Comreg has to make the right choice for the future of broadband

According to this story, Irish incumbent telco eircom will obliged by the telecomms regulator Comreg to continue LLU network rollout, in spite of the fact that next-generation networks, where every cabinet will be individually enabled with faster 25 or 50 Mbit broadband. Now this is ridiculous.

LLU, the arrangement whereby competitors are allowed put equipment into eircom exchanges and connect directly to the customer’s line, is dead. There is no point in anybody investing any more money in unbundling local exchanges if a fiber-to-the-cabinet network is to be built. It will simply be impossible for an LLU operator which can offer maximum speeds of 10Mbps to compete with eircom or bitstream competitors who can offer speeds of up to 50 Mbps on the same piece of copper, for the same price. (Unbundling every individual cabinet is possible in principle, but in practice, it would be too expensive for a small operator to do.)
Comreg has to make up its mind now whether it wants to devote its energies to protecting the interests of consumers, who need NGN and need it rolled out economically and fairly, or whether it is going to spend its time protecting the interests of the various unconsolidated bit players in the telecomms marketplace, by tying the whole country into dead technology, slow speeds and an unworkable business model.

Barr Tribunal on-line

The Barr Tribunal report into the shooting a man by Irish police in Co. Longford was issued in PDF format yesterday. It’s a sad story about a mentally ill man who was shot soon after he emerged from his besieged house carrying a shotgun. Obviously, no one should ever walk towards a police cordon carrying a loaded shotgun, but there was no need for this man to die. According to the report, the man had bad relations with police after he was falsely accused of burning a mascot goat without any evidence, but the negotiator who dealt with him during the siege was not aware of these issues. There were many other simple mistakes made, and altogether they contributed to the incident’s unfortunate end.

I’ve made a copy of the 700-page report available (28 Mbyte PDF), as it is obviously of major public interest (if only because it cost EUR 18m to write) and doesn’t seem to be available anywhere else on the Internet.

Barr_Tribunal part1

Barr_Tribunal part2

Barr_Tribunal part3

Barr_Tribunal part4

Become a primary school teacher, online

Now you can study to be a fully qualified Irish primary school teacher on the Internet with Hibernia College. It only takes 18 months and the degree is recognised by the Irish government. If a company like Hibernia College with very few employees and no campus of its own can set up and offer courses leading to professional qualifications, then what hope is there for bloated universities and colleges, with thousands of staff and expensive buildings?