Why are you lying, Dermot?

I can see why Eircom would lie to the public, but why are you not keeping to the truth in your recent RTE and Irish Times interviews?

In both you claim Irish Broadband pricing to be at the EU average. Do you not read our Quarterly Reports?

Irish DSL pricing has risen considerably above the EU-15 average. Not a good thing when we want to reach the EU-15 average dsl uptake! We need to have the lowest dsl price to catch up. And this comparison does not even include the impact the high Irish line rental has on the Irish dsl subscriber bill.

From Comreg Quarterly Report September 2004, page 23:

resources:

Irish Times Article, Wednesday 22 Sept 2004

Minister says broadband expansion key achievement in portfolio

It has been a busy two years for the Minister for Communications, Mr Dermot Ahern, who has overseen big changes in the telecoms sector since taking on the job, writes Jamie Smyth, Technology Reporter.

Now, with a Cabinet reshuffle due for next week, he says he is staying focused on his portfolio, despite persistent rumours linking him with different ministries, including foreign affairs.

"My preference is to stay in Cabinet but I enjoy this ministry and it is a challenge," says Mr Ahern, who quickly shifts the conversation to accomplishments.

"One of the key areas that I identified when coming into the job was broadband and I am reasonably happy with the changes that have happened," he says. "There were just 3,000 broadband users when I came into office and there are now more than 80,000. Prices were more than €100 and now they are at the EU average."

Faced with an incumbent operator in Eircom that had resisted calls for lower prices and more investment, Mr Ahern set about securing public investment to drive the roll-out of broadband.

"I was acutely aware of the need for Government to be more interventionist... In my view we had to intervene - if you leave it to the market then you have a situation where the peripheral areas and areas not commercially viable for broadband will not have it."

Despite a vigorous campaign conducted by the Communications Workers Union (CWU) in his own backyard and lobbying by Eircom to have funding for regional fibre networks cut, Mr Ahern persuaded Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, to fund the projects.

"During the last six months, Finance has agreed as part of the estimates process to fund broadband in 2005 to 2007 with an average of €35 million per year... networks will now be rolled out to another 90 regional towns."

Mr Ahern acknowledges that difficulties remain in opening the last mile of Eircom's network to competitors but he says there is no going back as public networks and new technologies emerge.

Despite consumer frustrations with a 24 per cent failure rate on Eircom's network, he remains upbeat about the future for broadband take-up in Ireland, which he says is catching up with the EU.

"I would like to see Eircom and the other telecoms firms invest more but they will have to make their own commercial decisions," he says. "What we are experiencing here is no different than other European countries."

Mr Ahern also heralds the establishment of the group broadband scheme - which offers rural communities access to funding worth €25 million - as a success, despite a very low take-up so far.

"We have more of a job to promote the scheme... I am not going to go back to the days where we gave big companies a dollop of money and let them go off and build networks. I will target taxpayers' money to ensure there is not more of a digital divide."

One success in his tenure was the use of policy directions to force the regulator to take aggressive action to ensure Eircom set up flat-rate dial-up internet and wholesale line rental.

"I am happy that I was vindicated in my push to open up flat-rate dial-up and 90,000 people have signed up for it so far. But the next challenge is to move these people to broadband, something which surprisingly isn't happening at the moment," he says.

Critics cite Mr Ahern's interventionist approach in regulation and the creation of an Appeals Panel that can overrule decisions made by the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) as evidence that he has undermined the regulator.

He dismisses this criticism signalling that Government must set policy, but he acknowledges that ComReg needs new powers.

"On every occasion when ComReg comes into me I have asked them if they require legislation to ensure that action is taken... Legislation takes time to bring forward, that is the reality. I have now signed off on new legislation that will increase the fines they can levy on firms," he says.

