user, anywhere in the country, has at least five different operators
to choose from. The user can choose freely between different operators and services
and can always obtain good performance and high-quality, reasonably priced services."

Does anybody know if any of the political parties, or senior politicians, have actually decided to DO something about our national broadband deficit in such clear, explicit terms?

Along with Bard, and 82% of us in the poll, I think it is now time to again take the Broadband Agenda into our own hands and, like with the successfull digitalisation of our phone system in the 1970s by a government body, JUST DO IT.

Maybe, this is the type of message that needs to be put across to our politicians?

jd

*

DeVore

The content of the letters is reasonably unimportant.

The quantity is crucial.

DeV.

Matfinn

A poll should be setup here maybe after the blackout, asking 'Would you be up for taking part in a letter writing campaign. Handwritten letters may have a good impact also:) 'I couldnt email this to you because I cant afford Eircoms crippling intenret charges, and the net is too slow to send out so many letters:)

Gluck

Matt

Bard

Originally posted by rardagh

Along with Bard, and 82% of us in the poll, I think it is now time to again take the Broadband Agenda into our own hands and, like with the successfull digitalisation of our phone system in the 1970s by a government body, JUST DO IT.

er... what are you saying I said exactly???

rardagh

"The Government, on behalf of the state, should buy back the telephone network infrastructure, including telephone lines and exchanges, from eircom plc., - infrastructure that the Irish public originally paid for through taxes, etc.,- effectively making eircom 'just another telecom company' who would then have to rent this infrastructure from the state in exactly the same way as Esat or any other licensed operator."

However, I believe that there could be a further choice of 'build it rather than buy it'

Building it makes more sense.

The current legacy eircom infrastructure would probably cost too much compared to building afresh a fiber to the home network in the cities targetted by the draft national spatial strategy.

BTW. Now I realise you may not have been taking a position on the poll, sorry if I got it wrong.

Praetorian

Im going to start writing some letters right now !

Come on guys make the effort

It will only cost you a few pence on postage and a little bit of your time!

GwaaaAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNN!

JaneDoe

Do you not think that these letters could creat more problems that they solve - particularly as generating the replies would tie up resources who could be used in actually doing the work...just a thought. Maybe one letter co-signed by the Committee (and thus showing a professional approach) would be better

d-j-k

Politicians and government departments recieve hundreds and thousands of letters a day in some cases. They have the ability to process them. If you send a single letter signed by the comittee they will just file it will be filed somewhere by a secretary and the minister prob. wont even be informed.

A volume of letters will be taken much more seriously. Its your democratic right to lobby a minister/department/government body.

Also the fact that this problem is an absolute national disgrace, that we're slipping way behind other european countries would warrent a bit of public anger. I mean it took quite a lot of angry voters to get Telecom Eireann set up and the phone system digitalised and brought out of the complete dark ages in the 1970s/80s. We had a situation where Ireland had a mix of manual and very out-dated electromechanical switches in use making it practically impossible to make a call from Dublin to Cork without hastle that and it took months to get a phone line from P&T. Actually it wouldn't hurt to draw a comparison between the need for proper digital switching etc in the 80s and Broadband access networks in the 00's.

Again I'd stress that you should talk about why you need this, why it's damaging your business, costing you money, putting you at a compeditive disadvantage. If you must talk about technical issues put them in lower down paragraphs. Remember that the ministers / politicians are not IT professionals, so write a letter as if it was aimed at your mom/dad/grandmother etc..

I still think that the government isn't really aware of what is required here. They arn't looking at broadband access networks, just broadband infrastructural projects like installing long-distance fiber optic cables etc. Also Eircom etc do a PR job to government just as much as they do to customers, so you can be sure that they get loads of glossy brochures with pictures of "super mouse" on them telling them how great everything is....

d-j-k

If the committee hasn't made contact with IBEC and the Small Firms Association they should give them a call.

IBEC / SFA would have a very serious interest in broadband access as affordable internet access is vital to small firms.

oscarBravo

Originally posted by JaneDoe
Do you not think that these letters could creat more problems that they solve - particularly as generating the replies would tie up resources who could be used in actually doing the work...just a thought. Maybe one letter co-signed by the Committee (and thus showing a professional approach) would be better

Writing to political representatives is never a bad idea. A flood of letters on a single topic is a pretty much guaranteed path to a hot political issue, especially if (as I have said in a public meeting) the recipient is an opposition politician.

I have communicated (indirectly) with one government TD on this already. The response has been unsatisfactory, so I will shortly be lobbying an influential opposition TD to do something about it.

MS

I have to disagree with this. I wont mention names but some of the people you have actually listed are some of the people actually trying to 'HELP' us. And i don't think Biteing the Hand That May Feed You' is the way to go about this. So before you even think about this .... make sure you know Who your enemy is.


MS

sceptre

Ah but these are all people that we're either trying to get firmly on our side or keep them firmly on our side. By trying to convince them that this is an issue that affects many people, people with votes, we both keep it an issue and make it an issue for people who aren't aware of the problem.

Look at it this way. 166 TDs (or rather 164 TDs) take it up with the Taniste and Minister for Public Enterprise (after they've got letters themselves), pushing the issue on to the agenda firmly, destroying any ideas that they (hopefully don't) have about it being a flash in the pan or a minor issue affecting a small number of people with the impetus to do anything about it. The idea of sending letters to the ODTR is clear - push the idea that this is a bone this dog is not going to let go of. Additionally, if they don't use this as encouragement to get greater powers from the government, they're clearly not doing their job.

If there's an important national issue, our public representatives need to know about it. More to the point, we'd be morally remiss in not informing them about it (and I'm not talking tongue in cheek, I'm telling the truth).

In the end, we're not taking this issue on because we're a few grumpy geeks who are annoyed because we have to pay for our internet. We're a group of people (who may or may not be grumpy geeks) who are offended at the unnecessary high cost or unavailability of telecoms in Ireland and have decided to do something about it, to a great extent purely for the greater good.

And we will prevail - all IrelandOffline's objectives will be met. Affordable communications, availability of (affordable)unmetered and (affordable) broadband - these aren't lofty goals, these are not unnecessary goals, these are not unachievable goals. They are necessary for the survival and development of our businesses and our economy. They are necessary for sheer convenience of what the internet can provide for people's lives. In a wired world, everyone needs access to that wired world. And everyone who may not be aware of that needs to be informed. Everyone who is aware of that needs to be reminded whenever possible, to enforce that reality.

Do our public representatives need to be informed? Yes. And by us? Who else is going to take the lead on the issue? - we are by now the recognised consumer and business community organisation on the issue.

(I'll get off my high horse now)

SkepticOne

Originally posted by MS
I have to disagree with this. I wont mention names but some of the people you have actually listed are some of the people actually trying to 'HELP' us. And i don't think Biteing the Hand That May Feed You' is the way to go about this. So before you even think about this .... make sure you know Who your enemy is.

MS

Should you send letters to your enemies?