12 Responses to “Internet Scrappage Scheme”

1. Damien Mulley on April 29th, 2006 3:46 pm

   I’d come from a different angle. Make it unprofitable for ISPs to sell dialup. Right now eircom make a lot from wholesale flatrate dialup. ComReg has not re-examined the wholesale pricing in something like 3 years I think. Despite certain groups asking them to do it they threatened they might increase wholesale prices so maybe better not to ask. Right yeah, wholesale costs are plummeting in Europe. Even the resellers make a tidy profit from dialup. At €3 an hour for some dialup products it makes sense for ISPs to keep people on dialup.

   The average Internet bill in Ireland is now €36 a month. Many ISPs now sell broadband for €20 for a 1mb connection. If any IIA members pay more than €15 a month on dialup then they should seriously consider moving to broadband as with the always-on aspect it means they can auto-update all their pcs for security patches, servicepacks and anti-virus updates.

   It might be worth surveying everyone in the IIA so see what they use and how much they spend.

   No need for tax cuts or incentives. Just force down wholesale costs and see the ISPs do the work of moving people over. Anyone that can’t be moved to broadband should have to be given a flatrate dialup package that costs no more than €15 a month.

   Like in Northern Ireland where if BT cannot give someone broadband via dsl they have to give them wireless or satellite but cannot charge them more than £29 a month. Great incentive to make sure people can get broadband then.

2. Damien Mulley » Blog Archive » Pay people to move from dialup to broadband? on April 29th, 2006 5:59 pm

   [...] Over on the IIA blog they suggest an Internet Scrappage Scheme to move people to broadband from dialup. I don’t think such an idea makes much sense although since the DCMNR are just throwing money at the fibre rings project it wouldn’t surprise me if they went for it. Moving people to broadband from dialup won’t happen until the ISPs stop making money on dialup and right now they make collossal money on it. Read my comments on the IIA blog. Technorati Tags: blogs broadband dialup iia ireland irish irishblogs [...]

3. D on April 29th, 2006 7:08 pm

   You want to get paid to write a blog for a non profit orgranisation. Doesn’t sound right.

4. Bernie Goldbach on April 29th, 2006 9:49 pm

   Dial-up scrappage seems to consumer-oriented and not business-oriented. I think there’s a business proposition in the form of the community MANs laid down throughout the country.

   I think the IIA should take a position on the generous funding given to the broadband MANs. Determine the amount of money sunk into the MANs. Determine the amount of traffic on the MANs. Ask the government why local businesses cannot be given free connection to the MANs through grant assistance. Fence the money needed to put local businesses onto local MANs. Local business would figure out how to light their MANs, perhaps with shared extranet bandwidth.

   It’s questionable whether there is *any* value for money in the heavily-subsidised MAN project. Given that the taxpayer funded the fibre, why not let businesses generate more taxable revenue by connecting free to the MAN infrastructure.

5. watty on April 30th, 2006 9:31 am

   The Ol’ Demand Red herring!

   If access is dramatically increased and all Irish goverment info & forms can be done on line and more local business have online ordering etc then demand will look after itself.

   Only a worthwile idea for N.I.

6. Michele on April 30th, 2006 12:46 pm

   The Italian government invested heavily in encouraging internet and pc usage and subsidised pcs and broadband connections.

   As for the MANs .. How many of them are actually online? I’ve got the fibre outside my door here in Carlow, but I can’t actually do anything with it

7. Damien Mulley on April 30th, 2006 1:27 pm

   80M so far payed out for MANs, another 90M to go. Circa 4k customers have gotten broadband that has travelled over a MAN at some point.

8. keith bohanna on April 30th, 2006 8:30 pm

   Go for simplicity Fergal just like you suggested. We ran one in Kilkenny CEB a long time ago – IRP100 against a bill from an ISP paid up front for a years dial-up. We had a lot of take up by SME’s who were prompted to act. And it was structured so it was very cheap and simple to run.

   Such a scheme could be delivered throught the CEB’s and I believe would make some difference to the dismal take up rates for DSL even in areas where it is readily available.

   keith

9. Damien Mulley on May 1st, 2006 11:23 am

   Well actually if you use the true figure of availability we’re in line with a lot of other countries. Trouble is they have it available to all the population, not 70%

10. keith bohanna on May 1st, 2006 12:11 pm

    Hey Fergal

    how about a debate on this topic – “Most Irish SME’s don’t dive a **** about broadband”. I’m there for the proposers

    keith

11. keith bohanna on May 1st, 2006 1:15 pm

    dive being give!

12. Ken McGuire on May 2nd, 2006 11:12 am

    I’d be all for it. I looked after the changeover for a company I was working for last year – took a bit of lobbying on my part to get them to change – but change they did, and haven’t looked back.

    Their server was set to dial out at regular intervals, all at peak times (8:30 to 5pm) to gather and send mail, making it also financially impractical when dealing with large attachments, drawings, PDFs etc on a daily basis.

    The change to broadband has effectively knocked a few hundred euro a month off the bills, cut the line rental and is much more manageable.

    If companies could avail of a free setup or subsidised broadband costs if it is their first time on broadband then I’d be all for it. There are people and businesses out there paying outrageous costs for pointless dialup or subscriber-based dialup services when they could be paying a small fraction of that on a BB service.

    Financially, why they don’t make the move at this stage of going, is beyond me.

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