The new powers will be contained in the Telecoms Miscellaneous Bill, which will go before the Oireachtas this autumn. The Bill will reinstate maximum fines of 10 per cent of turnover on indictment of a telecoms firm that breaches regulation. But it may also give ComReg the power to fine telecoms firms without having to go to the courts.

The power to levy tough fines without recourse to the courts has long been a weapon sought by ComReg, which currently can levy only a puny fine of €3,000 on a successful court indictment.

One problem area in his portfolio that Mr Ahern has so far failed to deliver results is the creation of a viable digital TV platform in the Republic. Despite a Government commitment to get a platform up and running since 1998, one attempt has failed and no firm new policy has emerged.

"We could be lucky in that some other countries set these up in the boom and lost millions when the firms collapsed," says Mr Ahern.

"We are now actively looking at rolling DTT [digital terrestrial television\] out nationally but on a gradual basis beginning in the greater Dublin area and over a 30-month period facilitate the development of the market," he says.

Under the current plan, up to 12 channels would be made available to consumers on a trial basis in Dublin at a cost of €3 million

But after six years of waiting for DTT, consumers would be ill-advised to bet the house on it.

© The Irish Times

Transcript of RTE interview:

PRESENTER – CATHAL MacCOILLE
Well for the past few days on the programme, we have been getting lots of emails and discussing the issue of Broadband access in Ireland, or to be more precise the lack of it and many complaints, people expressing their annoyance and frustration over their inability to get a Broadband line. We had one email in overnight from somebody on Dawson Street, in Dublin 2, the very centre of the capital who was unable to get connected to Broadband. Which seemed like an extraordinary situation, just to note, if you don’t have a computer or if you don’t use a computer or the internet or whatever, please bare with us, because there are many people, the experts I would suppose you would say, Minister Dermot Ahern, Minister for Communication, Marine and Natural Resources. The experts say that it is people with computers who actually are the future of our economy, would you agree with that?

MINISTER DERMOT AHERN – MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS
Oh absolutely and in fact a lot of my colleagues, a lot of people in the Oireachtas know me as the Minister for Broadband, they are sick of me talking about Broadband, because I believe nearly more important than a road into an area, particular in a peripheral in this country, if you don’t have proper telecommunications there will be quite a clear digital divide. And this is one of the reasons, pushed me in the area of Broadband to basically intervene in the market and probably one of the ministers, in the EU who has intervened most in this market. I face stiff opposition from the EU commission and from other ministers in Europe. I took them all over to a conference here in Dundalk recently, where I showed and I think a lot of the smaller countries would also have this view, that there will be a digital divide. If you have areas in the country that can get Broadband, I know there are areas that cannot get Broadband…

CATHAL MacCOILLE
But Dawson Street?

DERMOT AHERN
I accept that and probably there are technical difficulties in that respect. But I would suggest to that person, that they should look at some of the alternatives. We set up a vote for Broadband website on my website, whereby people can go in and see exactly where they can get Broadband and from who they can get Broadband and also there is a trigger mechanism there, that if a certain number of people in effect vote for Broadband in a particular area anywhere in the country, we will then go to the service providers and ask them to provide Broadband in those areas.

CATHAL MacCOILLE
But you had to intervene in the market you say and why did you have to do that, because the normal government line would be the market will provide in all these places. There has been a failure has there not, at least that’s the indication we get from the people who have been contacting us. They believe that the market has failed them and the major market player in particular, Eircom has failed them, would you agree with that.

DERMOT AHERN
There is absolutely no doubt that the market will fail people in areas where it is not commercially viable for those companies to go into. That was…I was told that quite clearly by companies that they will not go into areas, where it is not commercially viable for them, because of that I thankfully got a sanction from the Department of Finance, I have to say a significant battle, not only from finance but also from outside finance, trade unions and private interests were against the government in effect investing in infrastructure in the telecommunication area. But we now have a situation where we literally have an alternative network up and running. You had George McGrath from E Net on yesterday, they will manage that significant level of investment has gone in to wrapping around high tension cables by ESB, where we now have two massive loops around the country, which will link all the MANs projects, these are the metropolitan area networks.

