Damien Mulley

eircom are launching their next generation network. Fibre to the estate is what it really entails. They are probably looking at how KPN in the Netherlands did theirs.

With NGN you don’t need exchanges. If eircom sold all their exchanges they’d make billions. With exchanges gone, LLU players would be quite screwed unless they have a large presence in every exchange. They don’t in Ireland. If they did, what could happen is what happened in Holland where the telco was not allowed to sell off the exchanges because of the high level of LLU. If a tiny percentage are on LLU though, well then the regulator and the EU might allow a telco to go right ahead and sell off the exchanges.

In the past three months Noel Dempsey has done nothing but talk about looking to the future and about NGN. NGN NGN NGN. LLU has not worked and may not work. Noel wants it brushed under the carpet as soon as possible. Now ComReg is starting with the NGN twaddle when they haven’t even fixed LLU.

Expect Noel and ComReg to let eircom do their NGNs on their own terms and expect exchanges to be sold off and LLU to have it’s throat slit to put it out of its misery. You can thank eircom, Dempsey, ComReg, ALTO and BT for this. At last ALTO has started to speak up but I think they left it too late and the same with BT. The future will see broadband via ducting controled by eircom with the only true competition being wireless services. This sunshine moment was brought to you by…

ComReg did have a Broadband Strategy Manager job advertised on their site here. While today is the last day of applications, the job is no longer on their site. Hope it had nothing to do with me talking about it on Newstalk on Saturday afternoon. You can still find a cached version of it on Google though.

Good Afternoon,
I wish to apply for the position of Manager Broadband Strategy (Ref:
W2/07) in ComReg. Attached is my CV. I am currently Chairman of
Consumer Lobby Group, IrelandOffline.

In the past three years IrelandOffline have been the main driver of
broadband awareness in Ireland and have successfully lobbied to
increase broadband availability. Through my work as Chairman I have an
in-depth knowledge of all aspects of broadband in Ireland, have
working relationships with ComReg, DCMNR, eircom, ALTO, BT Ireland and
every other ISP.

Through my meetings and regular communications with ComReg I feel I
have an understanding on the operations of the Communications
Regulator. I would therefore like to be considered for this job.

Damien.

Please? It isn’t that difficult these days is it?

Edit: Thanks Squid!

More of this.

Ahhh hah, Frank has a tash. His beard for the other play was better. Ticket to the tash are still on sale.

I’m noticing a lot of ads in my various Gmail accounts for the LinkedIn profile of Facebook VP Matt Cohler. He used to work in LinkedIn too. I wonder what that costs on a daily basis.

I see Bebo staff are using Google Apps for their mail now.

Tom Murphy makes mention of the “Technology Journalists’ Association of Ireland”. A Google brings back nothing for them but I have heard some chatter about a Tech Journo Association being formed/reborn. I have found references to the “Irish Science & Technology Journalists Association” but their webpage on IOL is dead.

Jason Kottke points out what a farce the Red campaign was.

Also Via Kottke The David Fincher 6-6-6 Tribute. His 6 Best Music Videos, 6 Best Commericals, and 6 Best Movies.

This has been doing the rounds the past few days: Help the Police by Adam Buxton. A cleaned up version of “Fuck the Police”. Classic.

Up to now if you were with UTV or BT or Digiweb broadband and wanted to move to Smart or Magnet, you first had to cancel your service, move back to eircom and only then could Smart or Magnet place an order for LLU on your line. Well in a few minutes eircom will announce they have enabled a “seamless” transition process so people no longer need to do this.

We should have had this years ago and it is a statement that the new eircom are playing ball more than ComReg having any ability to force eircom to do this. This should have been around in 2001 and now we’re here six years later and it is only starting. Expect Smart and Magnet to start upping their game and trying to grab eircom, BT and UTV customers.

Still, there is a massive gap in LLU and that is mass-migration. This is why LLU works so well in the UK and this is why Carphone warehouse tore up the market last year. BT Ireland expecially are waiting on mass-migration so they can move all their customers who use the resold eircom product over to an LLU product. This process is not seamless and takes a bit of time still. eircom will probably never allow this to happen unless they get some kind of leaving tax from BT for every customer moved.

eircom’s point is that they enable an exchange, take the monetary risk in putting all the equipment in while BT and UTV just come along and resell without any risk, then if BT builds up say 400 customers in an exchange, they can put their equipment in and move their customers over, again with less risk. eircom are hardly going to make this easy for them and I very much doubt ComReg will. I’m sure today’s news will piss off BT as well since they’ll probably lose customers to Smart and Magnet.

Congrats Maryam. The kid will live-blogging her own birth I bet. I love how geeky Robert’s announcement of their news was.

Sarah gives a good summary on what blogging is and what it means. Nice counter to the Turbidy trolling.

Finding Nemo sushi. If only.

I’m from Barcelona videos at the Village from Friday night.

Saw this on an Irish Blog yesterday but worth spreading. The vile Ann Coulter called John Edwards a “faggot” at some Republican conference during the weekend. Henry Rollins writes her an open letter. If you’ve never read his work before, do. Rollins is a brilliant writer and spoken word performer. His metal music ain’t bad either.

