Damien Mulley

Simon Coveney from Fine Gael has put down a motion on broadband during Fine Gael private members time in the Dail this week. There was some coverage about it in the Sunday Indo business supplement this weekend. It will be debated by all sides of the house from approximately 7 to 8.30pm this evening and Wednesday evening too. If you ring his office you can go and watch from the fruit throwing visitors’ gallery as his guest. Number is 01 6183755

I disagree with the FG broadband policy and their attitude til now on broadband but credit where credit is due, at least they are getting attention to the situation. Ross’ Bill is a bit better though. If it takes death by 1000 cuts or 10,000 cuts at least it might get the Government and the utterly woeful Minister for Communications to realise he’s being watched and held to task. There’s no hiding from the dire situation anymore.

(The 12 year old juvenile only giggled once at the title. Ok, twice)

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.

Dear Lying

We suddenly have 120k people on mobile broadband? Didn’t you tell Bertie 90k just the other day and he said it on YouTube? Who to believe, who to believe. Not you.

You got caught with the maps. Badly. First anyone had heard about the maps being constantly updated. Should I FOI that too? According to you I should find a few iterations of that map when I do another FOI. I think I will so.

The National Broadband Scheme will be finished in 12 months. Really? If I asked eircom, BT and Three, would they agree? I’m going to ask them tomorrow to check.

We are NOT midtable OCED, we are not average. Bertie even said that the other day and that figure includes mobile broadband figures that are not counted by the OECD.

Loved when they quoted the DCMNR FOI’d documents about resources. Muhaha. Punk’d

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.