Ireland: one of the fastest broadband speeds

The reality of Broadband Society is increasingly positive. It is the case of Ireland (in collaboration with Sarah Talty). This country has one of the fastest broadband speeds in the world and broadband in rural Ireland is gradually improving, but it wasn’t always this way. It has been 16 years since the first DSL connection went live in Ireland in 2001. 

In fact the earliest emails can be dated back to the 1950’s but the Internet only began being used more in the 1970’s. In the late 1990’s and for the first few years of the 2000’s in Ireland there were only dial-up connections in Ireland. That meant that when you used the Internet in your house, nobody could call your home phone. This was really very inconvenient. Alternatively you could get a separate line for your home phone but this was very expensive so few households would have done this. Broadband arrived in the early 2000’s and with it came the arrival of two separate lines, so therefore people could use the Internet and their phones simultaneously.

This changed the way that we used the internet and made it more accessible to everyone. When mobile broadband arrived to mobile phones, it changed the way the Internet was used by people and people began to use it a lot more frequently as they could use it anywhere and on the move and not just in their homes.

Ireland itself has gotten a great reputation in recent years in terms of broadband. This is mainly because of our high speeds and also because Ireland is where many big multimedia corporations have chosen to be the base for their European operations. These multimedia corporations include many big names everyone has heard of such as: Google, HP, Apple, IBM, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Pfizer, GSK and Genzyme. With so many massive media outlets calling Ireland home you think that our broadband would be unrivalled. But this is not the case. While we do have world-class Internet speeds in the bigger cities of Ireland, many of the rural areas of Ireland are still without any broadband. In fact the rural regions of Ireland have ranked as some of the worst served broadband regions in Europe.

In today’s world broadband is a necessity for many, especially when it is used as a main form of communication and business and in having a less than satisfactory level of broadband, it means the people of rural Ireland are suffering. Internet nowadays seems like it should be a basic human right. Not having access to broadband also closes the inhabitants of rural Ireland off to both interactions with people and business deals. This can lead to isolation and also to people moving out of rural areas to urban ones because it is a necessity for their work and business.

The concept of a broadband society as discussed in White Book (Delors) 1993, means that with the introduction of broadband has come a completely new orientation of jobs. Without a proper broadband connection these kinds of jobs are not possible. They are also left out of modern conveniences, such as Internet banking. Delors also discusses the idea of the introduction of broadband introducing a new environment. Technology saves many natural resources, which can lead to greater sustainability. For example when you think about keeping in contact with people before broadband it was always through the mail, whether it was for personal or professional use. Now we mainly use emails and social media to contract each other. This development has saved imaginable amounts of paper and human resources in the past 16 years. Broadband has improved all of our lives drastically in a short period of time and it isn’t right that many rural areas in Ireland still suffer from a bad Internet connection. It is a serious problem and the government have tried to deal with it in the following way.

To try to combat the problem rural Ireland has with their broadband, Ireland introduced the National Broadband Scheme in 2012. The Scheme expired under its contract with Internet provider Three in September 2014. This scheme had the aim of providing 70Mbps - 100Mbps to more than half of the population by 2015. It still operates today by providing broadband to the rural areas, which are covered under the National Broadband Scheme on a commercial basis.

An updated version of the National Broadband Scheme was published in July 2015. There are plans to implement a new National Broadband Scheme. But according to Newstalk Ireland it was revealed in October 2016 that the Scheme would be delayed. “In a post-budget press conference, however, Minister for Communications, Denis Naughten, spoke about the National Broadband Plan and signalled further delays to the commencement of the process.” For the sake of the inhabitants of rural Ireland hopefully the Scheme will be back up and running soon.

In 2015 in a study carried out by networking firm Akamai it was found that Ireland has the seventh fastest broadband in the world. We surprisingly outranked both Germany and Britain. We were just behind South Korea and Japan in their speeds. You wouldn’t think this would be the case, especially for a relatively small island off Europe.

In Ireland we are lucky to have many different broadband providers: Sky, Vodafone, Virgin Media, Eir, Pure Technology, Digiweb, Magnet.ie, Q Sat, Europasat and Imagine.

With so many different broadband providers in Ireland, the providers have to be competitive to gain business and attract consumers. The prices are therefore very competitive and are actually very affordable. The variety of providers we have in Ireland also means that the details of the broadband plans they offer vary so therefore you can buy a broadband plan to suit your needs.

We analyze international broadband evolution (in this case, Ireland) in this blog, in Research Group about Digital Journalism and Marketing and Broadband and in Research Group on Innovative Monetization Systems of Digital Journalism, Marketing and Tourism (SIMPED), from CECABLE,  Escola Universitària Mediterrani of UdG, UPF and Blanquerna-URL, in Twitter (@CECABLEresearch), Google+, in the group of LinkedIn, in the page of LinkedIn, in the group of Facebook, in Instagram (CECABLE), in Pinterest and in this blog. We will go in deep in the XXII Cable and Broadband Catalonia Congress (4-5 April, 22@, UPF).