US 30% Have Broadband (Ireland .3%)

spongebob

This country is losing its relative competitivity at an awful rate.

In the US it is predicted that 50% of all users will be ON Broadband within 2 years.....early 2004 to be precise. This means 200kbps and above and not 64k as per the marketing muppets in Eircon.

Note that the Telcos are not the way to go in an advanced economy or so it seems, the Cable Companies carry 2 outta 3 Broadband connections.

The survey use the word CONNECTIONS rather than the crap we hear about HOUSEHOLDS from our incumbent operators here. A household is a potential rather than an actual consumer and may contain a blind granny with no computer for.....which is why Eircon includes them in their target demographic no doubt.

We are primitive here compared to any of our competitors in the global knowledge economy......the number of broadband connections is well under 1% of Internet using households.

Figures I have heard are:

400,000 households use the internet

1,500 households currently have ADSL or Cable Modems .......all in Dublin somewhere......that may be nearer a whopping .4% than .3% but is still the lowest in Western Europe.

I haven't even started on the subject of SDSL or HDSL leased lines T1 equivalents...the traditional leased line as it were.

M

BoneCollector

This country has always been backward.
this is because its run on BULL and not the red kind either.
Where all pissing against the wall here, and if people here finaly get broadband.. i feel it will be by other means an not errcum or its croney re-sellers. its just gonna take longer and it probably wont happen this year either. :mad:

MDR

Find attached the European Competative Telecoms DSL scorecard.

Now lads I ask you to bear in mind that ADSL has just become available here, I know everyone is pissed off, but there has been too much negativity lately, and it doesn't help.

As time goes one the figures you are pointing at will continue to improve, now I am not suggesting for one moment that at the prohibitive price ADSL is currentily pegged at, it will ever achieve the same levels of penetration as in other countries.

I would dispute the Cable figures, have a look at the scorecard, NTL reports that they have an 11 percent take up of Cable Modems in areas where they are available.

Lemming

Originally posted by Muck
This country is losing its relative competitivity at an awful rate.

In the US it is predicted that 50% of all users will be ON Broadband within 2 years.....early 2004 to be precise. This means 200kbps and above and not 64k as per the marketing muppets in Eircon.

As people (including myself) have said time and time again .... within 3 years this country will be uncompetitive from an e-perspective. And yet the government fails to grasp this single basic, yet utterly sobering, concept.

spongebob

Figures.

Am I right in saying that NTL only pass 6000 homes with cable capable of carrying bi directional data

Chorus can be disregarded, they offer nothing to anybody except snowy BBC pictures.

11% of 6000 is circa 660 households

Eircom would be pushed to exceed 1000 connections.

Wireless providers are hardly in the 100's, even lumpiing Vsats in there.

I would be confident of my man who said 1600 broadband connections. Not till we reach 4000 will be into single digits for broadbancd connections..... NTL are not upgrading any other households this year as far as I know.

Jawzus

M

MDR

Then where does the 52,000 cable connections on the ECTA scorecard come from ?

I suppose for their figure to match with NTLs,
1/2 million homes would have to access to Cable Internet. I suppose i could drop them a mail, querying their figures.

spongebob

AFAIK not even 52000 households in Ireland have digital TV by cable....most are on analogue. 52000 may be the most optimistic scenario.

It ain't the same as having a cable internet service though.

Someone must be reading marketing guff again and passing it off as a factoid.

M

MDR

Sending them an email now,
how certain are you about the number of home with Cable internet ?

spongebob

Figures.....

....only 6000 homes in south west Dublin are capable of having a Cable modem installed and working, I am really sure of that. No cable upgrades have taken place in over a year either as far as I know.

11% of that is 660

(660 is less than 0.2% of Internet using households in Ireland)

M

MDR

ok, I have sent them a mail ...

MDR

Your call is very important to us, please hold the line.

Dear Mr Kinsella

I have forwarded this and your last e-mail to Mr John Dickie, our Regulatory
Affairs Director.

Kind regards



Marcus Benson

MDR

My colleague, Jonna Byskata, tells me that the data was provided by by
Cullen International, the telecoms consultancy. It might be that they are
confusing another category of connection - any help you can give ECTA in
getting the right numbers for cable (a particularly tricky task we find)
would be appreciated.

John Dickie
Regulatory Affairs Director
European Competitive Telecommunications Association

Tel: +44 (0)118 979 3331
Email: jdickie@ectaportal.com

Who are Cullen International (http://www.cullen-international.com/) ?

Can I send this guy a response and get the numbers changed to be something a bit more realistic. Does anyone have the proper numbers ?

dahamsta

Can I send this guy a response and get the numbers changed to be something a bit more realistic. Does anyone have the proper numbers ?

The ODTR should have the correct numbers MDR. Have a go yourself, and if you have no luck I'll try and get in touch with NTL and Cablesurf to get numbers off them.

[ I find the assertion that the numbers for cable are hard to find a little naive, at least in Ireland. We only have a few cable operators, and only two of them supply broadband... ]

adam

spongebob

Yo!

