Rural Broadband
When Telecom Eireann was privatised, they became wholly focused on profit and keeping shareholders happy. As opposed to their previous role of doing what the government told them to do. This goes a long way to explain why rural households in Ireland are being totally ignored when it comes to the rollout of broadband in Ireland.
Eircom say that 96% of the country will be broadband enabled. What they should have said was that 96% of the Population will be broadband enabled. Ireland has a population of around 4.1 million people (according to the CIA world factbook) And approximately half of that figure live in the Greater Dublin area. So straight away half the broadband allocation goes on one small area. The rest of the country have to fight for whats left. Eircom have since enabled exchanges in many towns across ireland, but if you live outside the towns you are stuffed. We live approximately 6km from a broadband enabled exchange and still cannot get it. It does not help that we are on a carrier line with someone else in our village too.
However, there is a way round it.
We have just ordered received and installed a one way satellite DSL system from Germany. We are now achieving download speeds of approaching 2Mb/s and all for approx €40 per month (+ the cost of the dial up which must be connected at the same time) Download speeds of up to 24MB/s are available.
Click the link below to find out more.
Photos