This guy supported Arcade Fire on their tour I’ve been told
Thomas Truax – Inside the Internet

Thomas Truax – Prove It To My Daughter

Flew into Dublin on Friday morning and the phone was hopping from 8am til midnight. RTE filmed me in the Alexander at 1130am and it went well. Philip that interviewed me was fantastic to chat to. Someone who knows his subject matter and gets blogs. We had a good discussion after the interview where we talked about media and technology and he educated me a little on what he does. Chatted to a few journalists by phone all day and then rushed to Trinity for 1830 so I could give a talk about IrelandOffline and lobby groups. Thanks to the 6-7 people that turned up on a Friday night. 🙂 Glad I could answer everyone’s questions.

After Trinity I headed over to the Village to see “I’m from Barcelona” play. They eventually took to the stage at 2130 and I was so physically wrecked that I lasted for 4.5 songs. Still, widly entertaining pop music with the main singer deciding to go crowd surfing 30 seconds into the first song, it seemed. The tiny stage at the crappy Village venue was filled with about 20 of the band members singing and dancing and throwing balloons into the crowd. Worth seeing again. After that met up with an old friend for a chat for a while and then decided to get some lunch in Burger King around 2330. Eventually got back to the hotel for midnight.

On Saturday lunchtime I had to scoot off to Newstalk where I went head to head with a ComReg guy. This was the first time ComReg actually agreed to take part in an interview and interact with IrelandOffline. Previous to that they refused to come on-air or came on-air but refused to acknowledge and interact with us. The ComReg guy that was sent is a genuinely nice guy and I don’t envy his job. From the feedback I got from numerous people it seems I rang rings around him. As I said, I don’t envy people in ComReg because there are some genuinely cool people in there but it’s like they’re working for the Bush regime because as an entity they are doing tremendous damage. On a side-note I see we have once again NOT been invited to a ComReg event. I am rather busy these days but lads, I can still create a fuss over this. On the Newstalk interview it was mentined that ComReg have a Broadband Manager job advertised and I was asked would I apply and ComReg were asked would they think I was good for the job. The physical reaction from the ComReg staff member was entertaining.

After that it was back to the hotel to get the room ready. Went downstairs and met Elana, saw the room and shouted “oh fuck”. The room was massive. That’s what 400 seats looks like so.

The night itself was good but I wanted it to be a little better. I wanted a few surprise things for it such as the free bar for the nominees and judges, the goody bags, the champagne bottles and a web link to Dave from Blather.net who was on a Greenpeace boat near the Anarctic. The goody bags were practically empty and might have been fuller if I had blogged about it but that would have ruined the surprise. Still, it was something additional. The linkup with Dave was a disaster due to issues on our side but since it wasn’t announced the only people to be disappointed were me and Dave. The mafiosi people Bock the Robber sent were brilliant. When I have the energy I’ll go more in-depth about the night itself but thanks to everyone who came along and apologies to the majority of people I didn’t get to chat to. I was a lil busy as you all saw. 🙂

Finally got home a little later than usual on Sunday night after yet another Ryanair flight where the pilot aborted the landing. After 20mins circling, we finally landed. Yes, I Twittered from the air. It is not an air-danger as air industry people say, it is more to do with keeping the mobile companies happy as a mobile signal on a plane uses up more processing time on the masts as they try to track your fast moving signal. Ok I’m rambling. Still feel hungover from Sat night even though I wasn’t drinking. Glad to see the positive coverage in the papers today too. It’s not over for us yet with more interviews this evening.

*breathe out*

A proper post over on Awards.ie will follow.

Had an interview with Newstalk this evening about another ComReg report with dishonest facts. Did this from home and then sped into town to go on the Fanning show on Radio1 at 1900 to talk about the Blog Awards along with Kieran Murphy. On the way in and finding a spot to double-park in, I’m listening to TodayFM and they’re talking about the Blog Awards with Piaras. At home this evening doing final preps for the Awards and Rick O’Shea on 2fm is talking about the Awards and ohmygod but Twenty Major is on the show!

I think there’s something in the Irish Times tomorrow too and tune into Six One News tomorrow night as you might see some faces behind some of your favourite blogs. 350 have now registered to go, which is fantastic too. This thing is turning into a Carnival. Actually, does anyone want the Awards show to be part of a blog carnival next year? A few events all weekend with the Awards show as the highlight?

So yes, today was another insane day and tomorrow is worse. Meeting people in Dublin from early morning til late afternoon, then talking at Trinity about my work with IrelandOffline then going to see “I’m From Barcelona” at the Village.

Lastly, the staff of Bubble Brothers and especially Julian fucking rock. I’ll explain more on Monday, if I survive the weekend. I won’t probably post on this blog again until I get home late Sunday evening. I hope everyone has a good time this weekend and please remember not to take these things too seriously, only I should be stressing!

Via Anthony, is the best of Olli Williams.

Google Ads are free speech, apparently.

Why pilots say “Roger”.

Details of Second Life event running at the same time as the Irish Blog Awards.

Tracker devices in our staples now. Scary.

Evelyn Rodriguez is running a series called “Forty Days of Everyday Inspiration” on her blog. Well worth checking out.

Over the forty days I’ll share tips for everyday inspiration. This won’t be philosophical, but practical

Already had “I’m From Barcelona” on my blog a few days back but they’re back again because they play the Village on Friday night. I hope to go along if my talk in Trinity is over in time.