Eircom engineer, Larry Doyle, feeds fibre broadband cables through a cable blowing machine to reach other installers in Knocklyon, South Dublin in 2012
The national broadband plan is supposed to provide high-speed internet services to 542,000 of the most isolated homes and businesses in Ireland.
This will require the laying of 110,000km of cable and cost upwards of €1.5 billion – an average of 200 metres of fibre and nearly €3,000 per home or business. By comparison, the cost of building the long-delayed children’s hospital is a paltry €1billion.
The return on this enormous broadband investment is predicted to be so low that so far no private company has sustained confidence that contributing even a third of this amount would provide a profit.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the cost of attending to the needs of people in remote areas is considerably higher than attending to the needs of those in more densely populated areas. Ireland has, of course, the highest percentage population in the EU living in remote areas.
The 2016 census found that 38 per cent of Ireland’s population live outside of settlements of 1,500 people or more, compared to the EU average of just 22 per cent. The number of people living in such remote locations actually increased by 258,000 (17 per cent) between 1996 and 2016.
Ireland has not been subject to a “bungalow blitz” in recent decades, so much as a “bungalow apocalypse”.
When we consider the poor standards and high costs of Ireland’s public services, the highly scattered nature of our population must be a very significant factor indeed.
Those Scandinavian countries whose public services we most admire have as little as 13 per cent of their populations living in such isolation. This enables them to concentrate their funds to provide superior services in a limited number of locations, while we struggle to provide even basic services over a greater area.
Perhaps the State should reconsider its traditional approach of encouraging isolationists with grant and subsidy, and instead incentivise more sustainable living patterns.
Withholding subsidised broadband might be an easy place to start. The savings could fund a second children’s hospital in Cork instead – after all, if people really want Netflix that much, they could just move to a town with fibre.
John Thompson,
Phibsboro,
Dublin 7.
National broadband plan (Irish Times letters page)
Rollingnews
exactly
You have a fibre connection already, don’t you?
100% agree, JT.
The reason Scandinavian people don’t opt for remote isolated living is well, because about 1/3 of it is inside the arctic circle
+1
Cutting the massive subsidies to isolated areas is better for both the environment and the state. And in the long run for the isolated people themselves, too. There would be a lot to be gained for everyone by having our rural population more concentrated in villages than in one off bungalows.
A property tax based on square footage of the property, rather than property value, would also help in this massively.
“A property tax based on square footage of the property, rather than property value, would also help in this massively.”
Ridiculous
How so? Is it fair that people living in McMansions in the middle of nowhere, which cost an awful lot more to service, are paying a lot less property tax than someone living in apartment in Dublin?
The cost is the location and demand for the land not the area of the property or area of land on which it sits. The person who built the property services the property, they take the cost. Most one offs have their own water and sewage, and internet.
By the logic of this posts so far the person who lives in the apartment should move somewhere else if the property tax is too high for them.
If I’d said the opposite you’d have argued against that, because that’s all you are.
An objector with no solutions.
Boom.
Conversation over.
“The person who built the property services the property, they take the cost.”
– they don’t, though. Electricity and internet cost a lot more to supply to rural households than urban ones, yet both sets of customers pay the same rate. Ergo, urban consumers are subsidising rural consumers.
Re-read the last 2 words.
I ended the conversation.
You are clueless but an expert in every post here.
Goodbye.
I will continue to post in a thread if I like, with or without your permission, ta very much. If you don’t want to respond to it, don’t respond to it.
“The person who built the property services the property, they take the cost. Most one offs have their own water and sewage, and internet. ”
This is 100% incorrect, and is the whole point of this broadsheet post. The one-off rural households are being heavily subsidized in service provision.
If things were left up to the market there would be rather a lot fewer one-off rural builds because it would be prohibitively expensive for most property owners to supply their own power, water, broadband, telephone lines etc to them.
Rog_G, keyboard warrior, troll and internet hard man, I’ll be rolling with the latter, byeeee
Now now – it’s not my fault you can’t put forward a convincing argument, no need to resort to name-calling.
Zaccone,
They dont supply water
They dont supply sewage
They don’t supply Internet/Phone (unless requested amd which is mostly useless internet wise, no one uses landlines I know of unless they are in a 0 coverage area which is rare). We have no hard line to our house for phone.
The roads are existing and nearly un-maintained, which you’d know if you lived in the country outside of a town.
They supply power, through a private utility.
We pay property tax…for what service? The road? Which has a house every 40/50 meters and are in the same position as ourselves providing all our own services privately outside of power?
‘Dubliners are subsidising their country counterparts in the funding of local services by up to 50 times, an analysis by Dublin City Council shows.’
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/consumer/dubliners-get-up-to-50-times-less-funding-than-rural-dwellers-1.1730130
This article is from a couple of years ago, but I am sure there are plenty of more recent ones.
@Increasing Displacement Most one offs have their own water and sewage, and internet.
