Broadband strategy - Plan does not lack ambition

Announcing the national broadband plan yesterday, Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte described broadband as “the rural electrification of the 21st century”.

He also announced a number of “ambitious” targets which, he said, would be met within the life of this Government.

Broadband may not be quite the great empowering and liberating force, especially for women, that rural electrification proved to be, but it is nevertheless an essential survival and development tool in today’s world.

And, to link the two projects, the continuing absence of a reliable, cost effective and high-speed broadband for a lot of Ireland, and not just remote rural areas, undermines a lot of the social progress made possible for an earlier generation by rural electrification.

Let us hope too that we do not have to wait as long as we did for electricity to reach all of the country before we can all enjoy world-class broadband services. Rural electrification was not completed until 1973 — Kerry’s Black Valley being the last piece in the mainland jigsaw — but some islands were not connected to the national grid until as recently as 2003.

The growth in fixed broadband penetration, according to the European Commission, is slowing down, leaving our take-up rate at 24.3%, which is below the EU average. We rank 17 out of 27 on the European league table so we have some ground to make up. However, we have above average uptake for mobile broadband.

Mr Rabbitte’s plan is very easy to support but if ambition is to be tempered with reality and experience, as it should be, it is hard to see how his pledge that every house in the country will have access to broadband speeds of at least 30 megabits-per-second (mbs) “by 2015” might be realised. After all 2015 is a little more than two years away. As if that was not daunting enough, he has promised over 40mbs to 70% of the country and over 70mbs to half the country. That’s just 28 months to transform the Irish telecommunications infrastructure. That ambition must be filed under “maybe, hopefully” as the suggested €175m from public funds matched by private investment seems a lot less than might be required. Nevertheless it is an entirely appropriate and justified national project that must sooner or later come to fruition.

At a moment when the possibility of privatising some of the services once proud if inefficient symbols of our growing independence is under consideration, maybe we should reflect for a moment on why our broadband situation is so very poor and frustrating.

When Eircom was sold off — disastrously as any early investor will remember — our broadband services became a way to make profit for private investors rather than a social project in the commercial sphere managed at an arm’s length by the State. Those ventures, mostly semi-state some not, led to all sorts of difficulties, monopolies, barriers to reform and the disastrous habit of buying solutions to all sorts of problems, especially labour issues.

Now, free from those shackles, broadband investors want to concentrate on centres of population that will reward their investment. They feel little or no social obligation. Imagine for a moment if those principles applied to water or electricity. These are the issues that define a society or even if there is any real commitment to the idea of society.