Why should I have to pay for someone else's high speed broadband?

[Purple]

If Dublin takes water from the Shannon then I assume everyone will have to pay for this.

The reality is that Dublin is the engine of the Irish economy and tax payers in Dublin subsidise the rest of the country. Since a large proportion of the people in Dublin are from other parts of the country that's a reasonable scenario. If people in the Shannon region don't want people who live in Dublin to take "their water" then should people in Dublin stop those same people from living in "their city".
People in rural areas should have access to broadband but it shouldn't include every nook and cranny and they should pay a reasonable rate for access to the network. And yes, it should be more expensive than in urban areas.

 

[T McGibney]

People in rural areas should have access to broadband but it shouldn't include every nook and cranny and they should pay a reasonable rate for access to the network. And yes, it should be more expensive than in urban areas.

But all these factors apply to the "proposal" launched by the Minister this week. So what's the big problem?

 

[fearbeag]

Perhaps the money for this plan is not coming from hard pressed Dublin Pockets after all.

It seems that Juncker has found €315 Billion under the mattress in Luxembourg and High speed broadband is high on the Christmas list for all from the Boyne to the Baltic and from the Reeks to Rome.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/1126/662603-european-investment/

While I find the respective Culchie / Dublin bashing amusing, I am not sure how productive it is.

A suggestion I would have is when they lay the pipeline bringing water from the Shannon to Dublin that they could possibly lay a Fibre optic cable or two in the same trench, would help reduce the costs a tad. A similar approach with our Wind energy would help.

That said I don't think that Broadband is the highest priority in rural Ireland.
The highest priority must surely be sustainable jobs so that we all don't have to go to Dublin.

 

[Purple]

But all these factors apply to the "proposal" launched by the Minister this week. So what's the big problem?

I don't think there is one.

 

[Padraigb]

... I don't think that Broadband is the highest priority in rural Ireland.
The highest priority must surely be sustainable jobs so that we all don't have to go to Dublin.

Broadband and job creation are linked. That, rather than any wish I might have to subscribe to Netflix, is what underpins the argument.

 

[Jim2007]

This is the type of development which is welcomed by those benefiting from it, but those of us who will have to pay for it stay quiet.

That is about the same as people in a rural areas asking for compensation for government decision that caused revenue generating opportunities to be placed in certain parts of the country to the detriment of their area! It would be total unfair to expect that you can benefit from those decisions to the detriment of your fellow citizens.

The alternative would be some kind of federal government like say that of Germany, where counties the benefited from such government decisions would be required to pay tax equalisation levies that would be distributed to counties that did not benefit from such decisions. The result would be that people in Dublin would be paying very high local taxes to compensate the rest of the country for the fact that most of the government is located there, the fact that the financial service centre is located there and so on.....

 

[moneybox]

As for electricity, if somebody wants to build a house in the middle of no where, then the ESB will charge them a hefty price for the supply.

yes,that is true. A a very very hefy price

 

[Time]

And continue to charge you rural rates thereafter.

 

[newtothis]

There is no big benefit to society in providing high speed broadband in every nook and cranny of the country.

Brendan

There are certain things that (so called) developed countries have: universal access to clean water, access to electricity, access to free education, access to transport networks (roads universally, rail and air to larger centres of population), the list probably goes on.

Whilst in each case you can say at the micro-level lack of any one of these isn't necessarily going to hinder economic activity, taken as a whole just look at the difference they make between countries that have these things and those that don't.

You can be quite sure that when each and every one of them was brought in, voices would have been heard: "why should my taxes go to pay for someone else's benefit?", or "why do they need that, can't they live just was well without"? or "all people use the roads for is to drive to the pub" or whatever. The benefit at the micro level is certainly huge for the individual, but experience has shown they also benefit everyone at the macro level, by virtue of being universally available.

In each case, the infrastructure didn't just happen at the behest of the modern God we call "the market": it was driven through at a political level, with the possible exception of the very early railway network. Similarly, adequate universal broadband has not just happened.

The only question I'd have is does high speed broadband fall into one of the key universally available infrastructures that are defining characteristics of developed economies, ones that have the ability to develop further and faster than those without it. For sure that's a debatable point, but if it's accepted that yes it is, then to achieve universality no doubt subsidies will be required to put it in place, as if they weren't it would be there already.

Arguments such as "why should I pay?" don't make a lot of sense to me: it's logically the same as saying the electricity, road, education and other key infrastructures should be retrenched to a core that can afford it due to population density. Do you really believe such a strategy would be good for the economy as a whole?

