Eamon Ryan keeps telling this same boring story again and again about when he visited Korea and he couldn’t get his phone to work or Skype or upload files. He’s said it in the Senate, he’s said it in interviews, he told me this story on the phone, he told it at his broadband forum a while back.
(Aside: Joe asked me why I said nothing at the forum when journos and bloggers got a private audience with Ryan. My reason? I see no point arguing with a man that is so comfortable lying to anyone and everyone and happily swerves away from reality with such panache.)
Back to the rant 🙂 This Korean story to Eamon means Korea is in fact not as good for broadband. Great logic right? Take those Koreans down a peg or two and we’re looking a bit better. Step back into the swap there lads.
From his debate with Shane Ross the other day:
While it may be true to say that in Korea there is 100 Mb broadband connectivity to every home, it does not necessarily mean they have the applications or the benefits from that. Nor does it mean they have the economic strivers from it. These are some of the reasons we would be investing and we will invest in the development of our broadband future.
…
One of the problems I encountered at the conference was that my mobile telephone did not work.…
I could not connect my mobile telephone to the network. I could not run Skype on the network. I could not send a single 5 Mb video file from the convention centre.While it is useful to analyse and use international comparisons to determine what is happening in other countries and learn from them, we must remember that we have our own unique characteristics.
See, his argument is that his one experience of a shit connection at a conference means we shouldn’t trust dozens of studies and hundreds of news stories about just how good Korea is in terms of broadband. Which is fine because anyone that was at this Broadband Forum a few weeks back can now argue the same thing. By the power of Ministerial logic, because the WiFi in Dublin castle was shit, it means in fact that Ireland has no broadband at all.
Photo owned by [ v2milk ] (cc)
Eamon couldn’t of course leave it at that and went on and repeated the same lies of his and his Department which have been used nonstop:
In the past year and a half we have roughly doubled the number of broadband subscribers, which was the fastest rate of growth in the OECD. We have been particularly strong and fast growing in the mobile broadband sector, in the application of wireless hotspots and mobile broadband itself. We are also starting to see prices come down and speeds increase. In recent months operators have been increasing their standard packages from 2 Mb to 10 Mb or even 20 Mb. New companies are building fibre optic networks which are providing 50 Mb connectivity to the home. It is starting to happen and companies are starting to deliver.
Lying fucking Ryan.
There starting to use the words (hope to) now in realation to broadband rollout in 2010
What a fuc**ng joke
There no sign of fiber optic here. The connection comes to a shuddering halt at times after 6pm.
How the f**k can you complete on the global Market (yes goverment Web2.0 is here- were you not watching the BBC news report on Tuesday night) uploading large files on a sh**ty connection?
Its about speed not aspirational hopes
I wouldn’t have believed that someone could get away with analogy on tv and radio and not be questioned about it. What is going on in that Department are they all afraid to stand up to Eamonn and remind him that he can’t be peddling such drivel.
If I was the South Korean Embassy I would be demanding an apology.
Liam
While it may be true to say that in Dublin there is 1 Mb broadband connectivity to every home, it does not necessarily mean they have the applications or the benefits from that. Nor does it mean they have the economic strivers from it. These are some of the reasons we would be investing and we will invest in the development of our broadband future.
…
One of the problems I encounter at home is that my mobile telephone does not work.
…
I can not connect my mobile telephone to my wireless network. (why would I want to do that any way??) I can not run Skype on my network. I can not send a single 50 kb file from my home.
While it is useful to analyse and use inter-county comparisons to determine what is happening in other counties and learn from them, we must remember that we have our own unique characteristics.
Signed
Up the Kingdom
Glad I wasn’t the only one who thought the crap WiFi in Dublin Castle on the day of the broadband forum was worth a giggle.
It was probably due to Ireland’s demographics or geography, but it was ok if you take into account mobile broadband…
his phone probably didn’t even have wifi or if it did, was it even turned on. Anyone know what type of phone he uses? 😛
Just wondering – he talks about not being able to connect his phone to the ‘network’ and his phone not working in South Korea. I have been over to Korea a few times, and their broadband speeds are unreal, and the level of connectivity over there is unbelievable.
however, my phone wouldn’t work over there either. not cause of any sort of failing on the Korean networks part, but cause their phones all run on CDMA, not GSM. Therefore, the phones from this neck of the woods don’t work over there. No matter how fancy your phone is, you’re not going to get skype or any sort of connectivity. your phone reverts to being a calendar and address book with a bonus clock….
Agree with Eamonn – just wondered if I was missing something – Korea runs a different mobile phone network than Europe, so for Eamon Ryan not to know that, it’s laughable …
Pity no-one hit him with the fact in public and asked him why he didn’t know that already …. Might take him down a peg or two…
I know I’m updating an old post but thought I would in case any one stumbled upon this….
http://techfragments.com/news/359/Tech/All_Koreans_to_Have_1Gbps_Broadband_by_2012.html
If anyone meets Eamon can they ask “are you sure it was Korea you were in?”