UPC are making progress:
30Mbps available in many areas. More upgrades to come adding Broadband to TV only areas.
120Mbps DOCSIS 3 on the way.
UPC bought a pile of junk from NTL and Chorus. But it should not have been like that.
NTL and Chorus had no money eventually. They both did minimal investment. What UPC is doing could have been done 8 years ago.
Chorus and NTL could have had Broadband on Cable before eircom or Esat launched DSL.
Chorus had Fixed Wireless Broadband (I think in 2000 or 2002) but lost licence due to lack of rollout.
Chorus and NTL could have had Digital on MMDS and Cable before Sky Digital launched.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_Ireland
| BROADBAND SERVICE
Work on a further expansion of the town’s services will commence this week with the laying of the new fibre-optic cable to provide broadband service to those areas of town where the biggest potential users are presently located. The route the cable-laying – which will inevitably cause further traffic disruption – will take in the industrial estates at Shandon and the businesses on the Youghal Road / By-pass, as well as Grattan Square, Bridge Street, Davitt‚s Quay and Mary Street. This will complement the Casey Cablevision service which has been providing a high quality broadband network, as well as a comprehensive TV network for the whole town for the last five years and which also covers outlying areas such as the fastgrowing Ballinroad. |
From http://archives.tcm.ie/waterfordnews…story12080.asp October 2003
Goverment did belatedly make it a condition of cable TV licence to provide Broadband but it was years too late and they kept the bar too low and also were not perpared to withdraw licence so kept extending compliance dates.
Eircom privatisation was exactly at wrong time and with no enforceable conditions and without prior separation of Network and Retail.
Ultimately lack of enforcement of regulations and lack of will of Government to implement their own recommendations was at fault. Not the companies.
The Oireachtas 24th March 2004:
| Define broadband as a service that provides at least 512Kbs connectivity and set a target of the widespread availability of 5Mps connections by 2006 and with a further suggested target of 10Mps connections by 2008. |
http://broadband.oireachtas.ie/Chapter02.htm
and
http://broadband.oireachtas.ie/Chairmans_Preface.htm
| The Joint Committee has concluded, for the Irish market, that speeds of anything less than 512kbs is not broadband but is in fact in a class known as 'mid-band'. This would include such services as ISDN connections and 124 and 256kbs DSL connections. In this respect the Joint Committee's definition of broadband differs from that in use by other groups and significantly differs from the definition currently to be found in Section 8 of the Finance Bill 2004. The Joint Committee believes that all connections at speeds of less than 124kbs, currently the majority in the Irish economy, have to be regarded as narrowband connections. |
We are sadly at about 1/2 the speed of the 2006 recommendation.