Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Domains

Domain: irelandoffline.org

Stories and comments across the archive that link to irelandoffline.org.

Comments · 11

  1. Re:Great.....but by Celt · · Score: 1 · on 'NBC Nightly News' to Be Shown on Internet

    Broadband in Ireland has only started taking off within the past 3-2 years, before this you could get 512K connections but they were crazy expensive and you would have been VERY lucky to find a home with broadband.
    Irelands main telco (Eircom) was still selling ISDN as "hi-speed internet access" uptill 2 years and broadband uptake is devastatingly low in Ireland as we are 2nd last in the EU for broadband penetration.

    There are now 173,900 broadband connections in Ireland, so its far from high adoption.
    Further info http://www.irelandoffline.org/

    Regardless of all the above RTE still was offering streaming news back in 1999 and even further back then that...I can only confirm 1999 by using archive.org http://web.archive.org/web/19990429152727/http://w ww.rte.ie/news :)

  2. Fibre by Draoi · · Score: 5, Interesting · on Broadband Over Power Lines: Coming Soon?
    Here in Ireland, our national electricity org, in an uncharacteristic moment of foresight, bundled fibre optic cables along with its high-power lines. No RF bleedoff issues, no crossover problems, etc, etc. The network was already there & it was just a matter of phasing in the fibre when upgrading lines. They did this very, very quietly indeed!

    Link here for those interested.

    Now all we need is for our national telco to roll out ADSL in a meaningful kinda way ... :-/

  3. Broadband Prices in Ireland by Ferdinand · · Score: 1 · on Broadband Pricing Across The World?

    Despite promises from Government to make Ireland into a "digital hub" and the fact that 25% of the bandwidth which comes into western Europe comes through here, Broadband penetration is low, mostly due to the incumbent telecom, Eircom being a bit of a monopolist dinosaur.

    Things are changing though, as alternative infrastructure is in place and wireless is spreading fast. Prices are still exorbitant but expected to fall soon.

    Detailed pricing information available via the IrelandOffline campaign website.

  4. Count Yourselves Lucky by Milton+Waddams · · Score: 1 · on How Much Broadband Usage is Too Much?

    In Ireland we all get really low caps. I'm with IOL and I'm 'lucky" 'cause my cap is 8GB per month. ireland offline

  5. Here in Ireland .. by Draoi · · Score: 4, Informative · on Broadband over Powerlines
    ... we've already got broadband over powerlines - sorta! Our national electricity supply company is bundling fibre optic cables with high-voltage lines. They say;

    The network consists of 48 fibres (24 pairs, each pair capable of delivering 2.5GB.) wrapped around the ESB's high voltage network.

    Just as well, seeing as we're still waiting for ADSL

  6. Re:The actual ranking... by bfree · · Score: 2 · on DSL Rising
    Be very, very thankful! I'm in Ireland and we have no option to get cable modem and our part of the list looks like this!
    • Germany, 2800, 3.4
    • Iceland, 18, 6.3
    • Ireland, 1.9, 0.0
    • Italy, 700.4, 1.2
    • Luxembourg, 3.0, 0.7
    And to make matters even more sickening, from their entire list Croatia, Romania, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are the only countries with fewer lines than us, and were about the bottom of the lines per 100 aswell (4 million people, 1900 lines). For more on just what a miserable mess our internet access is in look at irelandoffline. I wish that errorcom.com still exited so I could show it to you, but guess what, you can find mirrors here, like this! In case anyone thinks any of this is funny just hear it from the horses mouth.
  7. Aww Crap! by daveirl · · Score: 0, Redundant · on DHTML Bug Found in Mozilla 1.2

    I've only got 56k and left it downloading Moz 1.2 last night when I went to sleep and now I wake up to see this! Damn!

    Ah well. The joys of living in a country where broadband isn't available

    Maybe One Day!

  8. The view from the trenches in Ireland by afflatus_com · · Score: 4, Insightful · on Free Internet Access Is Profitable In Egypt

    Here in Ireland, all dialup Internet access is this type of "free", in which you are billed for the phone time online.

    For the phone company and ISPs, this "Free" Internet Access Is Profitable In Ireland, also.

    Few people like it, and would rush to support the other side of the fence, in which there is a flat rate of about $40 euro a month for dialup, and that is it (following the typical unmetered approach available in most of North America). An option of pay-for-phonecall is good, but when the phone company colludes with ISPs to make it the only option available, it cripples the country's online growth.

