Ireland Bottom of Another Bandwidth-Driven pile. A survey released today by Tariff Consultancy1 has revealed that Ireland is now the most expensive country in Europe in which to lease Data Centre capacity. After getting a broadband connection the first reaction of most people and companies is to establish a presence on the internet, usually a web site. However the cost of renting space in a datacentre is prohibitive. This shocking report is a result of a myriad of policy failings over the medium term since around 2001, not only in the lack of an overall balanced National Broadband policy but...

In Depth Harvard University Survey Damns Ireland The prestigious Berkman Centre for Internet and Society in Harvard University1 was commissioned by the US Telecoms Regulator the FCC to carry out an in depth survey of Internet connectivity in 30 OECD countries, published on the 13th of October. Yet again this report shows that we are stuck in less than broadband mediocrity. This is a very thorough report. We in Ireland Offline are particularly agitated by the table on page 58 and titled Table 3.4. Country rankings on various speed measures 3 and based on real life user speed. Measurements in...

International Broadband Quality Survey blasts Dublin. IrelandOffline today received their copy of the “Oxford University Said Business School Global Broadband Quality Study” which is issued annually. Commenting on the results of the study Eamonn Wallace of IrelandOffline said “We are not quite sure whether this is Salvador in Brazil or Salvador in El Salvador but this city is now ranked as the 86th City in the world for the quality of its Broadband Infrastructure and is one place ahead of Dublin in 87th place for the Quality of its Broadband” (1) Cities ranked ahead of Dublin include Ankara, Ljubljana, Bratislava,...

We would like to observe that we find it very difficult to approach this document as it appears to proceed from the core assumption that there are no NGN assets in the state. There are a number of operational NGN networks already , particularly the ESB and eircom core . Yet no data is forthcoming on  their operation and traffic growth and on the advantages that appertain to their being operational . We have had an operational NGN in Ireland for 6 years ….surely we must have learnt something from that and from which we can push its advantages closer...