Post-Meeting Questions

LegacyUser

Thought I might start a thread solely to deal w/ q's people may want clarification of, out of the aftermath of the meeting 19-07-01 @ the Mercer....
These are for any of the Cmtee. or any others informed to respond to...

Are we looking for a new name or was that a name for the Seminar?
Martin said the Mary O'Rourke was suggesting something more "Sexy/Cool"
Was this to replace IrelandOffline or what??

Also...
I thought one of the most thought provoking points that was made by a gentleman (near the front @ the window) in relation to SOCIAL INCLUSION. This has been such a watchword in the UK and AFAIK Tony Blair has issued some sound bites on this issue when it comes to widespread availability of Internet Access. If we are going to embark on a letter writing campaign or engage in lobbying of politicians, they will literally jump at anything that may involve publicising Social Inclusion of those financially oppressed or disadvantaged. Lets face reality here, while many of us may be able to afford DSL when it (eventually) arives, there will be a significant number of hardworking people who simply will not be able to afford it. I know Martin said possibly there has been too much emphasis by the ODTR on keeping the price down, but the Social Inclusion direction not only applies to prices but also the availability of services itself. If we are to get Politicians on board, they cant simply be seen to represent an exclusive group of Internet Moaners from financially stable backgrounds. We have to some extent represent more people than our members and bringing those who are being denied Internet Access under our umbrella by either price or service diffficulties can only augment our message.

Replies and suggestions Welcomed

80p.

"So little Done, So Much to do" - Cecil Rhodes, on his deathbed

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www.80project.com

Bard

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by 80project.com:
Are we looking for a new name or was that a name for the Seminar?
Martin said the Mary O'Rourke was suggesting something more "Sexy/Cool"
Was this to replace IrelandOffline or what??
</font>

Nope, the name IrelandOffline stays. A vote was taken on potential names well back at the formation stage and it was the most popular choice. There was never a suggestion of changing the name from IrelandOffline - at one stage Mary O'Rourke commented, in fact, on how witty and appropriate a name it was, if I'm not mistaken.

We are looking for a name for next month's seminar. Something along the lines of "The IrelandOffline <something><something> seminar" - where <something><something> could be anything relevant ("Hot Topic" was one suggestion).

More info/discussion: http://www.boards.ie/community/Forum18/HTML/000247.html

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Bard

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Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.

LegacyUser

Just arrived home from Dublin via some business stuff in Monaghan; as I have a lot of family stuff to catch up on, I don't have time just now to do detailed post. I also know Elana is busy with visitors from USA today, Niall will be away for couple of days and David is busy playing with his new ASDL toy

Please bear with us, we will get details on here over next few days.

Have to say at this stage tho that it was a great turnout, about 70 people, lot of whom stayed on well after official finish at 9:30 and a few until the early hours

Very high level of audience participation, lots of good ideas, as I said we will get them up here over next couple of days.

Thanks to all who came, especially those who travelled long distance.

Was also great to put faces to some of the pseudonyms used here

Martin Harran

LegacyUser

Thanks Niall.
I didn't think we were looking, it was just that Martin lowered his voice at the vital moment! IrelandOffline I think still gives everyone a chuckle! I know CUBIT and others were thrashed out on the Boards @ the start so I just wanted to clarify. although I do think we should have a suggestions thread for the Seminar Title- probably best left until nearer the date.

80p.

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www.80project.com

LegacyUser

Irelandoffline seminar on telecommunications in ireland

Its direct and to the point and is what were talking about "hot topic" could mean anything

One Question, eircom said they would take part if it was positive, this leads me to believe they want it to be a fluff piece of propaganda aimed at making the sun shine out their **** ,
some serious question will be asked, and i take it there will be a question and answer time were the guess's take questions from the floor,

And 80project.com lets focus on getting it first and then social inclusion, few people can aford the price of adsl but many will have to find away

LegacyUser

ha i wonder how many of you would like to see what i look like,
its bad i missed the meeting last night, but the seminar is the important one

Bard

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gladiator:
eircom said they would take part if it was positive, this leads me to believe they want it to be a fluff piece of propaganda aimed at making the sun shine out their **** ,</font>

From what I've read and heard on eircom's attitude toward us and the meeting they had with us, I'd say that's highly unlikely.

