adsl: January 2007 Archives

IrelandOffLine's Damien Mulley sent this out yesterday evening:

In the Irish Independent today, it was announced that the Department of Communications has killed off the group broadband scheme. Despite stringing-along groups since mid-2005 with the promise of another funding round and the Minister himself telling people in media interviews to apply for group broadband funds as recently as a few weeks ago, no new round has opened since April 2005. The third round was promised and promised and now it seems that those who were told that it was coming have been seriously let down by the Department. Despite not offering another round for almost two years the Minister squarely puts the blame on consumers for their lack of demand. > From the Independent: "In the two years since the Group Broadband Scheme was started, only 7,200 subscribers have signed up - the potential pool of subscribers is about 400,000 people. It will end following the second phase of the scheme. Mr Dempsey said yesterday that the take-up was very low and the roll out too slow" We do not believe that this spin on the facts is true, since all applications were refused since April 2005. If you have been part of a community group trying to get broadband for your area, or were about to set something up, I would very much like to hear back from you. Please email me at this address and include you area and whether you formally contacted the Department of Communications and whether your local broadband coordinator worked with you to prepare for round three of the funding. In the meantime as this is an election year I strongly suggest you contact every one of you local political representatives and explain your feelings about the broadband situation in your area and in the country as a whole.

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.