Finally someone in big business has stuck their head over the parapet and called the broadband situation in Ireland a joke. John McElligott, Managing Director of eBay in Ireland, wrote to several Irish politicians and described the broadband infrastructure as at developing world levels. He said that he embarrassed to tell his peers in other countries about Ireland's connectivity problems.
Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin, an ex-teacher, immediately launched the standard smokescreen defense. Nearly up to European average, blah, blah. Issues, blah, blah. Fault of private industry, blah. blah. I'm sure knowledge economy was mentioned at some point too. As McElligott said We claim the 4th highest per capita GDP on Earth. And we want to be average?.
I'm very impressed to hear this coming from eBay. They are one of the few multi-nationals based here who also advertise their service here. Bad broadband has no effect on their internal fibre connections but it does reduce the number of people who can potentially use the eBay service effectively.
I live about 2.5km from the local exchange. 2 Mbs on DSL is the fastest I can get. 3Mbs doesn't work reliably. So talk of 8/16/32 or even (hah!) 100Mbs annoys me ever so slightly. We have these wonderful mythical MANs around most of our big cities now but people down the road from me are at 56kbs.
Broadband in Ireland remains a joke and those who justify the current situation are either clueless or shills. I'd love to see the MDs or SVPs of Amazon Ireland, Google Ireland, Intel Ireland and Microsoft Ireland back John McElligot in calling bulls*** on the current situation. Maybe if they all threaten to move to Bejing, some strategic planning execution might occur?
Share This
Comment posted by Ernest Tab
at 12/10/2007 5:02:09 AM
Isn't BT an option for you guys? – http://www.bt.com/broadband
Comment posted by Conor O’Neill
at 12/5/2007 2:55:09 PM
Nice of you to fully analyse this company knowing nothing about them or their history. They've been waiting since 2001 for a leased line.. Please hold, an operator wil be with you soon.
Last month I visited another company that can only get ISDN. No DSL, no 3G data, no wireless. They are not part of this magical vast majority. Funny how most of the people I know down here outside of the big towns are also not part of the vast majority. But as long as you are alright jack.
Comment posted by seanwal111111
at 12/5/2007 2:10:20 PM
They're rolling out 15mbps for internet video. That much bandwidth is ten times more than what's needed for high quality music and webpages.
You say the company in West Cork is close enough to the phone branch exchange that it has a working DSL line. You don't explain why it can't get a second phone line installed. The company in this situation is probably guilty of dim foresight and bad management in not ordering more phone lines before it became 30-person, and/or not realizing the benefits of the internet before now. Yes and I suppose they whinge now that their situation is the phone company's fault if phone company tells them to wait a month for an install.
Comment posted by Conor O’Neill
at 12/5/2007 1:39:52 PM
I spent the afternoon with a 30 person company in West Cork that has one 3 MB/s DSL line for the company. That's the best they can get and 384 Kb/s up!
If 2 Mbs is adequate, why are they rolling out 15 Mbs in the UK? I'm sure paraffin lamps were adequate at one stage too.
Comment posted by seanwal111111
at 12/5/2007 1:22:22 PM
The price of broadband in Ireland today is not more expensive, and actually a little cheaper, than in most OECD countries (including the US and Australia for example). The broadband infrastructure reaches the vast majority of the population today too, though the vast majority are choosing to not sign up for it. I believe two megabits per sec is adequate for anyone, except for the people who want to waste their time watching television.
Whereas that whinger from eBay spoke about the physical infrastructure, the Minister for Enterprise in his reply spoke about the market uptake by consumers. Two different things. However the industry has been creating the infrastructure with high confidence that market uptake will inevitably happen sooner or later.
Comment posted by Fantastico
at 12/4/2007 9:42:20 AM
The only reason Ebay have come out whinging is because they are having little impact on the Irish marketplace.
It hasnt took off not becuase of broadband but becuase of the ripp-off merchants that populate it.
Why would anyone bother buying products from ebay.ie when they can be sourced half the price on ebay.co.uk or dot com?
The rest of us seemed to have got on with the current broadband infrastructure!
Comment posted by Matt
at 12/4/2007 7:39:17 AM
We have one of those mythical 12Mbs connections where I work. The actual speeds in the middle of the day aren't quite as advertised:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/208690608.png
About 4meg down, and about 800k up. I daresay if I did a test in the middle of the night it might be a bit faster, but not much.
The exchange is roughly 50m away from our router.
Comment posted by Jonathan Hill
at 12/4/2007 5:04:35 AM
Here here! Well said Conor. Us small indigenous companies have been complaining for years to no effect.
5th of December 2007 by conor
5th of 
