Irish Examiner View: Broadband a hostage to fortune

The Covid-19 crisis may irrevocably change the way we work. Photo: Rollingnews

Even if the video-conferencing app Zoom is under scrutiny by New York’s attorney general for its data privacy and security practices it has made a valuable contribution to allowing millions of people work from home during this crisis.

Just as the value of such apps is appreciated as never before so too is the realisation that today’s world simply could not function without good broadband. We are absolutely dependent on being connected 24/7/365.

This, inevitably, brings into question the policy that allowed such an essential, life-sustaining utility to be privatised. There is a growing realisation that our new, post-C19 world will be very different to our old normal.

That world, as President Higgins said some days ago, is gone forever.

So are some of the values that informed it.

When rebuilding begins our broadband position should be reviewed with the intent of safeguarding, or returning, that vital utility in public ownership.

That will, in the full scheme of things ahead of us, be just a minor challenge.

Not to do so would create a hostage to fortune that will, sooner or later, cost us dearly.