Does anybody actually know someone who has and uses the Chorus service which is 'available' to some homes in Swords and Malahide. It has been around for almost 2 Years now.

I have heard nothing about this recently except that it was a metered product about a year ago.

I am bu no means the first to ask this question, follow this link to see a Potted history of

Chorus And Lies about Broadband

I see no improvement since that thread was posted either.
They have lied about wireless in Limerick. They are 'allegedly' going 'live' in Kilkenny .....Again by the end of this week!

Find me one Chorus Broadband customer with 512 down and 128 up. It does not exist and never has. In fairness to Eircom they have rolled out a product that works whatever the cost implications may be. Chorus probably told yer man Cullen that they had 40,000 connections .accouting for most of his stats.

The poor eeejit musta thought they were a reputable cable company.

M

Moriarty

Originally posted by Muck
Find me one Chorus Broadband customer with 512 down and 128 up. It does not exist and never has.

I know 3 people using their 'Powernet' wireless broadband package. Up until the begining of this month it was unmetered. They have apparently begun to meter usage from June. The connection is 512/256kbit, actually increasing to a few mbit during the early hours of the morning etc.

<Edit: they have each had the service for over a year>

vinnyfitz

Cullen International are members of ECTA - maybe they did the survey for free to boost their internal profile....
Cor they are an impressive bunch - Namur, Oslo a few other boondocks, no contact names and a dead link to http://www.icgroup.ie/. as their knowledge of Irish user groups. I hope the ODTR and no Irish media are paying them any heed - or ECTA for that matter.
By the way who are ECTA themselves? I have never heard of them - they charge £Sterling membership fees - must be core Europeans so..

MDR

I don't really know who the ECTA (European Competive Telecoms Assocation) is, i hope to find out in the course of the conversation I am having with the guy, see if they can help us in any way.

spongebob

Thanks for the heads up..

3 wireless customers (in Limerick ...right) exist. I stand corrected.

Is there anybody on Cable with Chorus then.

M

yankinlk

first i have seen of this post or i would have posted earlier...

i am one of those chorus broadband customers and can only see great things about it. I am sorry that it is not in your area, but please don't post trash talking when you seem to have little to zero facts. you are doing newbies to this forum a disservice by bashing a company that untill recently was the ONLY company in ireland to offer a stable, compettitve broadband solution.

spongebob

can I have someone wired please....not in Limerick

M

timod

Originally posted by MDR
Sending them an email now,
how certain are you about the number of home with Cable internet ?

NTL says it had 371,500 customers here at the end of March, of whom 15,700 are digital tv subscribers. It also has 4,600 telephone subscribers here and 1,900 high speed internet customers.

http://new.businessandfinance.ie/sectors.htm?a=463802

Tim

Digi_Tilmitt

Hey guys i live in limerick how much would it cost to get the chorus thing?

yankinlk

3? getalife. take your bitterness elsewhere. i dont work for them so i dont know numbers but i have put 10 businesses/friends on to them. they have run out of modems twice that i know of in the last year and a half...get you facts from a reliable source.

spongebob

Hi

NTL have been quoted as saying that 11% of customer in areas technically capable of cable modem deployment have taken that service.

Timod linked a story stating that this number was 1900 customers.

As NTL have only upgraded their cable in parts of south west Dublin this means that they have upgraded 17250 homes in these areas ....allegedly.....

11 % of 17250 = 1900 per the Business and Finance Article.

I do not believe that they have upgraded this many homes in Dublin 6w 22 and 24 in the first place and would therefore question the other figures too. Information from a good source of mine suggests that the number of homes in ireland capable of Cable Modem deployment today ....for all cable operators... is 6000.

In short I believe that the number of Broadband cable connections in the country is in the 100's and not in the 1000's

That is because I do not believe marketing and PR people.

M

spongebob

OK

On the 16/04/2002

NTL had 165 cable customer outta 1500 possible homes 11%

On the 12/06/2002

This had Increased to 1900 but 'BY THE END OF MARCH'

Does this mean that the number of 'high speed' NTL customers dropped from 1900 to 165 in a fortnight between the end of March and the middle of April or does it just help show the amount of lies and guff that the Telcos have peddled over broadband. I am really impressed at how NTL are going from 1500 to 25000 by the end of the year.......go NTL!

As I like ENN it seems that there were 165 Broadband Cable Modems in Use in Ireland as of the 16/04/2002 because I have no evidence that Chorus had anybody wired and working at that point.

Add a few ADSL trialists and we have a figure in the low 100's for wired broadband users.

Pick a number for Limerick for Wireless then! That was sum total 2 months ago.

M

MDR

Dear Mr. Kinsella

Thank you for your email.

The current total number of Cable Modems in the Republic of Ireland is
about 300.

Kind regards,

Suzanne Behan

FYI : Reply from the ODTR on the matter.

dahamsta

Three HUNDRED! Ye gods!

adam

MDR

Dear James,

Thank you very much for your information! I will definitely check with Ireland Offline
before the next scorecard is published, which will be end of July!!