    The largest ISP in Ireland is IrelandOnline(IOL).
    The nexus of protest against this forced free-but-pay-for-the-phonecall scam is logically located at IrelandOffline.org

  9. I'm in Ireland right now and I can tell you. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Linux Beer Hike Goes to Ireland
    Most Irish people consider Ireland the third world country of the internet.

    Bandwidth is anything but big, unless you have massive amounts of cash to spend, while other European countries have had even ISDN for years for cheaper then what it costs to hook up a 56k modem. :(

    If one thing comes out of this I hope it is that /. can show how bad it is here in net terms and force a change.

    You can learn more at the IrelandOffline website.

  10. Ireland Offline by bfree · · Score: 5, Interesting · on Broadband Obstacles

    Here in Ireland we have no consumer broadband. If I want to connect to the Internet I can:

    1. Dialup at up to 56k for $0.6 - $2 per hour + $15 per month line rental
    2. ISDN 64k for $0.6 - $2 per hour + $35 per month line rental
    3. ISDN 128K for $1.2 - $4 per hour + $35 per month line rental + $25 per month IP connection
    4. Leased Line (about $10k per annum for 128k)
    It's so bad the incumbent monolpoly telco launched it's Hi-Speed Internet service about 2 years ago ... ISDN (with a reduced installation charge)!! Then they annouced I-Stream (ADSL) with a launch of October 2nd 2001 ... HOWEVER they knew full well they would not actually be allowed to launch at that time, and simply announced the date (and pricing, but NO conditions and STILL no conditions) so as to ensure the service would be stopped and dragged through litigation by it's competitors and the regulators. In the meantime the jokers are raking in the cash while soiling the market for any other potential competitors (the main candidate being ntl who paid (at the time) the highest price per subscriber ever worldwide for the largest Irish cable tv network (which was semi-state at the time and had hyped it's price by talking about cable modem trials which were very small) and who are completly cash strapped having rolled out (allegedly) maybe a POTENTIAL couple of thousand nodes for cable modems (I have yet to find a single person I know who could actually avail of it).

    So now we have Ireland Offline trying to act as the voice of reason our politically appointed department of Telecommunications Regulations should be, but neither have any real teeth. Just to top it all off, after NTL bought Cablelink (cableTV) the next government sale came up, Telecom Eireann which was floated to the public with guaranteed share availability to each member of the public, and everyone encouraged (banks throwing money at them) to buy at the government set price. So Eircom was launched (of course they had to rebrand it) and proceeded to lose most of the country some of their hard earned cash (but not the country's "vice prime minister" who was/is on the board who claimed at the first agm/lynching after the floatation that "he had no money to buy with" HAHAHA (insider trading cough cough) HAHA). So after a failed floatition that lost most of their customers potential loyalty (most people even had to deal with a share split as the mobile division was sold off, so they ended up with some vodafone shares) the company went through an incredilby public bidding war resulting in the purchase of the fixed line division by a private group which now has a £2billion+ loan to cover .... so they are going to launch a cheaper service for anything .... I think not ... they will unbundle the local loop now (only 1 year after the EU deadline) and risk losing some analogue call revenue ... NO

    To anyone in this thread who has complained in any way about price, quality of service or availability of service I suggest you thank your lucky stars you aren't stuck with 56k (I'm actually extremely lucky that I availed of an offer a few years ago to get unlimited free off-peak net access for $25 per month from one of their competitors who no longer allow people to sign up AND who kicked of many users for over using the unlimited service!) and go search google for errorcom to see just how popular eircom are! I think GPRS will be my first "broadband" connection .... Go 2002!!!

  11. It'd be nice to have broadband to dump! by Alrocket · · Score: 2, Informative · on Dump Broadband, Dig Out Your Modem!
    I'm afraid we don't have this choice:
    IRELANDOFFLINE PRESSURE GROUP ANNOUNCES "BLACKOUT" PROTEST

    DUBLIN, IRELAND -- November 5, 2001 -- IrelandOffline, an independent organisation working to bring affordable Internet access services to Ireland, has announced the "IrelandOffline Blackout", a multipronged protest scheduled to take place on Friday, November the 16th, 2001. The protest has been organised to highlight the non-existence of flat-rate and broadband Internet access services in Ireland - services that make Internet access affordable and so promote the growth of Internet use, e-commerce, and competition.

    blackout.irelandoffline.org.