Ireland.com piece

Valentia

Interesting stuff. Can't help feeling that they have been keeping an eye on the ball thru' IOL.
Pilot projects to test new broadband technology
By Jamie Smyth




The Government is planning to fund trials of a new technology that would enable consumers to access high speed internet services from power sockets, writes Jamie Smyth

It hopes the technology can be developed to offer direct competition to Eircom's local access network, which provides a telephone line to every Irish home.

Power line technology, which has already been implemented in pilot projects in Britain, the US and Germany, delivers broadband internet along electricity wires rather than telephone lines.

The technology can also be adapted by power companies to deliver a range of enhanced electric network services, such as meter reading, outage detection and power network monitoring.

Officials at the Department of Communications have contacted ESB with a view to establishing pilot projects in rural areas and around the Digital Hub facility.

The Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Mr Dermot Ahern, will meet senior ESB officials later this week to discuss the project.

"The ESB are very keen to look at the possibilities of technology in this area. If this were to be successful it would cure a lot of the issues to do with the last mile.

"It would also probably bring fairly significant resources to ESB," added Mr Ahern.

The British utility, Scottish Hydro is already offering high speed internet services over its electricity network in parts of Scotland and England. Its consumer broadband service offers users a two megabyte per second connection to the internet at £25 sterling, including VAT.

This compares favourably with the current cost of high speed internet services in the Republic, where Esat offers a digital subscriber line service at about €50. Eircom is planning to offer its own consumer services at a cost of €45, excluding VAT.

But digital subscriber line technology - which upgrades ordinary telephone lines to carry fast internet - has a limited range of about four kilometres from the nearest telephone exchange. This excludes many households from accessing broadband, especially in rural or remote areas.

Also, the slow pace of "unbundling the local loop" or opening incumbent telecoms networks to competition has also dampened the roll-out of high speed internet services over telephone wires.

This has prompted utilities across Europe to study the possibilities offered by powerline technology for revenue generation.

A survey by the research firm Gartner published in 2002 found that more than 20 power companies have set up trials of the technology in Europe, with others following in the US, South America, Australia and Asia.

The author of this report, Gartner analyst Mr Journi Forsman, concluded: "The technical problems that dogged early trials have now been ironed out, we believe. The way is now open for companies to retry, with a realistic chance of success."

But using electricity wires to deliver broadband is not an entirely new idea. In 1997, an energy firm, Norweb, and telecoms equipment company Nortel said they had found a way to make the technology work.

They set up a joint venture and embarked on a series of pilots. But the projects were never commecialised and interest in powerline technology diminished.

Although electricity wires are made of the same raw materials as phone wires - metal wire surrounded by insulation - sending internet data rather than electricity does pose problems with interference.

Electric current gives rise to electromagnetic radiation, creating "noise" that can drown out the data signal.

But proponents of powerline technologies believe these issues are now solved.

SkepticOne

cool

Agent7249

me hopes this is true, where did ya get it?

Ardmore

Originally posted by Valentia
Pilot projects to test new broadband technology
By Jamie Smyth

...in parts of Scotland and England ... consumer broadband service offers users a two megabyte per second connection to the internet at £25 sterling, including VAT.

Eircom is planning to offer its own consumer services at a cost of €45, excluding VAT.

FFS! What sort of problem do Irish journalists have that they can't calculate €45+21%? Is there some sort of VAT exemption for Irish journalists that they are incapable of quoting the actual proce that ordinary people will pay?

drjolt

They just cut 'n' paste from press releases.

Valentia

where did ya get it?

ireland.com

nahdoic

The British utility, Scottish Hydro is already offering high speed internet services over its electricity network in parts of Scotland and England. Its consumer broadband service offers users a two megabyte per second connection to the internet at £25 sterling, including VAT.

firstly it ain't two megabyte, it's 2 megabit/s, slight difference there Jamie.

But if the journalist had researched this article for even 5 mins, he might have pointed out that the best you can get from eircom is a 1 Mbit/s connection, that costs E204.49 a month.

So in fact, the offering by Scottish Hydro offers twice the speed and costs about 5 times less. Funny how I didn't really get that from the article he wrote.

But this would be so incredible, if the ESB could offer this. It would scare the bejeebers out of eircom and esat. They'd have to start doing something they've never had to do before, compete.

Slutmonkey57b

In a startling development on Ireland.com, journalist Jamie Smyth moved today to re-hash a government press release on some nebulous potential concept that might possibly relate to something happening in another country. Backing up the article with partially grasped information gleaned from Ireland Offline members' postings on the internet, the Rt. Hon Smyth made little headway with the article, before finishing with a full stop drawn under an unsupported concluding statement.

