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Too Little – too Late
More lies from Eircom’s spin-master
David McRedmond is at it again, misleading the country about the newly proclaimed Eircom goal of achieving “500 000 broadband connections by 2007” (he means by December 2007, that is in three years time from now).
McRedmond's spin, in his Newstalk radio interview, December 2004: “More importantly [500 000 connections] will get us to 40% of households having broadband connections by 2007.”
Professional spin-master McRedmond knows very well that this is a barefaced lie, but he thinks he can count again and again on the naivety of the media, the Regulator and the Department of Communications.
Of the current 100 000 broadband connections, 2/3 are business connections (according to Eircom). The figure of 66 000 business connections will surely rise to well over 100 000 by end 2007, leaving less than 400 000 Broadband connections for residential use. Of our 1 300 000 households, this represents a percentage of around 30% of households and not 40%, as McRedmond claims.
McRedmond's spin, in the Sunday Times, 5 December 2004: “That will bring us well above the EU average for broadband.”
Even assuming the EU broadband average will not rise as quickly as up to now, due to the entry of the new East European countries, Ireland will most likely not reach the average EU-25 level with having 500 000 broadband connections at the end of 2007, certainly it will not reach the EU-15 level.
The Department of Communications specifically excludes the new EU entrants when formulating the goal of reaching the EU average – is McRedmond counting on the average-lowering effect of the new post communist entrants?
Just have a look at the Dec 2004 Forfas statement, which compares Irelands broadband future with a group of 18 OECD countries:
• Ireland continues to compare poorly for overall take-up of broadband (DSL, Cable, Fibre to the Home) ... Since the last update report in November 2003, Ireland has slipped further behind both the average and leading countries within the comparator group.
• Norcontel estimate that compared to the average countries in the group (with 11% broadband take-up), Ireland currently has a broadband deficit of 360,000 connections. In order to catch up by 2007, Ireland needs to install this deficit plus the additional growth other countries are expected to experience during that period, equivalent to another 370,000 lines, bringing the total to over 700,000 connections.
Where does that leave the Minister for Communications who has set a very modest goal of achieving at least the EU-15 average by mid 2005? Have you given up on these goals? If so, please let us know. We are quite happy to scrap that goal, which we never took serious anyway. What do we tell the media?
Yours
Isolde, John and Mike
Resources:
The "new" Broadband goals are a fudge. See chart comparing the modest goals of the DCMNR March 2004 Policy Direction to ComReg (Ireland to achieve at least the EU-15 average end-user Broadband usage and availability) with the "new" Eircom goal of achieving 500 000 Broadband connections by the end of 2007. Noels's "challenge" to the industry of achieving 400 000 connections by end 2006 is just as ludicrous.
David McRedmond smears Irelandoffline
How the man who is financial director of the company that is putting down Ireland, that is putting down the broadband development in Ireland, smears the members of Irelandoffline, who have consistently talked up Ireland, talked up broadband Ireland and voluntarily work for Ireland not to be brought down to the bottom league of broadband countries:
If you are not aware of Irelandoffline's work visit their website www.irelandoffline.org.
Or have a look into or participate on the group's lively and extraordinarily well informed webforum on boards.ie.
Quote from McRedmond's Newstalk radio interview in Dec 2004
Newstalk: "According to the lobby group Irelandoffline Ireland is 18th of 21 countries in the OECD group in terms of its broadband penetration..."
McRedmond: "And can I just say in terms of these socalled lobby-groups, and I am always interested how many people are in those lobby groups.
And I am fed up of listening to people talking Ireland, talking down broadband in Ireland and talking down technology in this country.
Newstalk: "They say we are three years behind.."
"McRedmond: "First of all who they are and I don't know where they get their numbers from, and how they can say that we are three years behind. Let me tell you where we are. We met our commitment and we met it six weeks early. That is a huge achievement and that is a real reason for celebration. Not because a 100 000 is there, but because it shows that we meet our promises."
Newstalk: "100 000 is base camp.."
McRedmond: "Absolutely I think we have it's 102 000 customers, if you want the exact number, it was on the 19 of November, it was a 102 000 customers."
Newstalk: "But that is base camp."
McRedmond: "Now, what we have done, is we said now we are going to go and get to 500 000 customers."
Newstalk: "What will that do?"
McRedmond: "That will get us above EU average. So you are asking me about the European league table, that will get us a above the EU average by December 2007. And when I say to be above the EU average, I mean at that date. As much as we can project it forward and guess it accurately and all of those things, you know you have to look at it and we might have different views, but it will get us to 31 percent penetration of lines and more importantly it will get us to 40 percent of households having broadband by 2007."
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