I presume you said arse there, by the way

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Bard

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Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.

LegacyUser

well once they know, cause they start treating us like a tool, they will get a surprise

sceptre

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by 80project.com:

I thought one of the most thought provoking points that was made by a gentleman (near the front @ the window) in relation to SOCIAL INCLUSION. </font>

Got it in one. It's also been one of my pet topics for a while. The UK and Ireland governments both have plans for the www in relation to freedom of information and even more in the UK. Now, I can't defend the point with solid comparisons with TV for example (the airwaves aren't really free when you need to buy a TV licence) but I still think that basic internet access in the long term will have to be either free or so cheap it might as well be. NoLimits must have really helped some people get access to the Net that simply could not afford it. i know a few people who have internet access simply because NoLimits was there and I managed to source a few old sub p100s

Two costs involved, obviously - the cost of the hardware as mainly a one-off cost and the ongoing cost of the connection (probably not including line rental as quite a few people have a phone line whether they have net access or not). Hardware prices are in freefall and with the "next generation" (buzzword alert, sorry) of game consoles and other devices on the market the hardware cost will be far less prohibitive than before.

The "social inclusion" issue is the main thing that might get a few politicians on board. There may be a digital divide in any case, where some people have broadband and others don't (assuming that broadband access becomes a matter of necessity and not just a matter of convenience). This is likely to happen, at least as an urban/rural divide (the current limits to the technology will guarantee this for some time). Having a scenario where some have broadband, most have bog-standard access and some people have nothing is not something I'd like to see. For me, Net access is more than a convenience, it is becoming something close to a necessity even in a non-work environment. So it's not something I'd like to see some people left without simply because it's unaffordable.

LegacyUser

Has anybody noticed that this Seminar of Ireland Offline in August will probably be the biggest ever "net" meeting in Ireland, like its very doubtful that ppl at it will know each other in person but more on a net basis throught the boards and icq/msn/aol/paltalk and such programs.

Could be a record breaker!

Farls.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by sceptre:
There may be a digital divide in any case, where some people have broadband and others don't (assuming that broadband access becomes a matter of necessity and not just a matter of convenience). This is likely to happen, at least as an urban/rural divide (the current limits to the technology will guarantee this for some time). Having a scenario where some have broadband, most have bog-standard access and some people have nothing is not something I'd like to see. For me, </font>

The urban/rural divide is one that bites particularly hard - I live in a wee cottage down the end of a wee lane outside a "little village in the Wesht of Ireland" and quite frankly my access is LESS than bog-standard.

I've just got a new 56K modem and I now find my connection is dropping all over the place, it used to do fine with the old 28K (thank god I didn't throw it away, I'm on it now) and the same thing is happening across all 3 different ISPs that I have. And I *KNOW* what will happen if I phone Argghcom.

1. "The lines are testing perfectly for speech.."

2. "Can I sell you a high-speed line" ??

I can't buy a high-speed/ISDN line because firstly I am thinking of moving within the next year and secondly by the time I'd got to the end of the waiting list for installation (assuming they would even install it out here) I'd no sooner have the thing in than I'd have to leave it.

In the meantime, though, I'm paying Arggghcom £20 per month for 2 lines, so that I can have a separate line for the Net and that is not even buying me the service that I pay for.

The urban/rural divide bites again when I discover that I cannot have Esat's "Officelink" 24 hour preferential rate even though I run a business here, since it's not available to anyone outside the major cities.

And there also is the question of my shiny new computer which after all of 24 hours is just so much ****ing useless plastic, if I can't get a decent Net connection on it.

And like Sceptre says, No Limits made me USED to Net access and it became a big part of my life.

Does Arggghcom realise how many lives they have F*cked up, how many businesses they put in trouble, and how much frustration and ill-feeling they've caused all over the country??? Ask them THAT at the next meeting.

Signed, Conned of Connacht.

