Core problem: People's perception of broadband and its benefits.

spongebob

One other thing Karl.

I deliberately left out the install costs, let battle be joined on the other fronts. As for install kits !

Widespread Broadband adoption over the next 2 or 3 years is to a matter of economic life or death for this country and especially the regions outside of Dublin, it is my belief that the full Installation Cost (depending on Loop Provisioning Kit up to a ceiling which is realistic) should be writeable off against income tax as a matter of Fiscal Policy. If it costs €50 for self install DSL then so be it. If it costs €500 for a Cherry Picker crane and dish then so be it if thats what it takes.

It would/should be a bigger tax break for a typical Rural person than a typical Urban person because there WILL be a higher proportion of Wireless connections outside of the cities.

I think that the tax break should only exist for one year.....I can see us being just about ready to go in the middle of next year....otherwise it will be Vsat kit at shocking prices ....eh Dermot ?

I am not advocating that ISP's should gouge their customers up front because of this tax write off. I am sure we will come back to the issue insofar as it concerns public policy in the future.

Having levelled the playing field between Wireless and DSL/Cable the service paramaters are all that matter. A good spat in the pricing space we agreed on will set us up for the €40 christmas pressies.

M

nahdoic

There is no point in any company having a product that does not make them money.

Who said anything about not making money? Hmmm, Ryan Air doesn't seem to be losing money right now. I wonder why ... hmmm.

- self install (most people WILL mess this up, and then call tech support, and maybe a technician out) >> costs

I don't know how many people I've set up using their 56k modems for free. Most people know someone they can ring when it comes to 'those' things. And if they want to pay for a technician that's their perogative it's really neither here nor there. Does Ryan Air give you a refund if you miss your flight? No! But they sure as hell created the demand.

- bandwidth is relatively expensive in ireland so huge contentions

Well that's up to the ISP to get the best deal they can, but with the more users they have, the more they can actually spend, and the better value and more bandwidth they can actually get.

- degraded service in order to squeez as many people on as possible

This is just your 2nd point again.

But even if they were valid complications, so blooming what... ? It could get ugly with all those people on-line, lets not bother. Lets keep it to the elite and charge them an arm and a leg, I mean Ireland doesn't really need to develop its economy for the future. Oh wait we've been doing that for the last how many years now?

If you want to bring broadband to the masses and make it profitable the price has to drop drastically. No more than E30 a month, with a price like that you'd hit your break even point pretty god damn quick.

martinikarl

You're preaching to the choir, Muck. All in favour here.


Think of the reduction in traffic that widespread broadband will have. I think telecommuting will be the killer app, it will just be so slow that nobody will call it that. It's also worth noting the effect it will have on city property prices, especially office rent.

Broadband will burst the property bubble. Just my theory....we'll see.

STaN

Originally posted by nahdoic
But even if they were valid complications, so blooming what... ? It could get ugly with all those people on-line, lets not bother. Lets keep it to the elite and charge them an arm and a leg, I mean Ireland doesn't really need to develop its economy for the future. Oh wait we've been doing that for the last how many years now?

Ireland has problems making decisions and we dont seem to learn from this. This country doesnt work, and wont work AS IS if it continues like this. But thats a nother topic and one for the politicians and countrywide organisations in charge of running irelands services.

I don't think €54 a month is an arm and a leg compared to what one would be paying for say UTV + extra daytime phone charges etc for what you are getting or just standard dialup. It's probably just under double the price of FRIACO but a far great experience. Ireland could go cheaper yes but a revenue of €360 a year per person connected would hardly be worth any effort put into selling this product in the first place due to rising costs for staff, etc etc.

So my argument that products in the ~€50 price range are reasonable and are widely available and acceptable around the world.

Ireland just doesn't know it wants them yet.

dahamsta

Broadband will burst the property bubble. Just my theory....we'll see.

I hope you're not trying to say that FF economists are cleverer than they appear Karl?

(By the by, I hope you didn't take offense to my comments earlier. I tend to be a little acerbic. Nobody gets me. Sob.)

adam