International Broadband Quality Survey again blasts Ireland
International Broadband Quality Survey again blasts Ireland.
IrelandOffline, a leading consumer advocacy group today received their copy of the Global Broadband Quality Study from the prestigious “Oxford University Said Business School” which is issued annually. The study reaffirms the positive link between broadband leadership and innovation economies, something we in Ireland claim to aspire to. Yet again this study demonstrates the much touted “Smart Economy” is nothing other than“smoke and mirrors”.
We need real political leadership in order to drive the broadband issue forward for the benefit of all. Many emerging economies are ‘leapfrogging’ us by focusing on bringing the best broadband to their cities, acknowledging their impact on the economy.
Thirty eight cities already have the broadband quality required for the applications of tomorrow, ready to support smart and connected communities.The study also shows that Broadband consumption patterns are diverging, A basic household connection requires a stable connection of over 2 Mbps and consuming about 20 GB per month of data , to a smart and connected home commanding over 20 Mbps and a consumption of up to 500 GB per month.
Irelandoffline estimate that 50% of the so called Broadband connections claimed by Minister Ryan and Comreg come with a current data limit of 15GB or less, they being all of the 400,000 thousand Mobile packages in use and at least 33% of the 700,000 DSL connections in use.
Commenting on the results of the study Eamonn Wallace of IrelandOffline said
“We are lumped in with the likes of Ghana,Cyprus, Brazil and Thailand as “meeting the needs of today”. These countries are hardly the “high flying smart economies” of tomorrow. The unusual suspects are leading us: Greece, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. We used to be better than Greece yet have fallen significantly behind in recent years.
The survey shows Ireland is now fossilised in a broadband mediocrity. With the lowest Telecommunications Investment in the developed world (as a % of GDP) we are therefore guaranteed to remain in absolute and total mediocrity for the foreseeable future.
Furthermore, most of those countries have large scale fibre installation plans or installation projects in train where as we have no concrete plan and no vision for our “Smart Economy” beyond the next Ministerial soundbite delivery opportunity.
All of these future network plans are glibly entrusted to the”liberalised market” which Minister Ryan and his dysfunctional department love to hide behind. Both the Department and the “fully liberalised market” are failing us miserably as we have some of the highest costs for basic broadband in the world.