So, Poland just joined the EU – welcome! ;)
Meanwhile, time for a trawl through IrelandOffline news.
Boards.IE have had enough of crappy internet from the telcos — they’re hoping to launch an ISP. Given one company’s continuing stranglehold over the Irish internet, they’ll need every bit of luck they can get. Good luck guys.
And, in case anyone’s swallowing that ‘there isn’t the demand’ line, check this story out:
The story goes how Old Man Kennedy was getting his shoes shined back in ’29 and the shoe-shine boy was telling him what stocks looked good and what didn’t. Old Man Kennedy knew the game was up and it was time to get out of the market.
I got my hair cut this morning and the middle-aged man beside me was telling the barber how he had downgraded his ISDN line to get DSL but the DSL failed the test and now he’s stuck with a normal line. The barber was asking him what company he applied through, told him of the others, asked how far from the exchange he was, told him where the exchange was (as he didn’t know), said ‘mmm, that’d be about 3km, as the crow flies. But it’s not as the crow flies – it’s the turns in the road and that.’
Now if my barber can give me the technical requirements for DSL and people are talking of stimulating demand, you have to realise that something fishy is going on.
Forfas delivers damning broadband report : ‘Irish DSL prices for small businesses are about five to six times higher’ than other European countries. Hmm, I wonder why the telcos are reporting a lack of demand.
IrelandOffline’s Broadband – The Next Steps for Ireland document, which was presented to the Dail’s Joint Committee on Communications last week. Conclusions:
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Prioritise Wireless: ‘it is no longer time for trials’
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Increase Availability of Affordable Backhaul
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Raise Public Awareness of Alternative Technologies
And how’s about this for an Alternative Technology? Tethered balloons trialing in the North. Genius. The company is called Skylinc, and uses blimps flying at 1500m; each provides a coverage area of 80km diameter. The result is ‘fibre rate service at DSL prices’; non-contended for 30,000 customers, with 1-10 MB/s throughput. I really hope they can pull this off….