| THE NATIONAL BROADBAND SCHEME Those of you who are unfortunate to be living in rural Ireland and have had to suffer the annoyance of “dial up” internet for the past few years are obviously swayed by the political pronouncements emanating from The Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources to the effect that by the end of 2010 every householder in Ireland will have a broadband connection. We would like to question the sanity of such pronouncements for the following reasons – the purpose of the NBS is to bring broadband to presently unserved areas of the country. Who decides what areas are unserved ? The Department does. To this end they have produced a map on their website which, if you click on the attached link you will eventually get to. We say “eventually” because the self same map is 2.08 Meg. and if you have the usual bad dial up connection which most rural people have, you can go and play a game of football while the map is downloading. If you click HERE this will bring you to the map (don’t hold your breath !) Having eventually managed to download the map you will see that most of it is red in colour and a small amount of green. The explanation of this is as follow: The red areas signify areas of the country that are presently fully served by broadband at this time (in the opinion of the people in the DCENR) The green areas are the areas which, in the opinion of the Department, are presently not served by broadband but will be the areas covered by the NBS. This is not our opinion by the way it is fact as stated on the map ! Now let us examine the situation here. If you live in a designated red area you will not be availing of the NBS because as far as the Department is concerned YOU ALREADY HAVE BROADBAND ! If you live in the green areas it is you that the NBS is targeted at . In the middle of December The Department announce that 3ireland were the successful tenderer for the NBS and that they would have the whole of the NBS areas covered in 21 months. Coverage will be by electoral division and they have nominated 1024 electoral divisions that need to be covered .there is a list of these ED’s on the 3 website. If you do not live in one of these ED’s then you will not get broadband as part of the NBS and you have to “paddle your own canoe” as it were. If you do live in one of the selected ED’s you still may have problems and these problems are as follows. 1. 3 have stated that they need to install 160 new masts to provide the service in rural areas. They will have to apply for planning permission for these masts. Will they get this permission quickly ? Highly unlikely. 2. 3 announced that there will be areas within the NBS ED’s that they will not be able to serve with their technology ie. about 10% and these areas will have to be served by satellite. They stated that their satellite partner was an English company called Avanti who would be using a brand new technology from a brand new satellite. At the time of writing the new satellite has not been launched and looks as if it will be sometime in 2010 before this happens. Of course all of this depends on a successful satellite launch which in this case is not guaranteed due to the newness of the technology ie. the rocket being used to launch the satellite has not yet flown ! 3. According to 3Ireland Avanti have said that they will rent space on an existing satellite in the meantime but, it would appear from the satellite footprint that a dish size in excess of 1.2 metres will be required for areas west of the Shannon. Planning permission is required for any dish in excess of 1 metre in diameter so more delays are on the horizon. Despite what their sales people tell you can you see a cash strapped company like Eircom upgrading any more exchanges particularly as they have told the Government that the remaining exchanges are “commercially unviable “ and as they will not be getting any money from the NBS scheme to do so ? IN THE LIGHT OF ALL OF THE FOREGOING WHY NOT SIGN UP WITH ABB TELECOM TO BRING YOU BROADBAND IMMEDIATELY NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE. IF YOU STILL BELIEVE IN EIRCOM OR THE NBS THEN OPT FOR OUR SPECIAL 6 MONTH CONTRACT AND OUR OFFER TO BUY BACK THE MATERIAL.IN THIS WAY YOU CAN HAVE BROADBAND NOW AND A SET OF OPTIONS FURTHER DOWN THE ROAD. |
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