This is a cross post of a piece I have just posted on the IIA blog in my position as Chair of the IIA's Physical Infrastructure Working Group.
It is difficult to cut through the aspirational waffle in the consultation document and actually find tangible deliverables that the Government is committed to within a defined timetable. Surprising eh :-)
Firstly feedback on some of the Government Commitments:
1. A breakdown of the €435M would be necessary before any judgement
can be made on it’s relevance. Across 7 years this is €62M a year – a
very small amount in the context of investment in other essential
infrastructure. If this includes planned investment in Metropolitan
Area Networks(MAN’s), the National Broadband Scheme and Broadband to
Schools then there will be little left over for anything else.
2. This pledge of universal access does not address the cost issue
for people not serviced by more than one provider. It is difficult to
see this happening by 2010 given the probable need to build out
infrastructure to support it. And the speed target of 2012 of being
equal to “comparator EU regions” is unambitious – do we not want to
establish leadership in this area?
3. This aim is meaningless for the majority of schools who do not
fall within the HEANet/MAN infrastructure that will be used to deliver
this. How is it proposed to deliver a 100Mbits to those schools? And
phased means forever and ever ( or never).
This announcement happens 2 weeks after 18 school ICT advisers
around the country were told by the Department of Education that they
are being sent back to their classrooms from their secondment and
coincides with the ongoing absence of the National Development Plan
Schools ICT strategy (announced by the Government in February 2007). Is
the intended €252m investment under the Schools ICT plan now part of
the €435M?
www.independent.ie/national-news/cutbacks-bite-as-advisers-sent-back-to-classrooms-1421257.html
4. Value for money is vital – but must be balanced against the need
for intervention in an area which is speculative – in the same way that
we invested in our education system in the 60’s and 70’s which reaped
long term benefits in the Celtic Tiger era.
5. Hard to tell what this means.
6. The commitments on backhaul mean that the Minister will have to
establish an organisation (another quango?) which either facilitates
negotiations with a multiplicity of semi-state bodies or instead takes
a direct interest in elements of their assets. It would be optimistic
to say that could be hideously slow.
9. This statement is meaningless without some indication of what
exactly is meant by it. Is the Minister going to make fundamental
changes to the procedures followed, and responsibilities held, by
existing purchasing sections across all Departments?
Feedback on other areas of the document:
It is worth noting that a number of the commitments will mean
substantial initiatives being driven from this Department. This is the
same Department which lacks the basic manpower necessary to administer
the National Broadband Scheme – this information was obtained by the Irish Times and also Damien Mulley using Fredom Of Information.
From the documents obtained:
“Various recent developments
have given rise to extreme pressure on existing staff within my area .
. . again, due to the existing bar on recruitment of new resources to
the department, I have no civil servant working on the National
Broadband Scheme.” – January 2008 memo from Mr Spratt to Assistant
Secretary Peter O’Neill and human resources department requesting
additional resources
In a section on Potential Uses of next generation broadband (Page 6)
the issue of demand stimulation is covered. However there is no mention
of the build out of Government/State services here (although it is
referred to on Page 41). This is a tricky area and again would mean
leadership being shown and a need for cross-Department cooperation.
The section on International NGN developments is interesting in that
it does not include any reference to the existing European NGN networks
in Scandinavia (maybe because they have a lower population density than
Ireland and thus would not suit the case being made here?).
In addition only passing reference is made to the fact that in many
countries who are world leaders in this area (Japan is named here)
their broadband policies are only a small part of their overall ICT
development policies so that they have a strong context.
Unfortunately in Ireland we appear to be developing the broadband plan
first and the ICT plan (from which the broadband plan should be taken)
second.
In the NGN developments in Ireland section (Page 21) there is an telling omission. At the end of the third paragraph it says: “This
strategy of focussing on the residential market appears to reflect the
fact that, in general, the requirements of large corporate users are
adequately addressed through existing market mechanisms”.
Although this is merely commentary on the marketplace where are the
small to medium businesses in all of this? They make up over 97% of our
businesses and employ more than half of our private sector work force
and yet do not have access to the broadband services available to large
corporates. They make do with barely ramped up domestic offerings
coupled with indifferent customer service.
This is a market failure and it is not explicitly addressed here.
The section which analyses the Possible Government policy approaches
(Page 33) appears to make sense. However the context here is the budget
of €435M available – this does not actually allow for Approach 1
(direct Government support) to be considered as a option on cost
grounds so it is little surprise that it is discounted in favour of
“providing a competitive environment to spur innovation and
investment”. Considerably cheaper!
Also in this section the challenges around the business model for
the MAN’s is acknowledged yet there is no explicit suggestion on the
changes that maybe made to improve this situation.
UPDATE - consultation paper here
keith
Recent Comments