 

[Sophrosyne]

Well said, Newtothis.

All too often, what holds the country back is small-mindedness and failure to see relationships between issues.

 

[jdwex]

I think people should have a look at the submissions from the Telcos
http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyre...nstoCFIforpublication22ndOctober2014FINAL.pdf

It's pretty clear that it'll have to be FTTH. DSL is too distant dependent, VDSL dropping off rapidly after about 300 meters from a cabinet.

 

[darag]

I'm assuming this will not go ahead but if it does, one thing I can confidently predict is that at the end of spending hundreds of millions, there will be cheaper and more effective/powerful technologies available.

The government will either invest in something which is guaranteed to be obsolete by the time it's done like copper wires or else they will have to gamble on one of a number of up-and-coming technologies - risking ending up with an curiosity/oddity unless they are lucky enough to pick a winner. I don't feel confident that public servants in the department of whatever will do a better job in picking a technology winner over global IT and telecoms industries.

I remember calls for government to subsidise ISDN uptake; that would not have been a good government investment and neither would this be.

Somewhat pointless anecdote: I have a friend living in a remote house who always complained of terrible internet access until mid last year when they switched to 3.5G. Now they can watch all the youtube cat videos they want stutter-free as well use useful services like Skype. And when 4G arrives, they will have 10/20 times the bandwidth again. I know this may not be the majority of experiences but it seems to me that in some cases at least the problem is already solving itself without massive government spending. Satalite has already been pointed out as being available everywhere.

---
By the way SBarrett, I think you might be confusing MB/s (megaBYTES a second) and Mb/s (megaBITS a second). There are 8 bits in a byte and the Mb/s number also includes overhead (10% or 20%) so 20Mb/s and 2MB/s are pretty much equivalent. Because of the easy confusing, people are switching to writing Mbit/s instead of Mb/s.

 

[Sophrosyne]

I'm assuming this will not go ahead but if it does, one thing I can confidently predict is that at the end of spending hundreds of millions, there will be cheaper and more effective/powerful technologies available..

Why make that assumption?

 

[Jim2007]

I'm assuming this will not go ahead but if it does, one thing I can confidently predict is that at the end of spending hundreds of millions, there will be cheaper and more effective/powerful technologies available.

This will always always be true, as we can expect the technology will evolve. However it is not an acceptable excuse to do nothing! A solid investment in broadband technology today that allows people to enjoy very acceptable transfer rates for the next five years or more is not a waste of money nor a display on incompetence on the part of civil servants as you suggest, it is simply how investments in technology work.

 

[jdwex]

FTTH is pretty well future proofed as a physical medium.

 

[Leo]

I'm assuming this will not go ahead but if it does, one thing I can confidently predict is that at the end of spending hundreds of millions, there will be cheaper and more effective/powerful technologies available.

That's Moore's law for you. But if you waited for technology to be cheaper, we'd still be cooking over open fires and washing our clothes in a bucket!

The government will either invest in something which is guaranteed to be obsolete by the time it's done like copper wires or else they will have to gamble on one of a number of up-and-coming technologies - risking ending up with an curiosity/oddity unless they are lucky enough to pick a winner..

The most expensive component of this plan by far will be the installation of the physical transmission medium. This is going to be fibre, with probably some element of copper. Neither of these are going obsolete any time soon, there are no new transmission media that will replace these any time soon whereas there is significant work underway increasing the speed/capacity of copper and fibre. Wireless requires too much infrastructure and is way too expensive to get to 100% coverage, and the infrastructure still requires a very significant physical network back-bone to link it all together.

But I too have doubts about how likely this is, I think the competition rules could be the biggest stumbling block. Some of the drive behind this might be to up the percentage of the population who have access to a high-speed broadband service to attract more foreign direct investment outside of Dublin.

 

[Padraigb]

... I think the competition rules could be the biggest stumbling block....

Why should there be a problem with competition rules? This would be an infrastructure project.

 

[Leo]

Why should there be a problem with competition rules? This would be an infrastructure project.

Because it would be construed as state aid to commercial entities.

 

[44brendan]

I have a friend living in a remote house who always complained of terrible internet access until mid last year when they switched to 3.5G

I am living in a remote house with poor internet access! What is required to change to 3.5G darag?

 

[Padraigb]

Because it would be construed as state aid to commercial entities.

Infrastructure development is not generally considered as state aid. It might be different if one line were laid to facilitate a particular firm, but if it is a general provision available to all, that's not state aid to a commercial entity.