Argos at page 320 start of Guide to Televisions have
Digital switchover
The Digital switchover is coming to Ireland see page 373

Actually page 373 is an Advert, but page 374 has:
When is this happening
At the moment there is no confirmed date for the old analogue signal to be switched off. All we know is that it will definitely happen before the end of 2012,
so it is worth considering your options and preparing for the digital signal during 2011

I think this is a bit weaselish. But it’s clearly in the catalogue. Also EVERY TV in catalogue appears to have:
Irish digital compatible
or
Will not work with Irish Digital signals
you will require a digital set top box or
satellite source.

No confusing nonsense purely about Freeview as Tesco have!

Is it the first ever fine issued by Comreg?

Though for 3 it's small change. €1.5M might be a more reasonable fine for an International Telecom Company based in Hong Kong. Hutchison Whampoa. It's hardly Petty Cash.

How many years has 3 over stated 3G coverage or been mis-selling Mobile Internet as Broadband to home users, at a cross subsidy by voice?

None are contention or congestion free.

1. UPC can have very low contention depending how many are on the cable. Upstream congestion and Contention is inherently poorer than DSL (Eircom), but less people upload, so there appears to be less upload congestion.
2. Digiweb Metro is essentially UPC's technology over a very high capacity Microwave link instead of coax cable. So similar constraints but less capacity hence lower rolling cap to ensure low congestion.
3. Eircom could have no contention or very low contention depending on backhaul. There is no inherent contention or congestion in the technology.

1. UPC 8 meg €25.00 + 7.75("line rental*") + 6(Phone**) = €38.75

• 8Mb downstream; 1Mb upstream
• Typical Speed for 90% of users is more than 7.5Mbps
• No telephone line required. Needs UPC TV cable very close to Premises
• 120GB usage limit
• Phone Service extra €6 a month included in headline above. Cheaper calls than eircom? http://www.upc.ie/phone/tariffs/
• Very Low latency < 15ms

2. Digiweb 8M Metro €39.95

• 8Mb downstream; 1Mb upstream
• Typical Speed for 90% of users is more than 7.5Mbps
• No telephone line required. Needs LOS radio link to Mast < 15km
• 30GB usage limit (no excess charges, just throttle)
• Phone Service free 1st line. 2nd line extra. Cheaper calls than eircom. Free calls to other Metro users. http://www.digiweb.ie/home/bundles/metro-bundle/CallCharges27-11-08.pdf
• Low latency < 25ms

3. Eircom 8 meg NGB €29.99 + 25.36 = €55.35

• Download speeds of up to 8Mbps (10% of Users)
• Typical Speed is 3Mbps. 10% to 20% of users get 1Mbps
• Needs phone line installed.
• Usage allowance of 30GB
• Phone service included, calls cheaper than Mobile Prices? http://www.eircom.ie/About/Activities/VOP1_eircom_Value_Business_Multi_Line_Plans.pdf
• Medium Latency < 50ms

Hard to find non-bundle prices to compare call costs.

Other Differences

1. UPC can only economically service high density areas. They can't easily have zero congestion, just very low.  It's inherently asymmetric. The 30Mbps and 100Mbps services can't do very much faster upload.
2. Digiweb Metro can't realistically offer more than 12Mbps due to limitations of Radio spectrum. If Comreg licence and costs allowed and Line Of Sight possible it can do 30km range. If the 800MHz "Digital Dividend" band was used Metro like technology could offer 30km without line of sight using a TV aerial for radio link. It can't offer higher caps without a bad effect on congestion without a lot extra Spectrum from Comreg.
3. Eircom can only fix congestion not speed. In theory Eircom could offer slower symmetrical up to 4Mbps + 4Mbps, typically 1.5Mbps + 1.5Mbps. Eircom has the most variable speed. It's physics. They can't fix it: http://www.techtir.ie/comms/dsl-limits

    

Imagine WiMax (Nomadic/Mobile) and Mobile (O2, vodafone, 3 Ireland and Meteor/Eircom Mobile) are not broadband. They can't compete at all on reliability  latency, connectivity or speed with these packages.

