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’...

Comreg the toothless poodle regulator (part #532) We here at IrelandOffline towers have read with dismay the recent reports from various telecommunications companies, if these reports are shown to be correct it portrays our glorious regulator as being asleep for the last few years. This is an utter disgrace and our regulator should be abolished and a regulator that is fit for purpose instated. We warned of this many years ago and lo and behold asleep they went and here we return to a theme from earlier this century which was first mooted in the early noughties : The telcomms...

Our New Government Needs to stop Dithering With Our National Broadband Plan. In 2012 a National Broadband Plan was announced by then Minister Rabbitte. The project should be completed by now, were we to believe Minister Rabbittes ‘promises’ in 2012(1), but it is presently one year away from starting off, the latest delay owing to an apparent problem in planning. IrelandOffline cannot do much about any of that. However we wish to make a point about the envisaged rollout period which is far too long and far too unambitious. In 2012 it was known that a substantial portion of a...

IrelandOffline has been campaigning for many years for improved, consistent, value based broadband services for all the citizens of Ireland. The published statistics on Internet access show that the service providers concentrate on densely populated areas. This is not surprising as the supply of telecommunications services has been privatised. However, there will always be areas where either distance from populated areas and/or low population density militates against service provision. The National Broadband Plan (NBP) was launched a number of years ago to deal with the issue of support for “disenfranchised” areas with respect to broadband. The published objective was to...