Recently in 3g Category

Over the last few months I've been talking a lot about the mobile web in other places, however the reality in the Irish market isn't that attractive. While it may be fine to navigate the web from your phone if you're on your local wireless network ie. piggy backing off your dsl or similar, the costs of browsing the web using one of the operators maybe prohibitive.

Adrian Weckler's latest blog post mentions some of the cost involved and they are not nice!

The Register reports that users of 3 Ireland's broadband services have been getting a rough time.

The report confirms some of the issues that have been reported by users on Irish ISP Test, Boards.ie and elsewhere.

The kind of issues facing users are caused by ISPs using NAT for their network, instead of providing dynamic IPs or even fixed ones. This can lead to IP ranges being blacklisted

Last year was an interesting year for the broadband market in Ireland. Early in the year there was the takeover (again) of Eircom, while in the autumn Smart imploded. What will happen in 2007? In the latter half of 2006 there were plenty of rumours regarding mergers and acquisitions in the ISP market. Since most of the ISPs are making a loss some level of consolidation is inevitable, though what form it will take is another matter. Rumours of who is likely to takeover Smart are still in the air, though there doesn't seem to have been any further progress on its supposed merger with Imagine. NTR owns a sizeable shareholding in Irish Broadband (IBB). While the company may have improved its customer service over the last few months it's still not profitable according to some media reports and maybe sold. Rumours abound that Clearwire maybe a potential buyer.