Why dont we do it ourselves

LegacyUser

I have just been looking through some of the posts on this board and it seems that there are lots of people out there that are as browned off as me about the lack of access in this fair isle of ours. The ODTR dont seem to have a clue, all the proposals for the National Development Plan are based on installing more "Dark Fibre" of which we allready have more than enough. (only 2% of current fibre has data passing through it)
The Telco's seem to be talking through their nether-regions just look at Esat's discription of ADSL, Their definition of "asymmetric" neglects to say that its in one direction, not so good for new Customer to Customer applications like Napster.
And they dont have a date to roll out a soon to be out of date technology.
Waht we need is a High speed symmetrical network, with a flat rate billing structure.
We can either sit around and wait, or do like other groups have done all over the world and build it ourselves,
Look at http://www.innaloo.net/ and http://www.air.net.au/ in Australia.
All we need is a group of like minded people to give some of their time, What do you say ???

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It's not the pace of life that concerns me, it's the sudden stop at the end.

Bard

It's a nice idea and something that as a project works very well on a local community level (as the Innaloo one shows) and helps bring people together better. I'd love to set it up, for example, in the village of Donabate, where I live. A focused group of people paying together for kick-ass bandwidth... mind you, you're still relying on SOME ISP somewhere...

How it would translate to the whole of Ireland is something I'm not sure about, though.

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Bard

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First motorbike in the bible ???? - a Triumph! - 'And yea verily did Moses strike down the ammmanites, - and all the land did hear the roar of his triumph !!!'

dahamsta

A few notes:

I don't think it's fair to say the ODTR "don't have a clue". I have slagged them off in the past, but I have to concede that Etain Doyle is pretty clued-in to telecommunications issues - she knows her stuff and she's pretty fair and even-handed overall. Her problem lies in enforcement, she's needs to get nasty with Eircom. However I'm not sure that's entirely her fault, I'm not sure she has the power to roast them.

I agree with you about the National Development Plan though. What really gets my goat is the government putting forward all these initiatives for broadband developments in rural areas. Now don't get me wrong, I believe people living in rural areas have as much a right to broadband and always-on Internet solutions as much as city-dwellers, but it's a seriously flawed case of putting the cart before the horse. Until local loop unbundling comes about, it's a waste of time and effort. The government needs to define its priorities and stick by them.

As to ADSL, it's become a standard now, and it's well tested and proven. Sure, it's not the best solution for Napster users, but the majority of users download more than they upload, so it's an ideal solution for the majority of users. Which is what products and solutions are all about.

And finally, as to your idea for doing it ourselves, you're forgetting a major factor, bandwidth. For peer-to-peer, it's fantastic, but it'd only be fun. If you want it to be useful, you gotta connect it to a POP. I'm not sure you'd be able to get the support to make it economical and viable. If you can though, I'll surely visit your site.

adam

dahamsta

Funny actually, we were only talking about this on CLUG last week:

http://www.linux.ie/pipermail/cork/2001-May/002082.html

Started out as a laugh, and ended up with a few people thinking "What if?" in the Metropole on Thursday.

Be nice to see it happen, but I won't be buying the balloons just yet...

adam