In 2006 (so the data is quite old) CSO says there were ~1,450,000 permanent homes. 915,000 in towns, 555,000 in Rural areas
1. (water) of these 252,000 had public mains, 95,000 Local authority group scheme, 45,000 private group scheme, 140,000 other private source.
most have public/local authority water
2. (sewage) of these some 400,000 of these were classed “One-off houses (Number)” ie detached houses in rural areas with an individual septic tank or other individual sewerage treatment system.
most have individual sewage
3. (internet) ??? your own makes no sense. it has to be connected. either wired or wireless.
wrong, just wrong
66% wrong
My 75mb/s Internet has to be wired does it?
Makes no sense does it?
Yeah good man.
Are you and Rob the same person?
Both seem equally repellant
I could not agree more.
“…. have been complaining about the process since Eir and the government concluded a deal to split the original rollout map….”
https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/major-blow-to-national-broadband-plan-as-esb-and-vodafone-pull-out-36170575.html
no comment.
What broke this was handing Eir the pick of the litter and left the rest, the most difficult, for someone else.
Handy for Eir and the Gov when they wanted to sell it off I suppose.
Everyone doesn’t need fibre to their door. 4G stations would suffice providing 20mb/s plus when not over saturated.
Not everyone wants to live on top of someone else in a noxious city environment.
For example we (like ALL of our neighbours) have my own water supply, own sewage and 4G internet via a aerial on roof. Hoping to become power independent in the next 5-10 years.
I got no grant.
I got nothing bar the powerlines and road past the house. Which were already there pre-build.
Typical city slicker moronic post.
+1 Not to mention the huge Council levy fees that have to be paid when you want to build your own house.
It costs a lot more to service the roads leading to your house.
It costs a lot more to deliver electricity to your house (power lines are not just built and left there; they need to be maintained).
It costs a lot more to deliver the post to your house.
‘Typica city slickers’ subsidise you personally in all of these areas; surely it is not too much to ask rural dwellers to meet close to the real cost for just one of the many services they receive?
not to mention that plenty of folk living out the sticks are far less likely to take a stroll to their nearest centre of population (because it’s too darned far) for a pint of milk, a pint of beer, or a meal in the local Chinese restaurant.
However Stalinesque it sounds, if you rounded up everybody living in the countryside and had them all living within walking distance of the nearest centre of population, the shot in the arm for small businesses would be huge.
Dunno what you’re smoking but everyone I know goes to the city on a weekly basis for shopping and food.
You don’t seem massively chilled out, considering you sound like you’re living The Good Life. Moronic this, city slicker that. Have a slice of relaxing cake and a nice big hug.
Great comment thanks you really added a lot fair play well done hat comes off to ya
Electricity is privatised. Your local property tax doesn’t pay for pylons, it pays for local government services, roads and so on.
Why would a millionaire in dalkey be happy when his €600 LOCAL property tax gets redirected to service country bumpkins in Roscommon?
Property tax is a scam. This government have taxed, taxed, taxed again. Before this tax, our income taxes paid for council services. Did we see any reduction in them to offset the property tax? Have we noticed and change to the services?
The water charge scam was another attempt
Hmm… not really.
Some of us remember rates – this was a tax paid on property that went to the councils. But this was abolished.
Then there was Residential property tax – this was a tax paid on property that went to the councils. But this was abolished.
Rural dwellers pay a higher price than urban dwellers for electricity.
Genuine question? Do refuse trucks service your house or how d’you get shut of garbage?
They do, a country private service does it. I pay for it.
I put a small refuse bin out once a month.
Rest is composted or recycling.
Drive to the dump
Ethnic cleansing of the rural Irish?
Sure start another Famine why don’t ya?
In fact the letter is suggesting the urban dwellers continue to subsidise them in everything, only at a slightly lower rate than before.
Ah, if only people had paid attention when it was pointed out that spreading everyone out in low-density one-off housing and ribbon suburbs rather than concentrating developments in existing villages and towns and building up major urban centres would make infrastructure more expensive to build and maintain God I hope people are learning the lessons in this HAHAHAHA.
Why not come at the problem in another way?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/27/welsh-village-residents-dig-15-miles-trenches-faster-wifi-michaelston-y-fedw?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Similar solutions have been developed throughout Europe but are not permitted in Ireland. Ever wonder why?
I’m sure if people living in one-off houses offered to dig the trenches and supply the fibre optic cable, no-one would object. Instead, they are looking for a dig-out from urban dwellers, yet again.
Simple have Dublin pay a couple of Billion for water from the Shannon, it would easly
cover the cost of Fiber Services to the remotest part of Ireland, even the ESB are
going to be compensated for the loss of water to the tune of 400 million. they are
already being paid for the loss of water extracted on the Liffey at Leixlip hydro station.
Dublin has 28% of the population, but generates 55% of income tax and VAT, which is then distributed among our less well-off brethern in the provinces. So, consider the Shannon water a token settling of the accounts ;)
Why does it need to be fibre? Could they not make use of a wireless solution? I’ve got a Virgin Media sim card, 25 quid a month, I’ve had it out in a fairly remote cottage up in Leitrim a few times and it’s been grand.
I remember someone saying the same thing about electrification.