IrelandOffline » Press Releases

IrelandOffline exposes the real figures behind ComReg quarterly report

Eamonn Wallace — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:03:01 +0000

IrelandOffline exposes the real figures behind ComReg quarterly report

Key points:

Highest phone line rental in the world (once again omitted from figures in the report)
Highest mobile spend in EU

Total Internet subscriptions 1.4 million (or, 45% of households), of which nearly 40% are not broadband

Having analysed the most recent quarterly report, and consulted with the OECD, IrelandOffline affirm that the suggestion that Ireland have reached the “Top 10″ is “wishful thinking”. The only Top 10 we actually feature in is the cost of owning a telephone line, for which the ITU recently reported Ireland as being the most expensive country in the world.

IrelandOffline spokesman Eamonn Wallace explained, “we currently have almost 240,000 dialup users in the country, along with 310,000 mobile midband users.These figures highlight the lack of infrastructure that is accessible at a reasonable cost. A huge percentage still rely on dialup as their primary means of accessing the Internet in Ireland. Some of the comments stretch the boundaries of credulity”

In accordance with the OECD methodology, and to enable comparing like with like, across our European and OECD country counterparts, it is necessary to exclude those dialup and midband users. When calculating the figures from Comreg themselves, it is clear that our Broadband Penetration rate is actually 45%, according to the OECD Measure of Household broadband penetration. The reported 63% figure seems to have been conjured up from nowhere and touted by certain parties in a misleading attempt to make Ireland look comparatively better; which is an outrageous claim. No other country uses midband (mobile) subscriptions in their calculations.

Wallace also pointed out that “mobile phone costs are as exorbitant as land line costs, as ComReg report that Ireland have the highest ARPU⁽¹⁾, yet again.” The excuse that Irish users ‘talk more’ doesn’t hold, when France speak more for less, in the same report. The recent ComReg quarterly report confirms the costs of telephony, both fixed line and mobile, in Ireland are exorbitant. These costs must be addressed immediately if we are to remain competitive in these difficult and challenging times.

FOOTNOTES: (1) This is the Average Revenue Per User. The standard measure used by mobile operators of how much revenue companies make from each individual.

Irish Phone line Rental (ripoff of the century?)

Eamonn Wallace — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:25:07 +0000

IrelandOffline today expressed concern over the continued delay in the ComReg reporting of the quality of Ireland’s telephone network, for which its users continue to pay the highest line rental charge in the EU.

ComReg, on a quarterly basis, report on the status of Universal Service Obligation (USO) performance. This report examines how well eircom, the designated USO provider, are delivering on their obligation to provide a good quality telephone service, including voice, internet access and payphone services. The reports are considered important metrics in evaluating the state of the Irish phone network, and the value for money Irish consumers are receiving for paying the highest line rental in the EU.

IrelandOffline Spokesperson, Eamonn Wallace, explained “ComReg have failed to publish these reports for over 2 quarters now. Although, these statistics are meant to be published every quarter, the last published statistics were for Q1 2008, with yet an other deadline missed in the last week of February. These guidelines have have only been published once since Comreg set targets for line faults and increasing performance levels on Repair.”

ComReg, themselves, note the importance of these reports when they describe that the reports “will provide increased transparency regarding the fulfilment of the USO and will help to inform debate regarding related matters”, in an earlier USO Performance Review they carried out. Wallace expressed the concern “we still have the highest line rental in the EU. The minimum we can expect for this exorbitant charge is a decent phone line. We also expect the regulator to answer Irish businesses and consumers, by reporting that the phone network is consistently performing to a high standard, in return for this high line rental. Furthermore this data is part of Ireland’s USO obligations to both Irish consumers and to the EU.”

Wallace also expressed concern at the proposed loss of staff in eircom, in the guise of cost cutting measures. “It looks as though many engineers will be made redundant, as reported in the media. With the most recent data available, trends indicate that these engineers are needed now, more than ever, to cope with the higher fault rates, longer repair delays, and longer installation delays”.