LegacyUser

Ireland is a bit of conundrum. That's what I see from reading the full OECD Communications Outlook 2001 report, from which both IOFFL and the ODTR have recently quoted figures (I compiled the fact sheet in this web site's news and info section).

There is a section in the report on the International Digital Divide, but the perspective is global and looks at the divide between countries of the world, not the divide within countries.

Although Ireland is not great in many of the OECD metrics, those in which it rates particularly bad are the measures for web hosts and secure servers per capita. Our performance among our OECD peers is bad enough, but Ireland also fares worse than four *non*-OECD countries in terms of web hosts per capita: Tapei, Hong Kong, Israel and Singapore. It also fares worse than two non-OECD countries in the secure servers per capita metric: Singapore and Hong Kong. While in that case those countries' higher performance may be related to off-shore porn and other dodgy ecommerce sites serving the West rather than indigenous ecommerce, I don't think the same is true for the web hosts category.

I guess the point here is that Ireland's poor performance in these measures should correlate directly to the lack of flat-rate access in Ireland, where users are paying by the minute to download shopping (and all other) sites and have already splurged their budget just to get there.

The irony is that Ireland kicks ass in the "communications equipment exports per capita" metric: 4th highest in the OECD due to all the Lucents and Tellabs and Motorolas located here. We export more than twice the level of telecom gear per head than Germany, Japan, and the US do. We also import more per capita than all of those countries.

Perhaps not so ironic is Eircom's performance. The comparative incumbent carrier metrics prove that it is a bloated enterprise compared to its peers: its revenue per employee is lower than everywhere else except for the telcos in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Iceland, Mexico, Poland and Turkey. And the number of lines (fixed and wireless) per employee is lower than everywhere else except for Poland. Meanwhile, the percentage of the population working for the incumbent telco is 2nd highest in the OECD: fully 1% of Ireland's workforce works for Eircom.

Eircom can complain that everyone is always out to slag them and that they are the most regulated telco in the country, or in Europe, or whatever. But as a monopoly they absoultely must be regulated and they also must take their fair measure of blame for the digital divide within Ireland.

LegacyUser

FYI, the OECD is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a 30-member-country body mostly comprising the wealthiest countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by MyPerfectCousin:
The irony is that Ireland kicks ass in the "communications equipment exports per capita" metric: 4th highest in the OECD due to all the Lucents and Tellabs and Motorolas located here. We export more than twice the level of telecom gear per head than Germany, Japan, and the US do. We also import more per capita than all of those countries.</font>

This is not really ironic. The sort of manufaturing done here (final stage assembly) does not require Internet access. Ireland has done very well out of this thanks to the low corporation tax regime.

The R&D is mainly done in other countries. For these countries, access to information is very important.

In the coming years, it will be vital that more R&D is done here because we can't always depend on multinationals providing assembly-line jobs. Promoting small industry should be encouraged.

LegacyUser

Skeptic1 said: "This is not really ironic."

I guess I was thinking about all those Irish workers pumping out next generation optical switching gear and other equipment that will greatly expand the capacity of the global network, yet they are still choked by the access bottleneck of the local info-boreen. In the mouldy cobwebs of my 1:30 a.m. mind that seemed a bit ironic and to relate in some way to the digital divide.

LegacyUser

I suppose irony depends on one's way of looking at the situation. For me, the huge success in high-tech manufacuring, including communications equipment, does not lead me to expect good telecommunications in Ireland and so I don't find it ironic.

It really should not have been included in the survey in my opinion.

LegacyUser

" All dressed up and no where to go. "

A description of the Internet in Ireland.
Most of us have souped up hardware- ie 1ghz Chips designed to handle broadband and we just cant let them rip.

Its like buying a Porsche and then Moving Guernsey!

Oh September Come Quick!

80p.

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www.80project.com

LegacyUser

more like come on 2002, i get the feeling that will be a good year,
bet you a teener eircon wont even start to move into new excahnges untill 2002

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gladiator:
more like come on 2002, i get the feeling that will be a good year</font>

I'm an optimist by nature but not a fool. Gladiator take it as a moral victory in terms. If I did bet a tenner you'd win. We all know!!

What I'd love to see is a thread of people who rang Eircom to find out about the launch date and see what answers they get. In the past 2 weeks I have received 3 different responses....

