All expenses paid, of course.
So Lieing Ryan has called in the mercenaries. He’s formed the International Advisory Forum on Broadband to talk about the next generation of broadband. Always good to look beyond the horizon, especially if there’s a huge mess around your feet that you don’t want to deal with.
The Forum will be facilitated by Mr. Eddie Molloy, a consultant with Advanced Organisations. The Forum members are:
Mr. H. Brian Thompson, Executive Chairman, Global Telecom & Technology.
Mr. Ken Carter, Senior Consultant, wik-Consult GmbH, Germany.
Mr. Martin Cronin, CEO, Forfás .
Ms. Isolde Goggin, Independent Consultant, Former Chair of ComReg.
Dr. Michael Nelson, Senior Professor, Georgetown University, USA. (and Obama fan)
Dr. Frank Sanda, CEO, Japan Communications Inc..
Mr. Tony Shortall, Economic Advisor, European Commission
ComReg have advisory panels like this too. In fact I think they have one on NGN, no? With the International aspect to it, you can take it for granted that the expenses of these folks will be quite large. I must dig out some FOI’d documents from ComReg but I know one person expensed over 20k for travel and stays when he flew in to attend meetings. Can we expect 100k to be spent to decide on our broadband future? 100k that might have enabled two exchanges for people in the present? Eamon says that availability is sorted.
Here’s the PR spiel from the Minister:
I have established an International Advisory Forum to advise on next challenge ahead – how we can get higher speed broadband at lower costs
Here’s the lie about availability:
The availability of broadband remains an issue for many consumers. The National Broadband Scheme will, in the coming months, begin to address the final piece of the availability issue. The competitive tender process for this Scheme is underway, which will serve the remaining parts of Ireland currently without access to broadband.
More words, more reports, more taxpayer money, more waiting for a lot of people.
