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Lack of political willpower is killing broadband in Ireland
- Every morning I join a convoy of neighbours who depart from our tiny little village on the 45min-1hr drive to our capital city. I don't mind the drive, I listen to the radio and get up to speed. As an editor my job requires my presence at the office most of the time to attend meetings, make editorial/design decisions, guide my team of writers, etc. But the writing aspect I can do from pretty much anywhere - and I have! Park benches, phone boxes, airplanes, trains, buses, airports, etc.
As a 21st century technology journalist I need a 24x7 awareness of what's happening in the digital world. Before I leave in the morning I ought to have scanned the web, checked email and if an urgent story needs writing - BANG - it's done. At the weekend if it moves, I’d shoot it. That was my routine when I lived in Dublin.
But like many of my fellow journeymen I don't have that luxury. My village is not served with broadband. When I moved into my new home in January, Eircom were meant to have broadband-enabled the local exchange by April. I thought I could live with the pain for four months. I have to rely on my Blackberry until I get to my desk.
Then it slipped to June, and now – apparently because the equipment in the exchange is ancient – this could slip into July. I’m literally going mad.
While I would give my eye teeth just for a miniscule 1Mbps connection at home, the world has in fact moved on. 3Mbps is the average connection speed in Ireland whereas 16Mbps is the average speed across OECD countries.
Fibre is the next hurdle and thanks to lack of vision in the Irish Government – consistent for the past 10 years and not helped by mentally constipated, overpaid civil servants and useless expert panels.
Eircom chairman Pierre Danon’s announcement to leave to join a French broadband firm that already has fibre infrastructure should focus minds here, but it hasn’t. I don’t blame him. Fibre is the future, not DSL. In fact, we probably have the same total number of consumer fibre subscribers in this country as the number of Eircom chairmen over the last 10 years.
A few things that are abundantly clear to me:
The Government doesn’t seem to understand that if we don’t get the fibre issue right in the next year, it will take 15 years to resolve by which time Ireland could have lapsed back into the economic doldrums we survived through the 80s and 90s (anyone know where I can get a half decent plough or a Green Card)
There appears to be minimal dialogue between the Government (aka Communications Minister Eamon Ryan TD) and Eircom over the fibre issue. In fact, I reckon the two entities have been doing their communicating via the press – http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single11108 – rather than straightforward talking.
The National Broadband Strategy (the follow-up to the disastrous Group Broadband Scheme) was announced a year ago and we still have no winning consortium. It could take another year before broadband-deprived areas have the now ancient 1Mbps minimal connection
As revealed this morning by Damien Mulley, minimal attention and resources have been given to the above scheme: http://www.mulley.net/
The Next Generation Broadband Strategy document due to be presented by the Minister for Communications in March still hasn’t been unveiled (any day now I hope)
Our education system is under-resourced in terms of ICT – Tesco is probably the biggest contributor of computers to Irish schools, followed by parents giving up their free time
The bottom line is Ireland needs leaders, dynamic people of vision to propel the country forward for the next few decades and the truth is that we haven’t seen these kind of people since Sean Lemass and TK Whitaker. Stuttering, posturing politicians and bureaucrats don’t impress me, they never did.
The Irish Government and its pampered civil servants need to wake up to the economic reality. Within three years 50Mbps connections will be standard across Europe with some economies enjoying 100Mbps like Korea and Japan already do. Ireland may not see any of this for 15 years unless the right decisions are made.
Our pretence to the throne of “knowledge economy” is a pipe dream that fits nicely into prepared speeches. A nice idea, but it’s not reality. There’s an opportunity available for dynamic visionaries to make the right decisions here and now. Anyone want the job?
2 comments:
John, the short of it is that they don't give a shit. Any plan in regards to broadband and every press releases that leaves the departments office is just posturing and supposed to keeps us quiet and hoping for the best.
You're right in saying that DSL is NOT the solution but then again ISDN (a 1970's technology)will still offered to us as broadband less than 10 years ago. On top of that DSL is still not available in large parts of the country.
We've had fiascos so far like the Ennis Information age town, the Group broadband schemes and now the National Broadband strategy. All big creamy pies in the sky full of big hopes and dreams but based on a lack of understanding of the issue and the technology.
The department doesn't really care that they do not understand the problem, ComReg has it head so far up it's own behind that they're looking at the world through their nostrils and the incumbent Telco's cannot see the advantage in investing huge amounts of money in an infra-structure that will give them relatively little return.
It's time that we see the "broadband problem" for what it is; not a technical but a social, economic and demographical problem. Once we can understand the advantages that broadband will have in those areas we will be able to make a step forward.....
My initial enthusiasm on the latest NGN plan is beginning to wane. We need a list of deliverables rather than rhetoric. Agreed, it's a socio-economic disaster about to hit our shores if the over-paid boffins or quangos don't start to do their jobs.
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