Comreg – The captured regulator IrelandOffline a leading consumer advocacy group today examine the phenomenon of the captured regulator and how it applies to Ireland. What is regulatory capture? The captured regulators theory refers to the fact that, in most industries, the people who control government regulatory bodies are *THE EXACT SAME PEOPLE* who control the industry being regulated. Most regulations are written to benefit large corporations and their management. “Captured regulators” mean that regulators are answerable to executives in the industry regulated, rather than the general public.Regulatory capture is a form of government failure. A captured regulatory agency that...

IrelandOffline calls for an end to ComReg’s failure to protect consumers IrelandOffline, a leading consumer advocacy group, have examined a number of issues that ComReg, the telecommunications regulator, have promised action on and published papers on the subject and have refused to actually take any action. IrelandOffline call for telecommunications regulation that protects the consumer, not only the industry. Contracts In July, 2007, ComReg determined that no supplier of telecommunications services was fully compliant with the requirements of Regulation 17 of the Universal Service Users’ Rights Regulations. These regulations are compulsory EU directives and are in force since 2002. No...

Irish Broadband Speeds Continue Their Decline IrelandOffline Quarterly Broadband Speed and Quality Survey Q4 2010 The steady decline in Irish Broadband speeds and quality continues to decline under the regime of Minister Ryan’s watch. An overriding belief exists that accepts that substandard satellite is an acceptable solution to their many policy failures. In this quarter it is now the turn of Vietnam and Macedonia to overtake Ireland for average download speeds after Mongolia went past us in May and as the rest of the developed world continues to power away from us. Recently, Albania overtook us for upload speeds. We...

IrelandOffline refute NBS claims of Minister Ryan IrelandOffline read with interest the announcement of the Minister today that broadband is now available to over 99% coverage for the whole country. Patently this is far removed from the reality of the NBS. Never before has a Minister claimed to break the laws of physics -other laws perhaps- but never physics. These laws are immutable no matter what kind of expensive marketing you have. This what the National Broadband scheme is supposed to deliver contractually: “A service with a minimum download speed of 1.6Mbps and maximum of 6.8Mbps with a contention ratio...

Eircom, The Broadband Company not the Phone Company. For many years the standard excuses coming from previous incarnations of eircom about broadband were infused with a grim technophobic hilarity.eircom was not going to roll out broadband or any more broadband because there was “no demand” for it. Dialup Internet was making a lot of money for eircom in those days. While it seems ludicrous to look back at these statements today, we know they were mainly excuses to hide the chronic lack of ongoing investment as the company was asset stripped by by various “investors”. Ironically one investor enabled quite...