StatusIreland

The number of broadband subscribers, excluding mobile broadband, is 856,375 as of the end of September 2008. If you include mobile broadband the number is 1,125,080. This gives a penetration rate of 19.7% (25.9% including mobile).

In relative terms, Ireland’s current broadband position is behind all countries in the EU with who we are looking to compete with. The Nordic countries stand out as the leaders in both Europe and the world. Denmark has a penetration rate of 36%. Sweden and Finland stand strong above 30%. The quality of broadband in Sweden is quite good with 10% of the population having access to super speed broadband (>10Mbits/s).

The National Broadband Scheme (NBS) is being run by the Department of Communications Energy and Natural Resources with the support of ComReg. The aim of the scheme is to bring broadband to areas of the country without any presence. The tender for this was given to ‘3’. In order to facilitate competition ‘3’ will be required to give wholesale access to anyone wishing to serve premises in the NBS area.

As a result of this tendering the lobby group Ireland Offline have decided to reform. “IrelandOffline is a voluntary group campaigning for affordable, unmetered (flat-rate) and broadband Internet access in Ireland, for anyone who wants it.”

IrelandOffline is not happy with “the national contract being awarded to a 3G mobile company with a history of poor technology and customer service.”

Fair enough.

There technically isn’t a major problem with broadband in Ireland, if we were Latvia, but we’re not. Ireland is looking to position itself as a knowledge economy. The Internet is a modern revolution. It is an information revolution and if Ireland is seeking to be a leader in research, development and technology then we have to do better when it comes to broadband, we have to do much better.

Internet Penetration is a key economic indicator and as the old country expression goes “signs on”. We are currently Latvia, EU members since 2004.

ireland, technology broadband, broadband penetration, Comreg, Department of Communications Energy and Natural Resources, finland, internet, ireland, irelandoffline, Latvia, mobile broadband, national broadband scheme, NBS, Sweden

It was noted back in January of this year that the government were closing their little visited and very useless website reachservices.ie.
The site was approved at a cost of €14,000,000 by a committee on eGovernment. It ended up costing €37,000,000 to build. It then had annual costs of €15,000,000 a year.

The local and European elections on 11 June 2004 should have been the dawn of a €50,000,000 e-Voting system. Instead due to the lack of public confidence on the back of an ICTE submission to the independent Commission on Electronic Voting which said the machines had a technical flaw the machines were shelved. Cost of this shelving is about €2,000,000 per year.

A small glass tuck shop on the grounds of Leinster House on Kildare Street was built between March 2007 and opened in January 2008. The bill for the 40Sq m glass house was €1,280,867.

Today (15 December 2008), it is reported that a senior manager in An Post was awarded a total of €106,000 for his 11 weeks work in 2007. Following a restructuring of An Post some employees who were surplus to requirements i.e. didn’t accept a move elsewhere, were moved to what is known as the “rubber room” or officially the resource centre. Here they had little or no work to do but still qualified for full pay and bonus.

These are of course just some of the many, many examples of waste in the public sector. The idea of reform of any sort in the public sector seems to be the least of the governments priorities. Due to bad management and a lack of willingness we are finding ourselves living in a country which costs €50billion a year to run. €20Billion covers the wages in the public sector alone. There is surely some fat that can be trimmed off and some wiser choices that can be made. There better be because so far this year the government has pulled in only €40billion in taxes and that is why we need to borrow, borrow and borrow some more.

Finance, ireland, technology an Post, Dail, e-voting, eGovernment, Irish government, Leinster house, reachservices.ie, revenue, Rubber room, tuck shop