-Sept 1st
-Late Sept
-October some time

(and those responses were in reverse order)

Ronald Reagan said when talking about Shi'ite Muslim Extremists..."They are the strangest collection of misfits and looney tunes I've ever seen"
[Sounds like a certain Telco (begins w/ an "e")]

80P.

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www.80project.com

LegacyUser

well eircom heads said 28th of september, which i have fate in ass they are the ones deciding it, not some stung out support worker,

But there need to be pressure on eircom to extend to phase 2 of the rollout extremely qucikly there after,
the only reason they are doing this is as a stop cap in llu, (once they start llu they have another 3 month before they have to open another exchange up) and because chorus are about to offer fwa in the south, and ntl are about to launch a digital service.

you may say whats so big about ntl digital, well allot of people would change their phone over to ntl if they got digital tv, especialy if ntl package the two together and under cut sky.
So eircon need away to keep the market,
i douth however that i will get ntl digital as they would have to upgrade to 2 way my area and they seem to be avoiding that

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gladiator:
But there need to be pressure on eircom to extend to phase 2 of the rollout extremely qucikly there after</font>

We pushed them hard on timetables several times at the meeting but they wouldn't give us any indication.

I have a feeling that a lot of this has to do with price - they are submitting their prices to ODTR next week and, having been badly bitten on LLU price, they probably want to see ODTR reaction to their broadband pricing before they make any commitment on full roll out.

Martin


[This message has been edited by o_donnel_abu (edited 22-07-2001).]

jd

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by o_donnel_abu:
, they probably want to see ODTR reaction to their broadband pricing before they make any commitment on full roll out.

Martin


[This message has been edited by o_donnel_abu (edited 22-07-2001).]</font>

My own personal opinion is that they are waiting for clarification re: wholesale pricing
jd

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by jd:
My own personal opinion is that they are waiting for clarification re: wholesale pricing
jd</font>

Wholesale pricing is the crucial issue here. It was raised at the meeting that, in Britain, BT sells ADSL on a wholesale basis to other ISPs. This is likely to happen here but it needs to be determined.

Eircom avoided answering the question of retail ADSL pricing by saying that it will be the ISPs that set the price. However, if Eircom only sell the service wholesale to ISPs on a per-megabyte basis, they will be unable to provide any sort of flat-rate. At best we can expect a small "free" portion followed by a per-megabyte charging no matter what ISP you choose.

LegacyUser

the odtr would want to be tick to agree to a wholesale per mb price,

How by all this talk i take it Wholesale ADSL is not LLU.
So whats exactly is the difference,

Im guessing the difference with llu is you pay all to the isp, line rental the works,
but with a wholesale its split with rental to eircom and then isp fees

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gladiator:
the odtr would want to be tick to agree to a wholesale per mb price,</font>

Unless they feel that Eircom has a right to charge in whatever way it feels appropriate.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">How by all this talk i take it Wholesale ADSL is not LLU.
So whats exactly is the difference,

Im guessing the difference with llu is you pay all to the isp, line rental the works,
but with a wholesale its split with rental to eircom and then isp fees</font>

I think this is what has been referred to as "bitstream" unbundling in the past. I thought it had been scrapped in favour of full LLU after Eircom pulled out in March.

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by MyPerfectCousin:
Skeptic1 said: "This is not really ironic."

I guess I was thinking about all those Irish workers pumping out next generation optical switching gear and other equipment that will greatly expand the capacity of the global network, yet they are still choked by the access bottleneck of the local info-boreen. In the mouldy cobwebs of my 1:30 a.m. mind that seemed a bit ironic and to relate in some way to the digital divide. </font>

Actually, it might be ironic to the ex-pat managers of these companies when they try to get cablemodem or ADSL for their homes.

LegacyUser

How about "IrelandOffline v's IOL & Eircom Seminar"?
or Ireland Offline getting online seminar?

i am bursting with ideas here.... want any more sugestions?

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See ya Fi

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by fi:
want any more sugestions?

</font>

Yes

But post them on new thread "Name for our seminar"

Martin