Chart showing line rental charges across the EU taken from the EU’s “13th Report on the Implementation of the Telecommunications Regulatory Package – 2007” report.

Given the importance of these reports, ComReg’s own admittance of their significance, and the fact that they are now considered mandatory, IrelandOffline is now calling on ComReg and Minister Eamon Ryan to rectify this delay, immediately.

Glossary
======
+ USO – The Universal Service Obligation is a set of conditions, enforced by ComReg, which seek to ensure that everyone has equal access to some basic telephone services, regardless of their location. The USO sets various criteria around phone line install times, repair times, public payphone provision, functional Internet access (dial-up modem access, not broadband, unfortunately), and phone tariffs for vulnerable users.

Supporting Notes

Line Faults and Regulatory Capture

Regulatory Capture is described as “Regulatory capture is a term used to refer to situations in which a government regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead acts in favor of the commercial or special interests that dominate in the industry or the sector that it is charged with regulating.” (WikiPedia article).

While theory would suggest that this should not happen, Patrick Neary demonstrated it has been going on for years. ComReg (and their predecessors, the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation) are the longest serving regulator in Ireland and, in our opinion, have long been “captured” by eircom and the big two mobile operators.

The Importance of the Fault Reporting

During the 1990s, the World Bank standardised the statistics it collects, and a key statistic they collect is “Faults Per 100 Main Lines”. This figure is a good measure of the quality of a telephone network. The World Bank, describes this figure as “The number of faults per main line per year defines the frequency of breakdown of the telephone lines. For a well constructed and well maintained network, the average number of faults per main line per year should be 0.2 or less; that is the telephone line should not be out of order more than once in five years. Because the figure is normally small in industrialized countries, this indicator is often expressed in faults per 100 main lines. The actual situation in developing countries is much worse, with the average number of faults in some countries exceeding three faults per main line per year.” (Source: World Bank)

eircom’s figure, a quarterly figure, has risen to a record high of 7.8 faults per 100 residential lines and 3.1 faults per 100 business lines, as per the last USO Performance Quarterly Review report (PDF of ComReg report). Comreg is the collection agency in Ireland. They report to the ITU in Geneva and the ITU reports its collated data to the World Bank. The last report ComReg released was for Q1 2008, meaning ComReg have fallen behind on the delivery of this important quarterly report.

IrelandOffline estimates we have 1.1 million residential lines and 600,000 business lines giving us a blended average fault rate of 104,400 faults per 100 lines per quarter, or 6.1 faults per 100 lines per quarter in Q1 2008. As there are 4 quarters in a year this equates to 24.4 faults per 100 lines. Therefore we no longer have a “well constructed and well maintained network” by World Bank standards

The World Bank estimated that we only had 3.2 faults per 100 lines in 2006 and that the average for a High Income country was 5.8 per 100 lines in 2006 (source: World Bank PDF report). Q1 2008 was over 4 times higher than it should have been for a high income country.

Please note that this data series is not the same as the ComReg Quarterly Reports, where Mobile Internet is constantly and incorrectly described as broadband. It is in fact a midband technology. The latest report in that particular series is for Quarter 3 2008 (PDF Report). The line fault metric is abstracted from a different quarterly series, the USO Performance Review quarterly reports, which intermittently covered from Q1 2006, to Q1 2008. Those reports can be downloaded from the following pages: Q1-Q3 2006 , Q3 2007, Q4 2007, and the last available report, Q1 2008.

Minister announces “Broadband for All” and then total silence

Eamonn Wallace — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:52:51 +0000

Minister announces “Broadband for All” and then total silence

*Summary of Press release*

* NBS will not deliver anything
* Waste of taxpayer money
* Unfair subsidy
* Briefing document available
* Silence from Minister
* Meeting requested with Minister

On the 22nd January 2009 Minister Eamonn Ryan formally announced the National Broadband Scheme.
We in IrelandOffline feel this scheme cannot possibly deliver on any of its promises as outlined by the DECNR.

