From a question about the International Advisory Forum on Broadband.
222. Deputy Simon Coveney asked the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the cost to the Exchequer of the International Advisory Forum on broadband to be held in Dublin later this month. [7197/08]
Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (Deputy Eamon Ryan): The estimate of the cost of the International Advisory Forum on broadband is €50,000.
8 people will be the ones telling Ryan over the course of the day how to plan the future of broadband in Ireland. That money would nearly pay for the enabling of an exchange in a rural Ireland to get broadband. That’s 50k less for the provision of broadband.
Could they not have video conferenced the 8 people in on this using something like Onlinemeetingrooms.com? Would have been a lot cheaper.
Oh… wait… that would mean having to rely on our broadband infrastructure.
and the public will not be allowed in either to see how their money is being spent , eircom will be there though, to supervise eamonn and isolde, like they usually do!
Is that what you want Ryan to do – spend his budget directly on enabling broadband exchanges? This is a semi-genuine question, I haven’t been following the issue enough to know what your proposed cure is.
http://broadband.oireachtas.ie/
That was written in 2004 and is still as valid today. Ryan even supported it though just before the election when I emailed him and asked him would he mandate it if he was in Government … he forgot to get back to me.
The 50k is an example of what could be done with that money in terms of broadband besides a one day meeting. A cpuple of hundred people in a village somewhere would be availing of broadband with that. Or they could get wireless from Digiweb or someone else.
There are too many advisory groups and reports already. Ryan and his latest witterings suggest that every other report done by the Oireachtas, Forfas, the Information Society Commission and tonnes more were biased so we need non-locals to tell us how to solve an almost uniquely local issue. And they’ll do it in one day.
So what?? – Coveney would have spend the same. Did you read the crud he put out about broadband? (There are school children, aged 5, with Apple MACs who know more than that guy)
The ‘baseless civil servants’ on the job at the Department have selected more cronies than you could shake a stick at (Thompson, WIK etc). It makes no sense at all, particularly a former eircom Chairman.
Until such a time arises when we have joined up thinking in government, forget it.
The external parties on the broadband forum are so detatched from the nation it makes me laugh so hard I cry and almost urinate.
Have you seen who ComReg selected for the Consultation group/body on NGN? – similar band of bards.
One thinks that eircom should start to make some real concessions for the good of their investors before a number of things start to arise:
1. Babcock and Brown start to ‘shit-can’ the top tier at eircom Ltd;
2. The programme for government starts to flop;
3. Requests for tax relief start to build lobby momentum in the EU and people realise that it’s ‘one for all, not all for one’; and
4. The regulator needs to realise that LLU is not a panacea for the future, traders in commerical products e.g., leased lines and PPC are as, and if not more important to the Irish economy than access to consumers.
Does anyone really realise what is required to resolve this cluster-fuck? There are a few, but they are not retained where their knowledge counts.
Tom
PS: ComReg, get of the donkey and start riding with Godiva, you have the power now. Use it.
For 50k? DSL enable a rural exchange? I don’t really think this would be possible. If there were fiber there already, maybe so. But the problem is that these exchanges generally don’t have fiber.
Even if you did DSL enable a rural exchange, it still wouldn’t provide the coverage to all the customers attached to it. Realistically, it would only get an extra 30 or 40 people on-line.
It is always a big problem for a government to figure out how much to pay for expertise and thinking, and how much to pay.
It’s a separate issue, but I can’t see how the broadband report from the oireachtas committee in 2004 really addresses the issues that are being faced. It calls for a plan, but it isn’t really a plan in itself.
Oh fuck off Antoin and get off your fucking high horse where everything everyone else does is wrong but you have the secret answer.
NGN is essentially simple so here is the 50k answer
Its Ethernet !
Now enable the Arigna exchange in Roscommon which has fibre, TVM
“Oh fuck off Antoin and get off your fucking high horse where everything everyone else does is wrong but you have the secret answer.”
LOL, wooohahaha…..
😉
I have put down a private members motion on broadband in an attempt to put pressure on the government to make progress on this issue. It will be debated in the Dail tomorrow (Tuesday 26th) and Wednesday (27th) evenings from 7-8.30pm.
If anybody with an interest in this issue would like to attend the debate I would be more than happy to welcome you, please contact me in my Dail office on 01-6183753.
Simon, I would love to attend and am actually in Dublin tomorrow. Can I call your office during the day? Put my name down anyway.
Damien that response a bit hostile towards Antoin – without knowing either of your backgrounds on this issue (and I don’t care to know). He gave an opinion that was reasonable even if he was getting into way too much detail when u were only making the point to better spend the money and nothing more. Do u agree?
No.
fair enough – remind me not to get on the wrong side of you
It’s a very wide side. 🙂
ah. * inhales the sweet smell of petrol fumes *