Dear Eamon,
I believe that you and your colleagues in Fianna Fail have trashed out a program for government which mentions the idea of 120,000 jobs in the green and smart economy. I’d like you to consider something which you have responsibility which is vital to this. I’m talking about broadband. Again.
You must be tired of hearing about broadband, and how poor our penetration rates are, and how low our speeds are. YOu may even point at 3 Broadband and say they will sort everything out. I’m afraid this is nowhere near good enough.
I have just blown a weekend of my time configuring a brand new computer for my mother. This is her third computer. She is on dial up internet because she has a split line and Eircom and every other landline telecoms provider have told her that her line is not suitable for broadband internet. Although she is not a power user like I am, this is increasingly difficult given that she receives photographs via email, cannot use any of the interesting streaming services like Youtube, online radio, or RTE iPlayer. Nor can you effectively set up a brand new computer with out wanting to torture the senior management of Eircom.
Now I could go into the details of the mobile broadband side of things also but that’s by way of an irrelevancy. If you want to great 120,000 green and smart economy jobs you will have to implement a national broadband network that delivers 20Mb services nationally at the very least. And if your telecom provider friends scream about how much it costs, then you’ll have to find some way around that problem. I don’t care how you do it but broadband is like electricity now. It’s a national imperative that everyone has it. Particularly for those green and smart economy jobs.
You’re in charge of communications in this country. Sort it out.
regards
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