CATHAL MacCOILLE
Isn’t the problem though that it’s jam tomorrow isn’t that you are promising, you are saying well a lot of these things aren’t up and running, maybe you say Cork is up and running…

DERMOT AHERN
…No, no quite a number of them are already up and running and alloyed to that, that will give the service providers an opportunity to get into another network at a much keener rate, which ultimately will mean that there will be a huge level of competition. You have to remember when I became minister, to get Broadband was one hundred euros per month. And there were only three thousand on Broadband, today there are eighty thousand on Broadband and we are now at the EU average for price about thirty euros for the basic…

CATHAL MacCOILLE
…Well we are well below as you know the penetration rate and I know somebody in Paris for example who has had Broadband for five to six years at a rate of twenty two euro a year. He laughs when I tell him about access to email…

DERMOT AHERN
…I was in France over the last couple of years on holidays and you can’t get Broadband in peripheral areas and areas outside Paris and in deed even Paris I couldn’t get 3G. So there are difficulties in every country. We are about three percent penetration rate, the average is about five, we are increasing at…

CATHAL MacCOILLE
…One point seven six, was the last official rate…

DERMOT AHERN
…No, no three percent I had ComReg in yesterday, he told me the official rate is three percent, it’s now three percent…

CATHAL MacCOILLE
…one point seven six, we’ve all been told…

DERMOT AHERN
…And they also confirmed that it is increasing by four hundred and sixty percent. What is happening in Ireland is exactly what is happened in the rest of Europe in that we are….

CATHAL MacCOILLE
….Little later…

DERMOT AHERN
…Yes later, because, why because there was no investment going on because of the downturn in the sector.

CATHAL MacCOILLE
And the fact that the cable companies were in difficulties and they weren’t providing…

DERMOT AHERN
One of the biggest problems that we have in this country as opposed to any other country, particularly America and a lot of the successful companies in this regard is that, the cable companies and our country unfortunately at the time, were not in a position to invest in their infrastructure. But they are now, both of them have now agreed to invest in this infrastructure. I will give you an instance. We put a MANs metropolitan area network into the Longford area. There is a cable company there, that company over the years was in difficulty in relation to its services, because we put in that MANs, that company will now be able today provide Broadband to everybody in that area on demand.

CATHAL MacCOILLE
And it will be interesting to see what the take up is. We had another email from a gentleman in Tullamore this morning and I suppose it’s the tenor of a lot of emails we had, it’s Dr. Eddie Murphy who is a clinical psychologist. He says that Broadband is crucial for him, but in fact a telephone line would be quite good, because he lives in a new estate Carrigclunan and there is another estate there Ballyrean. He has had terrible problems as have had other people in that area. Tullamore a boom town, doing very well, going to be very important in that region in the future and they have had problems getting basic, basic infrastructure.

DERMOT AHERN
Well I would like to think that some of the service providers would take on board what you are saying in relation to that particular detail, nobody has contacted my department in that respect. In relation to Tullamore…

CATHAL MacCOILLE
…But do you worry about it…

DERMOT AHERN
…Of course I do, in relation to Tullamore there is a MANs project in there at the moment and people like him will be able to get services, particularly Broadband services, because the service providers will now be able to piggyback onto that infrastructure. What we have done is over the last two years, we have put in sixty five million euro, in putting in these metropolitan area networks for superior infrastructure to the existing one, fibre which will provide huge activity to those areas. I got consent to fund extra and we are not doing another ninety towns and there is also a group Broadband Scheme, which is a scheme designed for the peripheral areas, there is twenty five million euro available to communities, to small communities to get Broadband in their areas.

CATHAL MacCOILLE
Okay Minister Ahern, Minister for Communication, Marine and Natural Resources, thanks for coming in this morning.




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