Best regards,

Jonna Byskata

FYI : From the ECTA

gandalf

300 Hundred Cable Modems after how many years, thats a bloody disgrace !!!

Chorus & NTL should be made remove Cable Internet from their offerings as those aren't even trial levels of users.

At this stage they should have their licenses removed for the delay in rolling this out. Only in Ireland.

Gandalf.

MDR

At this stage they should have their licenses removed for the delay in rolling this out. Only in Ireland.

Wouldn't help in the slightest, who would take over from them ?

I am not sure what is needed ...

spongebob

.........don't shoot the messenger

How many dsl and wireless to add to this whopping figure?

M

MDR

How many dsl and wireless to add to this whopping figure?

The figure includes wireless :rolleyes:


The ECTA's figures say zero for DSL but they date from just before its release in April. I am not sure the ODTR would have those figures yet.

spongebob

Sum of

Cable NTL s/w Dubin

+

Cable Chorus Malahide/Swords

+

Wireless Chorus Limerick

= 300

The only other Broadband services WORKING are

Eircom Dublin
Leap Dublin (brand new...south city centre only so far)

along with some VSATs who are not obliged to publish any figures to the ODTR

I am minded to think that 1000 covers the lot or 0.25% of internet using households while assuming that there are 400k households on the net to some degree.

My man (who is in the know) may have included firm orders for cable/dsl not actually installed yet but in the pipeline....which brings us to 1600.

If we hit 1% by Christmas I will be amazed....thats 4000 broadband connections people.


M

dahamsta

Hang on a second Muck, didn't the ODTR say "cable modems". That would surely exclude the wireless customers. And what about Cablesurf in Waterford?

adam

spongebob

MDR seemed (to me) to say that this included wireless.

Could he 'clarify' a bit as to the replies he received to his enquiries over the past few days?


M

MDR

Muck,

I received two responses, one from the ODTR whom I asked how many cable internet connections are there in the Republic of Ireland, the response was about 300 . The ODTR did not give specific numbers.

A friend in the know also supplied figures similar to the ODTR, he put the figure at 254 and he broke them down as follows.

NTL 174
CHORUS 10
FIXED WIRELESS ACCESS 70.

spongebob

my mate is an optimist

M

spongebob

...when I quoted this figure based on data from a 'friend' in the 'know' I was satisfied he was telling the truth.

it seems he was basing his info on knowledge of the installers and of the work they have on so he was quoting the pipeline as well as the installed base.

600-700 =

MDR's hard figure 184 Cable 70 Wireless

+

anything installed since

+

orders to be fulfilled in the next month or so

(and not including whatever Leap does, hopefully 1000's a week

)

M

MDR

I hope there isn't 1000's ,
I hope they don't get enough subscribers to any of the broadband services, so they have to drop their price to something more finacially viable.

spongebob

Thanks MDR

I would like the takeup on flat rate services to dramatically exceed capped products....especially where there is a choice.

Once the capped merket is dead then I would like to see open competition on price (quick and downwards) for the uncapped products.

..I would like all of this sorted out by the end of August this year not 2008.

With broadband penetration at less than 0.3% Nationally it is a matter of urgency that something is done fast or we will suffer a massive drop in inward investment owing to our primitive and uncompetitive telecommunications environment.

Allied to this we will also see a disproportionate (to our competitors) shrinkage in our high tech base as employers who depend on advanced comms close their operations where these are not available....especially after listening to all the lies and broken promises from the sleeveens who provide telecomms services in this country.

This week we have reduced cable modem penetration rates from 520000 (consultants) to 19000 (pr rubbish) to 200 (REALITY) simply by drilling into the FACTS

A good example of an employer who gave up on a location owing not least to the promises-reality gap in telecomm services is where Logica completely pulled out of Cork this week.

At the same time the cost of a fibre STM1 (155Mb symmetric) has dropped by 50% or more betwen London-Spain and London-Frankfurt this year alone . Distance is becoming less of a problem except for we Irish for whom it should not be a problem at all.

If we have not woken up to the sound of the rug being pulled it will be too late by the end of the year. A pattern will be set by then.

Roll on the Communications (amendment) Act 2002

M

spongebob

that would be 52000 (Fifty Two Thousand)

as linked in by MDR in this file

M

Dangger

This :

This week we have reduced cable modem penetration rates from 520000 (consultants) to 19000 (pr rubbish) to 200 (REALITY) simply by drilling into the FACTS

is something to raise on our trip through EU land.

Its incredible and something we have suspected for a long time now.

spongebob

Yo!

It would be a great help if someone like Karlin Lillington or similar actually rang around the various Telcos and checked these real figures and then published them .........

...it may stop slobbo journos from publishing PR crap ...unckecked...as given facts.

A state of the Digital nation report as it were.

Keep up the good work y'all

M

MDR

Perhaps we should compile our own press release, my source suggests the ODTR is going to release the information you are talking about earily next month.

We should grab the info then and shout as loudily as we can about it, drawing comparison with other EU nations.