Go Ask Me Bollix

Minister Eamonn Ryan TD

Eamonn Ryan needs a reality check.

Speaking from Shanghai he quotes from the Comreg quarterly report that broadband subscriptions experienced

an increase of 19% on the same period in 2009

and that

This success is down to progressive policy on the part of Government and significant investment by the private sector. In the last three years almost €1.5 billion of public and private monies has been invested in Irish broadband.

I’m curious:

1. How much of that €1.5 billion came from public monies?
2. Why is he trying to take credit investment by private companies? Private companies invest in order to make profits – that is their reward, not a big pat on the back by Eamonn.

From the same Comreg report:

Mobile broadband subscriptions (512,381) have been the biggest net broadband contributor since Q1’08, increasing by 9.7% in Q1’10

What a cheek! To call mobile (3G) “broadband” is insulting. And how many of those subscribers are using 3G internet because of the shite rate of broadband penetration in Ireland? Of a total of 1,615,032 internet subscribers, 512,381 – 32% – are mobile. They can’t all be sales reps!

Let’s compare Eamonn Ryan’s auto-back-patting exercise to some recent figures on broadband quality by Ookla

They tell us that Ireland ranks:

• 48 out of 152 countries on download speed (behind information age giants like Andorra, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal, Iceland, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Poland, Malta among othes)
• 62 out of 152 countries on upload speed (behind Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Ukraine, Rwanda, Belarus, Faroe Islands, Macedonia, Uganda, Armenia, Honduras, Azerbaijan and others)
• 61 out of 63 on Quality of broadband (besting only Egypt and Bahrain)

So who is bullshitting us? Eamonn or Ookla? I know what my best guess is (not at all influenced by my previous post on Eamonn’s efficiency on broadband – which, by the way, looks unchanged today!)

Shame on you Eamonn!