We have termed this solution “Midband” as we think this is a more appropriate description than “Broadband”

Spokesperson Eamonn Wallace explained:
“We initially welcomed the announcement as being imaginative, however, we have now concluded that the NBS will deliver nothing like the promised headline speeds outlined in documents from the DENCR. Nor will it deliver anything at all for 10s of 1000′s of Irish homes deemed to be covered already by the DCENR .

In fact, this is a total waste of taxpayer money, this money could be spent
on more appropriate technologies. This is a proprietary system based around one supplier and does nothing to enhance the spread of broadband, in fact it actually amounts to an unfair subsidy to one corporate entity to build out their network”.

After extensive consultations with our Expert RF Engineering Panel, familiar with mobile “broadband”,we have concluded that the system will be totally unsatisfactory, in fact most users will get dial-up speeds especially when the system becomes well subscribed.

Our Expert RF Engineering Panel are currently drawing up a plan that could deliver 5 times the promised speeds at half the cost. Neither Mobile WiMax nor Mobile LTE can deliver on these speeds, only a Fixed Wireless soultion.
However the bandwidth required for LTE will not become available until 2014 at the earliest, when MMDS is finally switched off” explained Wallace. “even then thousands of 2.6GHz LTE base stations,not 160, would be required to get close to 1Mbps DSL performance.”

IrelandOffline have published a more comprehensive document outlining the technical issues and our reasoning for this scheme being considered unwelcome and contrary to the public good.
Link to briefing document

We have urgently requested a meeting with the Minister to outline our concerns and have also discovered during our extensive research and consultations that no questions put to the Department have been answered, despite numerous requests for information and clarification having been submitted from a number of interested parties.

We are calling on the Minister to prioritise answering these questions as a matter of courtesy, if nothing else.

We still urgently need solutions not promises.

NBS Scheme

cgarvey — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:00:17 +0000

Minister announces midband solution for rural areas

Yesterday Minister Eamonn Ryan formally announced the winners of the National Broadband Scheme. We have termed this solution as Midband as we feel this is a more suitable description.

Interim spokesperson Eamonn Wallace explained:
“We welcome the announcement as imaginative. However we are unhappy with the level of service that will be offered,and do not believe this is a long-term fix.The technology used simply will not support the advertised headline speeds.Simple mathematics will show this”.

“Because of many technical issues this scheme will never be suitable for gaming, VOIP, Skype and other typical broadband uses. Speeds will vary enormously. These headline speeds assume only one user will ever use the sector, the question is what happens when 40 people use it?” explained Wallace.

Wallace went on to say “In fact this scheme is more likely to turn people off the idea of broadband rather than enhance their experience of the internet”

Again we say complacency is not an option. We need real broadband not half measures. IrelandOffline is in the process of publishing a more comprehensive document outlining the technical issues.

We urgently need solutions and to work together to address this crisis.

Broadband lobby group, IrelandOffline, reforms

cgarvey — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 16:37:58 +0000

Following intensive internal discussion, a number of former members of the broadband lobby group, IrelandOffline, have opted to reform.

Interim spokesperson Eamonn Wallace explained that the group were bewildered at recent National Broadband Scheme developments, including the recent news of the national contract being awarded to a 3G mobile company with a history of poor technology and customer service. Wallace cited the lack of meaningful development in broadband availability since IrelandOffline disbanded last year. Furthermore we believe there is a looming crisis in the provision of broadband in this country and we also aim to address this issue, complacency is not an option.

“Drawing on the experience of previous committee members and chairmen, IrelandOffline aims to be a neutral body campaigning for the provision of timely and accurate information in the field of telecommunications”, explained Wallace.

IrelandOffline wishes to build on the successful, hard work of previous committees and members, and hopes to have formal elections in the New Year.

IrelandOffline to reform

cgarvey — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:21:39 +0000

Following an absence of over a year, a decision has been made to reform IrelandOffline. Further details of the reformation, and the aims of IrelandOffline will be posted in due course.