Wishing you all the best with your Bill, you certainly have my full support here.

You may also be interested in some discussions going on here http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=60 - check out the first few threads.

Comments from David Morris above really make me scratch my head about eircom! Heres a man will to pay money for a service which they simply wont provide. Its staggering.

My own story is we have BB in a suburb of galway. The max the line can do is 2.6 Meg - we tried signing up to 7Meg but the line just couldnt do it. We finally got it to 2.6 although even at that its a bit unstable and needs to be reset every so often.

In this day and age in a major fairly new estate in one of our big cities and the lines can only do 2.6Meg… by international standards its a joke. An embarrassment.

I asked this company was my line poor but they said I have a very good line as Im getting this speed at 6km. I was stunned to hear 6km (its about 4 as the crow flies).

I was stunned to hear the only exchange was so far. Theres many hundreds of homes in this estate and it shows very bad planning to have them all on an exchange so far that BB speeds would be poor.

Anyway all the best

It’s great to see that someone in office is finally prepared to do something about the shambolic broadband services available in Ireland.

I’ve recently had a new phoneline connected to my new apartment in Dun Emer, Lusk, Co. Dublin. After applying for broadband connection I was told that “due to the sensitive nature” of broadband my line wasn’t suitable. A brand NEW line! After complaining to Eircom I was told that they were under no obligation to provide the public with a Broadband connection. This is no less than criminal, and what really ires me is that ComReg have given them this legal right. They have not only ruled that Eircom are to be the universal service provider in this country until 2010, but because Eircom refuse to install broadband capable lines, ComReg backed down and dropped the data requirement for lines from 2.4K to 0K (zero!).

What has frustrated me all the more is the fact that my neighbour, who lives 3 doors away in the same block of apartments HAS a broadband connection with Eircom. When I presented this fact to Eircom as proof that my line was faulty, they again retorted that as long as the phoneline works they wouldn’t do anything. The television is saturated with Eircom’s Internet/Talk bundles, but how many people are being left out in the cold because of their practices?

All the best with the campaign. I really hope you are successful in bringing Ireland into the 21st century.

Best Regards,

David Morris

Please use whatever powers you have to force this issue for all that it’s worth, the absence of suitable broadband services are causing huge problems to all levels of the business community.

Can I also ask you to give some consideration to another aspect. At the moment, the broadband services that do exist are in most cases variable speed, so the download is speed A, and upload is speed B, and in almost all cases, upload is pathetically slow. For many users, that’s not too much of an issue, but any business that wishes to operate a web site, but does not want to have it hosted on a central ISP service site is almost crippled before they start, as there’s no easy way to get a fast upload speed, which is needed to give users in other locations a good response time. I don’t need to tell you the sorts of speeds and capabilities that are being offered in other countries, you already are aware of that.

Please don’t be put off by the naysayers, who will pretend that ‘there’s no demand for broadband in Ireland.’ The demand is there, but there are many people who will not be ripped off with very high service charges for a substandard system, which in too many cases is all that’s available.

The other issue is the thorny question of contention. A high speed service is fine, provided it stays high speed when other users in the area are also wanting to use it. We’ve already seen that in some areas, there may be 20 or more users sharing one service, and if that happens, each user is getting a very poor and slow service, which is no help if it’s a business that’s trying to provide service to other customers.

Thank you for trying, the best of luck with your effors

Regards

Steve Garry

I am very happy to hear that someone is trying to do something about improving broadband provision in Ireland. I come from a small town in Co. Limerick called Kilfinane where we still have a dial-up connection. Broadband was recently introduced in Kilfinane but we have been told that our line is not suitable and we therefore will not be able to avail of broadband services.

I rent an apartment in Castletroy, just on the suburbs of the city - the apartment I live in has one connection for all the apartments which is very slow and we are not allowed to install landlines in these apartments or put up satellite dishes on the roof, which leaves me with the wireless broadband option. However, this does not work due to the buildings surrounding us.

I have tried to go through all options including wireless modems but there is not enough coverage for these to work either. I work as an IT Trainer and think it really is amazing that in 2008 these problems still exist in Ireland.

A friend in France emailed me this weekend asking if I could look up some information on the St. Patrick’s festivites in Limerick for her as she is visiting Ireland that week - it was embarrassing to have to email her back and say that I could not access any websites for her due to a very slow dial-up connection.

I wish you the very best with your efforts and thank you again for what you are doing.

Best Regards.

Good luck!

http://santa.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055194346&highlight=ntl tabula rasa

Obvioulsy we are a smaller country, with a smaller population, but surely, surely we can have at least 5MB connectivity? Without a basic standard of broadband, as measured against other European countries, we are at a serious disadvantage, and this can only become worse the longer we neglect this vital service.

I moved to the country as I couldn’t afford to buy a house in Dublin, and I work from home three days a week. So on these days I am not commuting, thereby not contributing to traffic congetsion, not releasing carbon emissions into the atmosphere, not adding to wear and tear on the roads, and cutting down costs not only for myself but for the State. Surely this is a good thing? Why can the government not see that by supplying a decent broadband connection it will eventually cut costs all around? If people can work in an environment of their own choosing, their productivity improves and then the economy will improve.

Thank you again for trying to address this issue and hopefully your efforts will go some way towards limiting the damage to the country’s reputation that this fiasco is causing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7202396.stm