News

Comreg Will Cost The Exchequer €300m in 2012 …..By Design. The flawed 4G spectrum auction process designed by Comreg will cost the taxpayer dearly. IrelandOffline now estimates that the auction will fall short of its optimal potential by as much as €300m when it is conducted this summer. Countries that have large dispersed rural populations do NOT benefit from having a multiplicity of physical networks. Only urban areas benefit from multiple networks, in what is known as infrastructure competition, owing to the costs involved. Rural areas are simply being ignored. Comreg have deliberately designed the forthcoming spectrum auction in Ireland...

“Selective, inaccurate and misleading” These were the words used by Mr Justice Moriarty in relation to information supplied by the Department of Communications to its then minister Alan Dukes. Mr Dukes unwittingly misled his Dáil colleagues as a result of this misinformation. Nothing much has changed in the last 15 years. Department of Communications  officials sent their Minister out to bat for Ireland with Broadband Performance data  that is at best incomplete and,in our opinion, seemingly suspect. On Wednesday, May 2nd in Dublin’s Digital Hub at the launch of the Next Generation Broadband Taskforce Report, communications minister Pat Rabbitte misled...

IrelandOffline Quarterly Report Q1 2012 (PR) The highlights of our report are that Ireland has the second highest cost per Megabit of data in the EU and by rather a long way we pay way above the average across the globe. We are stagnant in terms of upload and download speeds, however the likes of Bulgaria,Moldova,Belarus,Romania, Zimbabwe and Nigeria are still ahead of us for download speeds and we are battling to stay ahead of Laos in terms of upload speeds. We are 74th in the world for upload speeds with Libya, a country with no government, catching us up...

IrelandOffline Quarterly Report Q1 2012 This is the latest IrelandOffline Quarterly report, based as always on Ookla Netindex Data. Two particular issues are highlighted in this report. 1. Why is Bandwidth, measured as in $ per mbit delivered, so expensive overall  in Ireland. 2. The Urban-Rural divide.   Internationally. Ireland dropped 8 places to 53rd place in the World during Q4 2011 and staged an insipid  recovery to 51st in Q1 2012. We passed Vietnam for download speeds and just avoided being passed by nearby Laos for Upload speeds. In Quarter 1 2012 Ireland’s Position is as follows: Ireland is...

Probable eircom Fibre To The Cabinet locations This is the overall picture for Ireland. This is very similar to the original DSL rollout locations, one can only hope that other areas will eventually be enabled as was the case in the original programme, which however is still not yet completed. These are the Dublin locations: Provisional and unofficial  list of exchanges to be completed by mid 2013 CLONEE MERVUE SWORDS DOUGLAS TALLAGHT LETTERKENY PALMERSTOWN DONABATE BALLYBODEN DOORADOYLE BLANCHARDSTOWN PRIORY PARK BRAY DROGHEDA ROCHESTOWN DUN LAOGHAIRE BELCAMP DOLPHINS BARN DUNDRUM DUNDALK ENNIS SUTTON TERENURE BALLINCOLLIG RATHMINES BALBRIGGAN CROWN ALLEY BEGGARS BUSH...