Beam us up, like Scotland
Broadband facilities are needed for the e-mail, electronic data interchange (EDI) or the Internet, which were used to generate 20 billion of business, or about one fifth of their turnover, by 5,000 Irish companies which took part in a Central Statistics Office survey in 2002.
These methods cannot be used by at least 50% of the Irish population, because they live in areas still served by old eircom phone lines which cannot carry heavy volumes of electronic information. The figure is much higher than 50% in rural Ireland, and likely to stay high for some time, because we are rated third last in a list of 21 developed countries, in the race to put fast broadband electronic communication in place throughout the country.
