Do I have time for this?
Thoughts from the vaults...
Friday 11 January 2008, 12:30 PM
Dublin abandons free city-wide WiFi plan
It appears that Dublin city council have caved in to pressures from the telecommunications industry, and backed down from their plan to have free WiFi throughout the city.
The quoted reason is essentially that the plan would be contrary to EU law on state aid, which on the face of it seems plausible. Just in case you fail to believe them, the fall back position is the usual "it wouldn't be financially viable".
The council, according to various news sources, is to press ahead with plans to provide free broadband to disadvantaged areas presumably on the grounds that the telcos don't have a fleet of armoured personnel carriers available and/or pre-pay broadband is not a product they intend to offer in parts of the city which are home to a population with a propensity for random violence and wearing pyjamas to the shops at three thirty in the afternoon.
So a plan which apparently wasn't economically feasible over the whole city will now be restricted to a few economically disadvantaged areas. Riiiiight.
For a country with an appallingly poor record on broadband take-up, and some of the highest prices in Europe for some of the lowest speeds, this is warning Ireland cannot afford to ignore. The Telco's have demonstrated time and again their ability to protect their own selfish interests at the expense of the greater good. We've known this in the IT Community for well over a decade, but we've collectively failed to convince the powers that be - both at national Government & at EU level - to do enough to redress the balance. Pity that.
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