Irish Mobile Phone Coverage has SHRUNK YET AGAIN in 2016. IrelandOffline regularly warned in the period between 2010 and 2012 that there was a serious risk that mobile phone coverage would shrink catastrophically in Ireland once the mobile phone licences were sold off in December 2012. This is exactly what happened, especially in 2013 and 2014. Commenting on this Eamonn Wallace (Chair of IrelandOffline) said “Furthermore the state took many hundreds of millions for these licences and cannot make the operators ‘unshrink’ the coverage as they would be sued. So what does Denis Naughten do, he invites the Irish Countrywomen’s...

The NBP Intervention Area Map IrelandOffline have learnt that eir have announced that it will have the “entire Dingle peninsula” fibred-up in  2017. Congratulations seem to be due to broadcaster and musician Philip King on having pulled this one off. Most small communities are at their wits’ end to find a way to induce telecommunications into their area and great credit is due to those like Philip who develop local resources and a long term vision for their communities.  https://t.co/qTWrLvzEYP There is however a wider issue. Areas coming within the scope of providers’ plans may potentially be removed from the...

The report please, Mr Naughten. IrelandOffline now know who is going to own the assets of the National Broadband Plan and to nobody’s surprise it’s not us the citizens of Ireland. The rationale The reason it should be the Irish people is obvious from the intervention mapping. It seems that ninety six percent of the national territory can neither sustain a competitive market in communications infrastructure, nor attract enough interest from the regulator to mandate that the necessary investment be made. A decade and a half of ever deepening digital divide is all the evidence required. Instead of setting out...

IrelandOffline expresses concern over the future of the National Broadband Plan A few short weeks ago An Taoiseach (1) appointed Denis Naughten as Minister for Communications while at the same time he said that the responsibility for delivering the National Broadband Plan, together with the specialised NBP procurement team, was moving over to that Department with the really long name headed by Heather Humphreys. Today Minister Denis Naughten basically announced he was taking it back. Would someone actually take charge and please tell us what the hell is going on here? If this the ‘Rural Alliance’ ‘4G Interim Fix Proposal’...