Developing nations trump Ireland for broadband service
By Seán McCárthaigh
Friday, October 02, 2009
THE quality of broadband connections in Ireland is inferior to that of less developed economies like Turkey, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria and Romania, according to an international survey of high-speed internet connections in 66 countries.
The study ranks Ireland, which it brands "an innovation economy", in 37th place – a drop of one position on a similar survey in 2008. It also claims broadband services in the Republic are just about keeping pace with the needs of today’s computer applications.
It ranked Dublin as 123rd out of 240 cities under the same scoring system.
Although Ireland has the 12th highest penetration rate of any country with 82% of Irish households able to access broadband, the results suggest the Republic is poorly placed to benefit from next-generation web applications and services because of poor fixed and mobile broadband quality.
Research carried out by Oxford University’s Said Business School and the University of Oviedo, Spain, on behalf of Cisco, ranked countries using a "broadband quality score" which calculated marks on the basis of a number of criteria including download and upload speeds.
However, Ireland jumps to 16th position when the "broadband quality score" is combined with penetration levels. But the quality of broadband connections in Ireland remains inferior to that of many less developed economies including Turkey, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria and Romania. The only other EU member states with inferior broadband services are Italy, Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg.
The poor rate of development of broadband services in Ireland was recently highlighted by former Intel chairman Craig Barrett at the Government-sponsored Global Economic Forum in Farmleigh last month. Mr Barrett warned that Ireland’s ability to continue to attract direct foreign investment could be hampered by a number of factors including its broadband quality.
A spokesperson for the Minister for Communications, Eamon Ryan, failed to respond to requests for a comment on the survey.
Overall, the survey’s research team found that broadband quality is linked to social and economic benefits and that countries with high broadband quality had placed broadband high on their national agenda.
The researchers recommended that governments and policy makers set a national broadband agenda.
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http://www.examiner.ie/ireland/deve...r-broadband-service-102376.html#ixzz0SlWnDXLp
