Thousands of rural dwellers may lose coverage in the next licensing round from Comreg. Comreg propose that only 70% of the population of the country needs to be covered,this is approximately 10% of the landmass, which equates to mostly the east coast and a few hot spots around major cities/towns. Inevitably this will lead to a decline in current coverage levels as telecommunications providers struggle with the recession and the inevitable rolling back of their networks as there is no longer a regulatory necessity to invest or maintain the networks in more rural areas. This is a decision driven by...

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...