Our Bovine Journalists.

Dermot,

I am proud to know how to deal with our bovine journalists.



Our experienced jockey, Tom Butler, here seen riding "Matthew–the–Regurgitator" (owned and trained by the RTE–Irish Times-Independent-Examiner-ENN-Consortium) on the home stretch down the garden path.











Not one of our Media bunch recognised the frightening figures (real Internet usage going down) in our end of 2003 Amarach Internet survey. They all happily re-chewed our cunning lie about the fabulous 5% increase of Internet home users to 44%.
None of them even looked into the figures.

So here we go again, we simply announce our latest Quarterly Report with the same lie:



As reliable as the last time even the "specialist" reporters who might know better fall for our gaff.
In December 2003 ENN's Matthew Clark bovinely regurgitated our lie:

"[...]On the residential side, research done by Amarach on behalf of ComReg said that 44 percent of Irish adults have Internet access at home, a 5 percent increase on the previous quarter.[...]"

Just now ENN did it again - and most of the Irish Media will follow, I am confident:


ENN Tuesday, March 16 2004
by Matthew Clark

"ComReg reports more good growth in Irish telecoms sector:
Ireland's Communications regulator ComReg has said in its latest quarterly report that Irish Internet penetration now stands at 50 percent, growing by five points in the three months to December 2003. The growth was driven in part by flat-rate dial up subscriptions and DSL broadband subscriptions, of which there are now 40,000 and 26,000 respectively."



Dermot,

while it is fun to trick the public like that, I think you should not be left in any doubt about the sombre reality of things:


1.
Irish Home Internet Penetration has unfortunately but predictably not risen by 5% to 49%, it merely went up 1% to 38%, as anybody with eyes attached to a bit of brain could clearly see in our published report:



The 49% figure is misleadingly taken from the subgroup of people with a fixed phone line (83 percent) and has nothing to do with Irish Home Internet Penetration. The 5% rise in this group is simply the mathematical result of a decline of fixed line holders.

Far from being something to brag about, the 5% rise within the fixed line holders is thus the symptom of a very worrying development: The percentage of Irish households with fixed lines is rapidly decreasing, the start of a devastating infra-structural degradation, fuelled by Eircom's high line rental pricing.


2.
How does our real Home Internet usage compare with others: a look at the Swiss Regulator's figures:
He says they have 45 percent of Internet users from home. They not only do not give fake and misleading numbers as we do, by stating numbers of the statistical subset of holders of a fixed telephone line, but they also regard a person only then as an Internet user, when he uses the Net at least several times a week!
If we were to do that – of course this would be the appropriate method – the Irish figures for home Internet usage would look bleak indeed:



With 38% of Irish homes connected to the Internet and 58% of those using the Internet several times a week, we arrive at a figure of 22% real Internet usage from home.

To repeat: While I get the message out that Irish home Internet usage is at 49%, that's 4% above Switzerland's home Internet usage of 45%, the real comparison is as follows:
Switzerland: 45% home usage
Ireland: 22% home usage


Dermot,

if you have the time, download our latest Internet survey here and have a look yourself.
It only takes a few minutes.
Look out for:
page 12: while usage from work has gone up, usage from home is still at 31%, usage from school is down by 4%
page 13: percentage of households with home Internet access is only up 1 percent.
page 15: standard dial-up still at a staggering 83% of home connections, down only one percent
page 16: most home users are still on pay per minute (row 1,2 and 5)
page 18: the real Internet usage is falling: one year ago 20% used it daily, now 19%; one year ago 41% used it several times a week, now 39%. Our real Internet usage has gone down!
page 20: Hours per week are down from an average 8 one year ago to an average of 7 now
page 28: Overall use of the Interent has remained mostly unchanged...a slight dip in Internet use in schools and colleges...Residential Broadband connection remains low with only 2% of Irish online households

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