The Broadband Leadership conference was quite enjoyable. Some speakers were totally predictable like Gerry Fahy from TIF, Davis Jesse from EBay and Paul Bradley from HP. A presentation on how to use eBay was quite out of place at a broadband leadership event in my view. The HP Halo room was very disappointing too. It’s videoconferencing with a few more cameras. Nothing ground breaking. Then good ole Gerry who changes his mind everytime eircom management change their philosophy. At least this time his presentation was more aligned to reality. Still some of his figures were quite dubious.
Peter Cochrane was a live wire and tore into telcos and their attitudes towards the future. He wants fibre everywhere and he made everyone from the telcos uneasy by saying “Telecoms companies don’t want you to have broadband”. Very interesting guy. Made mince meat of Gerry Fahy during the Q&A session. Here’s a SiliconRepublic interview with Peter.
Dylan Collins talked about online gaming and the potential revenue it can generate and how his company is working in this area. Demonware are a company to watch.
Brian Coll gave a good presentation on how Sligo IT are using podcasting and videocasting for students and talked about the future of distance learning.
Martin Cronin from Forfas gave a good talk as usual and pointed out how much we have to do to secure jobs and investment. He pointed out that broadband was a key to this. Forfas are a really good organisation. No bullshit or spin from them, just good research and real facts.
Here are all the presentations:
Presentation by Peter Cochrane. 1329 KB PDF file
Presentation by Gerry Fahy from TIF. 332 KB PDF file
Presentation by Paul Bradley from HP. 1096 KB PDF file
Presentation by Dylan Collins from Demonware. 727 KB PDF file
Presentation by Brian Coll from Sligo IT. 1964 KB PDF file
Presentation by Martin Cronin from Forfas. 999 KB PDF file
Presentation by David Jesse from Ebay Ireland. 2018 KB PDF file
thanks for that Damien
keith
I was at the conference and I have to say that it is my considered opinion that the Ebay presentation was horse shit. I emailed Mr. Jesse and told him as much.
The perception of trust on Ebay is a joke and if you get stung by some joker trying to get your address and number Ebay will reward them and give them this information.
I got phone spammed, email spammed and was left a negative rating because some lunatic living in Tallaght used a false name and insisted on ignoring the terms of the auction and wanted to meet me. I saw a red light and said no way Jose.
Ebay went on the side of this nutter and since then I won’t use Ebay. I am an ex techie and a registered Ebayer since 1999 not some plonker that walked in off the street. They seem to think its OK to have to change your address and phone number because of one of their clients. The concept of Ebay is great but their treatment of someone who genuinely feared for their own safety leaves a LOT to be desired.
As for the other speakers the Minister and his spiel about Internet 2 was a joke. The elephant in the room that nobody spoke of was Eircom. His party gave Eircom away and are now hoping that the Internet will just go away.
Peter Cochrane was right but I think that the government would rather ban the internet first rather than get rid of the Eircom monopoly.
I learned that Comreg is the political wing of Eircom and that infrastructure doesn’t matter one bit to them.
My main reason for attending was to ask why Waterford Port is not allowed to have broadband. I have an interest there. We brought it up before with a Manderin in the department of Communications but we were told to go away as Waterford Port was in Wexford.
Waterford Port is technically beside a village in Kilkenny and because of a “lack of demand” in the village the countrys third largest port and all its businesses are NOT allowed broadband with no timeframe for review.
When I realised that the minister who I am a constituant of was fecking off to some other disaster scene I left the conference.
The conference was hyped aspirational crap and had absolutely nothing to do with what is happening to real people and real companies out in the real world.
Eircom have tried through their incompetence to put my company and sister companies out of business. Broadband is either unavailable, shitty quality or extortionatly expensive. they can bullshit me about specific local conditions but not in EIGHT counties that I have tried to get broadband for businesses and collegues it has been a problem. It took me three and a half moths to get broadband in Ballsbridge. The incompetence is mind blowing.
Ireland is not competitive in the part of the economy that employs the largest amount of people.
The government will realse or be forced to realise this after the fact. After the economy has gone down the shitter after the housing bubble bursts and we realise that we have only two competitive (small c) industries that are in order of magnitude, selling houses to each other and multinationals.
The rest of us are screwed and it is all down to the stupid and naive sale of a key state asset with no reciept. This government should go for this reason and this reason only. People getting stung by not selling Eircom shares fast enough are getting stung over and over and over again.
And Wimax will be banned. I guarentee that Eircom will blow a fuse if this gets rolled out and it will be banned. And the government will back them to the detriment yet again of the people that elected them.
I would agree wholeheartedly with Billy. The conf was a spoof from ComReg t make the Minister think they were doing something, and to offer him a photop and a bit of pr….
I found the MOST disappointing thing was that ComReg said NOTHING. I asked the Minister (in the coffee break, he took NO questions) when the new legislation, to supposedly enable ComReg to kick some ass, which he said was ‘ready’ last May would be passed. He told me that there was no slot in the Dail for it yet. I’d say it hasn’t a chance before the election, because if, for ex, ComReg forced the hand of Eircom on LLU they would declare redundancies, just in time for the election….
I also asked him why the Dept of Eds BB netw for schools was unavailable for local communities via a WISP connection. He professed to be unaware of the apparent prohibition by the Dept and said ‘he would look into it’
Last thing, apropos Eircom. A colleague I met at the Conf told me that the PM of Oz came to visit Bertie just before the Oz’s bid for Eircom and was given ‘assurances’ about the regulatory environment….. make of that what you wish…..
Bye, Barry
We have been asked to move Waterford Port by Eircom.
I am not kidding. I have documentary evidence from Eircom.
We are going to write to the relevant ministers and appy to have the port moved closer to the exchange.
Eircom bases “demand” on the small village beside the port and not the businesses who work and operate at the port.
Noboby seems to give two flying hoots about this issue and Eircom seem to have a free government backed monopoly when it comes to broadband.
The end result. Companies in Waterford port cannot get broadband from Eircom. There are no plans to solve this issue. If jobs go, tough. All because Eircom bases demand on a small rural village in South Kilkenny.
Pathetic. I am ashamed to be Irish.