A Better Communications Bill

Jorinn

Ok, we all know that the recent comms bill was nutured but that iusn't necesserily the end of it. As we all know when a new government comes in it doesn't continue with the policies of the outgoing governement. So my suggestion is this....

We draw up our own communications bill, take the core of the bill from last week and edit it so that it suits whats best for the market, consumers and most importantly the residential and SME user. Then we get a TD in the government to introduce it and lobby every single TD to vote in favour of it without alterations (as it's our bill) before it is introduced. This should gve us an easy majority as politicians will want to be seen as on the side of the consumer and small user. Alternatively if we can't get it proposed by a government TD then we could get it introduced as a private member's bill but do the same lobbying as we would otherwise thereby getting crossparty support.

Hope that all makes sense. Not entirely coherent probably.

Jorinn

sikes

the only major item left out of the Bill is about FRIACO which according to Mary O'Rouke, will become law within 6 months.

All in all I think it was an excellant Bill and once the EU directive is taken into our constitution we are sucking diesel.

aidan_dunne

Originally posted by sikes
the only major item left out of the Bill is about FRIACO which according to Mary O'Rouke, will become law within 6 months.

All in all I think it was an excellant Bill and once the EU directive is taken into our constitution we are sucking diesel.

That's assuming that the EU directive does have a provision for FRIACO. Having read the other post detailing this, there doesn't seem to be any direct mention of it. I'm hoping that there is something I or someone else has missed and that there is the provision for FRIACO within the EU directive. If there isn't, or if it's unclear or obscurely worded, you can bet Eircom will continue to fight FRIACO until it's dying breath.

Also, who's to say that it will become law within 6 months? I have a bad feeling about all this and that the current stalemate will still be going on this time next year. I certainly can't see FRIACO being in place by the end of this year. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic but.........

Also, Jorinn talked about lobbying politicians to pass a new Comms Bill. You can be sure that Eircom would probably get to them first and would back up their "lobbying" with some nice big thick brown envelopes, so any lobbying IOFFL do wouldn't make a difference!

Altomaximus

Originally posted by aidan_dunne


That's assuming that the EU directive does have a provision for FRIACO. Having read the other post detailing this, there doesn't seem to be any direct mention of it. I'm hoping that there is something I or someone else has missed and that there is the provision for FRIACO within the EU directive. If there isn't, or if it's unclear or obscurely worded, you can bet Eircom will continue to fight FRIACO until it's dying breath.

Also, who's to say that it will become law within 6 months? I have a bad feeling about all this and that the current stalemate will still be going on this time next year. I certainly can't see FRIACO being in place by the end of this year. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic but.........

Also, Jorinn talked about lobbying politicians to pass a new Comms Bill. You can be sure that Eircom would probably get to them first and would back up their "lobbying" with some nice big thick brown envelopes, so any lobbying IOFFL do wouldn't make a difference!

In any event, what has the EU got to do with this issue? Every other state has flat rate DSL. Eircom's refusal to provide wholesale and retail broadband services over the local loop at prices and QoS levels experienced elsewhere in Europe is surely a matter for the Irish Government to deal with. The government must stop passing the buck!

Subsidiarity please. Legislation and decision making must be pushed down to the lowest level. Unbundling and flat rate in Ireland are matters for the Irish legislature.

The US Federal Government does not legislate for Florida sales taxes or broadband availability in West Palm Beach. The Swiss Federal Parliament in Berne does not pass laws governing trash collection in Canton Vaud.

Altomax

Dustaz

Altomaximus, first off the issue is FRIACO which has nothing to do with DSL.

Secondly the EU can pass a law that will mandate FRIACO (whether the bill in question actually does seems vague atm). Thats what they have to do with it. We would all have preferred if the comms bill had gone thru with the ammendment, but it didnt and now we need the EU to do the job - thats the way it stands. Discussions about federalism belong in politics, not the ireland offline forum.

dahamsta

the only major item left out of the Bill is about FRIACO which according to Mary O'Rouke, will become law within 6 months.

That's highly unlikely. When politicians say 6-8 months, they mean 10-12 months, at best. I'm told that the EU Directives have to be transposed into Irish law by July 2003, which is over 15 months. There's also implementation to think of: LLU wasn't actually implemented until 12 months after the Local Loop was legally unbundled. Pricing wasn't settled until three months later (this month, 15 months in total).

In the last few months I've said that flat-rate needed to be addressed soon. In the last few weeks, I've been saying that it needs to be addressed /now/. I'm not kidding around when I say that -- we're already in a technological nosedive, if we don't start getting more small businesses and consumers on the Internet soon, Ireland is going to crash and burn. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind about this.

adam

sikes

I agree it is very unlikely that we will get FRIACO this year but O'Rouke did say 6-8 months. I will believe her now and if it doesn't come into law she will lose a lot of cred (not that she has much after Thursday)

You're right, there doesn't seem to be any direct mention of FRIACO in the EU directive. I am going to email O'Rouke and find out where it is.

MDR

I agree with Adam we need to get people on the net buying stuff. It is proposterous of our government to offer it's range of online services, everything for the revenue commissioners to the osasis.gov without providing the population a way to access this information a reasonable cost, equally it is stupid to try and sell ourselves as a nation at the cutting edge of technology (including web technologies), when our citizens have no real access to the techology. Its a bit like selling dvd player in nepal, great technology, but no electricity (er, note to editor, need a better methaphor).

However I don't think our goals are achieveable now. It anyone could suggest how they might be achieved now without revolution, I would be delighted to hear about it. Also I amn't sure how effective getting our own td and lobbing other td's to vote for our td's proposals would be, Irish parties tend to have quite strong party disapline.

What would be better is the old 'squeeky wheel'. I think we just have to increasing bug the crap out of all our td's (we would need a large group of people for this). In my expierence, if you repeatedily bug a td about anything, you will soon get results. If you do this with alot of td's, you might achieve something. This isn't a new idea, this has more or less formed a part of our stragey to date, but perhaps we should escalate.