Spokesmen for Irish internet users hailed it as a great development from the times when Smyth would just quote telecom companies PR propaganda verbatim, and expressed hope that maybe next time he will move on to quoting Ireland Offline member's wishlists.

sceptre

Originally posted by drjolt
They just cut 'n' paste from press releases.

Yes they do and it's pretty annoying - I like the way Ardmore put it.

I'd like to propose that we send a few (not a deluge but certainly a few:)) mails to every journalist who reckons residential consumers live in a VAT free world. Let's start with Jamie. Anyone have an email address? (yeah, I did a search)

DEmeant0r

Finally the government has copped on to the needs of their citizens, and that's low cost broadband, hope they'll start trial sometime soon!

dahamsta

Anyone have an email address?

Some say that Jamie's style of writing is acceptable because it's simply factual, and sometimes this is true, but recently I've found that it simply isn't the case. He's misrepresenting the truth by representing the mistruths of others, and I think that's dangerous.

jsmyth@irish-times.ie

adam

Webmonkey

Originally posted by Ardmore
FFS! What sort of problem do Irish journalists have that they can't calculate €45+21%? Is there some sort of VAT exemption for Irish journalists that they are incapable of quoting the actual proce that ordinary people will pay?

Well makes life easier for business owners hehe

Ardmore

Originally posted by Webmonkey
Well makes life easier for business owners

It's a residential service, and he quoted the UK price with VAT included - the only obvious conclusion is that Smyth is too thick to do the calculation, not that he's trying to make it easier for anyone else.

dahamsta

the only obvious conclusion is that Smyth is too thick to do the calculation

Too thick or too lazy. I favour the latter. Jamie ain't thick as far as I can see.

adam

Webmonkey

Apologies miss read the article :rolleyes:

Ardmore

Originally posted by dahamsta
the only obvious conclusion is that Smyth is too thick to do the calculation

Too thick or too lazy. I favour the latter. Jamie ain't thick as far as I can see.

I'll go halves with you - he's too lazy to care about looking thick.

dahamsta

I'll go halves with you - he's too lazy to care about looking thick.

Unfortunately he only looks thick to people who really pay attention to stuff like this - "normal" people will just see the numbers and move on - so this is actually a very real part of the problem. And it's not as if Jamie doesn't /know/ this. He and his colleagues read this forum, he knows it's crap and annoying - and more important, that it's wrong - but he does little to correct his behaviour, he just continues to parrot the figures the way they're handed to him. Or perhaps he doesn't think it's wrong. Either way, perhaps you're more right than I give you credit for.

adam

Stonemason

In a moment of total optimism I was thinking firstly its quite strange that the ESB is laying so much fiber if as they say they don’t want to enter the Telco market and secondly these vague remarks by the TD,s about every home in Ireland being broadband enabled by 2005 but no visible way of doing this.A wee germ of hope springs to mind what if said government has realized that Eircom being private and ESB still being state owned it maybe better to go with the ESB which is the only company with more access to homes than Eircom.

Ok for the downside firstly this would be to smart a move for a TD secondly Eircom would have a major hissy fit and start screaming MONOPLY (no matter how hypocritical it sounds) thirdly the numbers don’t match I.E 2mb connections instead of the EU, s 5Mb.

OOOOO well Optimism all finished

optimism restarted

And the cherry on the cake would be NOOOOOO effing line rental
so even if they did bring it out at the same price as Eircon/Esplat,s offering,s(hopefully itll be much cheaper )I for one would get rid of my land line(thus saving €21 pm from Eircon) and use my mobile for everything else.

Ahh Problem, this could really damage Eircon to the point where the goverment would probably pull back from doing it .

PS No Offence Guys But arguing about the reporter is off topic the main point being if the goverment are really looking at this and the ESB are exited about it too, thats what i was reading here!!.

SkepticOne

Good news, if true, on the ESB thing. On the issue of Eircom's VAT, I notice that the 'ad' on Eircom's web page has been updated. It now shows the 54 euros (with the 45 ex VAT smaller and in brackets). Previously, it just showed 45 euros with no mention of the price excluding VAT.

DC

nd the cherry on the cake would be NOOOOOO effing line rental

Well technically speaking the ESB have a standing charge which is more or less the same thing. The difference is that ESB is essential - no option to get rid of it - whereas you can survive without a landline, perhaps using a mobile phone.

Ahh Problem, this could really damage Eircon to the point where the goverment would probably pull back from doing it

Well, the government has more of a stake in the ESB that €ircon, so in theory, they should support the ESB more.

LFCFan

Originally posted by DC
Well, the government has more of a stake in the ESB that €ircon, so in theory, they should support the ESB more.

Yes, but we all know that our government pander to big business