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IrelandOffline is a voluntary organisation campaigning for universal high-speed broadband for all

News

Infrastructure

Another day another directive. This time Europe wants utility owners in member states to see the sense in sharing their infrastructure, so for instance, instead of building two completely separate pole and duct networks to carry fibre optic cables in rural areas, there would be open-access infrastructure that would serve all telecoms providers on a transparent equitable basis. So far, so common sense; and the department were, at one time at least, adamantly in favour, “..there will be no duplication of infrastructure. We are required under state aid guidelines to avoid this, but it is also a logical step that...

News

Current state of broadband in Ireland

Introduction We in IrelandOffline have been following the recent announcements about broadband delivery in Ireland with great interest and we have even attended some of the press events. Seemingly we will all have fibre to the home by 2020, well so says the government and they have even drawn up a plan to make this happen, this is called the National broadband Plan (NBP). We believe this to be a very good and aspirational plan, despite the long timescale. Current announcements In tandem with the announcement of the NBP we also have a number of companies jockeying to be overall...

Opinion

The end of the cable

There have been some very interesting global developments in the cable industry of late. It is reported that Vodafone may be considering buying Liberty Global International (UPC+Virgin Media). Cable&Wireless Communications have already acquired some of Liberty Global’s assets namely Columbus International.The question that must be asked is are the glory days of cable coming to an end? Eamonn Wallace chairman of IrelandOffline said: “Meanwhile here in Ireland UPC lost about 1,800 customers this quarter. While revenue and margins are holding up (for now), the real problem is this revenue is mainly driven by price increases and higher triple play penetration,...

News

The National Broadband Plan part II

The National Broadband Plan Irelandoffline would like to give the DCENR team who built the http://broadband.gov.ie/ mapping site that was launched yesterday some kudos for a job well done. By the standards of the output produced by DCENR over the years this is an astonishingly complete and accurate piece of work. We were extremely worried when a frankly incoherent list was quickly announced by Minister Rabbitte just before the local elections but as it turns out we need not have been. Some opportunities have been missed. The ability to send a geolocated query direct from the map, perhaps with a...

News / Press Releases

National Broadband plan

So after an enormously long wait and endless delays (2 years of work) the Department of Communications have finally delivered, we’ll resist the temptation to voice our initial reactions to this opus but anyway here is the map: http://broadband.gov.ie/ Here is the rationale and methodology behind this all: http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/DA48DCDA-A8D1-47BC-B91E-CE12B6DAB8E1/0/NBP_Mapping_Consultation2.pdf We’ll issue a Press Release as soon as our analysts have concluded their studies of these documents. If you have any comments or observations please feel free to contact us.