* No UPC "Line Rental" if Digital TV ordered

** Phone is option on UPC, mandatory line rental on Eircom.

Best effort at comparison 2nd September 2010

<< On 16 June a unanimous parliament voted in favour of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a resolution aimed at protecting investigative journalists and their sources.

'We took all the best laws from around the world and pulled them together, just like tax havens do, in order to create freedom of information and expression, a transparency haven >>

Ireland has quite difficult Slander and Libel laws. Also discussion of various topics can be deemed "illegal" or "criminal".

There is fibre from Iceland to Europe and USA. They also have cheap electricity. Atmosphere cooling of data centres is viable too. So a good place to have your hosted virtual server or build your next Data Centre?

This shocking report is a result of a myriad of policy failings over the medium term since around 2001, not only in the lack of an overall balanced National Broadband policy but also because our only energy policy is to have the most expensive electricity in Europe, by design. Data Centres are the very heart of any functioning knowledge economy, they are where knowledge and data is stored and and from which the kowledge underpinning the economy is distributed.

Pricing Irish business out of these Datacentres may seem smart and green to some but this smart green policy will have disastrous consequences over the medium term out to 2015, not least to our GDP. Ireland Offline calls on Minister Ryan to address these deficiencies as a matter of extreme urgency. Only 2 data centres have opened in Ireland in the past 8 years, one in Cork and one in Dublin. No more are planned.

### ENDS

——————

1) Tariff Consultancy Website http://www.telecomspricing.com/ 2)

http://www.telecomspricing.com/news_detail.cfm?item=2592 “The most expensive average Data Centre countries in our survey are Denmark, Switzerland & Ireland (with rates per rack from 1,300 Euro to 1,050 Euro per month), with cage and 50 KVA pricing being significantly less (in Euro per square metre terms).” Ireland led Europe in the quality price and availability of its Data Centres in 2001. We have built only 2 since, one in Cork and one in Dublin. Data centres are huge computer warehouses where ones data is stored, even though we are supposedly a “leader” in the knowledge economy stakes.

ABOUT IRELANDOFFLINE

———————–

Campaigning For Affordable, Unmetered And Broadband Internet Access In Ireland IrelandOffline is a voluntary organisation consisting of home and business Internet users. Its brief is to campaign for the development of high-speed Internet access services and to promote innovation and competition in the Irish Internet marketplace. For more information on the organisation, please visit the IrelandOffline website at http://www.irelandoffline.org or contact us at info@irelandoffline.org. For urgent media enquiries, contact spokesperson Eamonn Wallace at 086 250 6350.

When eircom was privatised 82% had landlines. Now in 2009 66% have landlines in Ireland and 1/3rd of those are paid for by Social Welfare.

Well it can!

content is referring to  the Namespace used.

viz at the start of the Feed is the clue:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/">

This Guy explains it well Here is another good post
The Techtir.ie portal has the “posts” content filled in from Forum Posts via RSS by including content:encoded and CDATA parts in the RSS feeds, using only a fragment of PHP in the “post” via SimpleXMLElement.

Anyway type About:config in address  bar

put browser.download in the filter

This means items stay in window till you press Clear:

browser.download.manager.retention  1

This stops an automatic virus scan which is buggy:

browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone false

That fixed my Download manager Window

Disable Sites seeing your history?

In address bar About:config

layout.css.visited_links_enabled = False

use the Registry on Windows.

Start | Run | regedit

Find in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions

Delete bkmrksync@nokia.com

I told “Regi” once if I started a Blog, to shoot me. However I think of this more as a new Portal Interface to my long running website / web presences dating back to 1996. I’m gradually upgrading my content to a new look and feel suggested by this template.

However so as to not worry too much about backups, most of the content will be built off line and uploaded so that I inherently have a backup of the site content as it’s published. With the WordPress Content or “Cloud Based” such as Google Docs, you must have a different backup strategy.