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!

broadband.gov.ie screenshot

Minister Eamonn Ryan TD

That is the official website of the Irish government for disseminating information about broadband to members of the public. As Minister Eamonn Ryan proudly states (in his welcome message on the old site courtesy of archive.org):

Broadband is an important tool for everybody in the 21st century

Couldn’t agree more Eamonn – glad you’re on the case!

According to figures released to Fine Gael Senator Paschal Donohoe in response to a parliamentary question, the broadband.gov.ie website received 67,694 unique visitors last year. It is a shame negligent incompetent to allow that amount of traffic to just die – as any web dude or even SEO snake-oil vendor knows you do not allow links to disappear, let alone a complete site!

So how much does this crock of shite cost you? Well Paschal Donohoe has it all (bear in mind that these are only running and maintenance costs):

So who is visiting these broken sites? And how should it cost so much to maintain sites that nobody visits? And why are so many of them unmaintained or broken?

Maybe you should go back and ask, Paschal – the only question I have is:

How do I get on this IT gravy train?

Update 12/02/2010:

Damian Mulley has a story of a €4 million government website on his blog – I’m too stunned to comment.