Getting up to speed Mayo ranks a poor seventh among the 26 counties for broadband penetration, so what are the options available to those who want to get connected? Neill O’Neill reports News Feature Neill O'Neill AVAILABLE figures from the Central Statistics Office show that of the 21,563 households in Mayo with a computer in 2006, only 4,371 had a broadband connection. At the time of the last census the number of households in the county with no PC numbered 20,840, while 13,169 of those with computers accessed the internet through a connection other than broadband.
In terms of broadband, penetration and availability should not be confused. When comparing Mayo with other counties, and taking into consideration its large geographical area and dispersed population, it is inaccurate to say that broadband is widely available here. Similarly, and despite the level of uptake in towns where broadband is available, broadband penetration in Mayo stands at just 10.1 per cent – placing Mayo seventh in a league table among the 26 counties of the Republic.
Both this low uptake level and the lack of availability are possible explanations for why 24,113 householders in Mayo said they have no access to the internet.
The Government claim that only ten per cent of the Irish population do not have access to broadband and are seeking to address this through the National Broadband Strategy. However, a Department of Communications broadband coverage map highlights that a vast swathe of county Mayo does not have broadband – one of the largest single areas in the country.
There are four options for accessing broadband available in Mayo, but depending on where you live you are restricted to all or one of these.
Types of broadband
DSL The most common form of broadband is Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), which is the standard connection many people have through their phone line. The general rule is that within three-and-a-half kilometers of an activated Eircom exchange you will be able to avail of DSL, and bundle broadband with a package for phone calls. The price of this will depend on the download speed, with ‘Eircom Home’ packages ranging between 1 megabit per second (Mbps) and 3 Mbps.
Most landline services are Asynchronous (or ADSL), where download and upload speeds are different, with upload generally much slower.
With the opening of the Eircom network customers now have a choice of operators with current options including Eircom, BT, Perlico, Imagine and Digiweb. Each company offers different broadband packages, speeds, bundles and deals, and switching operator simply means that you are billed by a different company each month. DSL is the most common form of broadband connection in Mayo.
Wireless Given the vast rural expanses of Mayo, many Eircom exchanges are not broadband activated and DSL is therefore unavailable outside many of the larger towns. This is because the cable infrastructure is often old and incapable of carrying the information, and because it remains economically nonviable for a telecommunications company to invest money in an area where the return is so limited.
In these instances wireless broadband has become a saviour to many. Westnet is a Castlebar-based company specialising in the provision of wireless broadband. The company buys broadband off the national network and sends it wirelessly from Galway to their central mast in Sraheens outside Castlebar.
They have built a network around the county which covers parts of Mayo where broadband was previously unavailable, by placing repeaters (two foot antennae) in places where gaps exist in the Eircom network. The signal is then sent wirelessly to the repeater and any location within a six-mile radius of this, that has a clear line-of-sight, has a good chance of being suitable for a connection to the Westnet network. The connection is completely independent from the phone line, and offers customers always-on broadband with residential speeds of 512 Kbps – rising to 2 Mbps for business connections.
The company has over 1,250 subscribers and 80 access points, though the network continues to grow monthly as more access points are added. Customers are at present connected in the following areas: Farnaght, Westport, Knockrooskey, Islandeady, Liscarney, Rossmoney, Castleaffy, Rosscahil, Kilmeena, Mulranny, Turlough, Ballyvarry, Park, Ross, Ballyheane, Balla, Facefield, Foxford, Charlestown, Curry, Knockmore, Louisburgh, Roonagh, Kilsallagh, Killadoon, Mullagh, Srah, Tourmakeady, Clonbur, Partry, Kilawalla, Ballintubber, Clogher, Robeen, Annies, Belcarra, Bohola, Meelick, Breaffy, Manulla, Pontoon, Ardagh, Lahardane, Massbrook and Errew.
Mobile Broadband Mobile broadband works by using 3G technology. It is a relatively new method of accessing broadband and depends on a live 3G network being operational in your area – which tends to only be the case in bigger towns. Mobile broadband is not accessing broadband on a mobile phone but as a rule of thumb the strength and availability of mobile broadband is directly related to the strength and availability of a mobile phone signal, and while a strong mobile broadband connection might be available in one part of a house, there is no guarantee that this will be the case in another part of the same room or for your neighbour. It is difficult to define where mobile broadband is available as signals are easily obstructed – even in areas of good 3G coverage – and as a result the operators such as Vodafone, O2 and 3 offer trial periods to see if this broadband is accessible in your home or business.
Depending on which operator you use you can access 3G mobile broadband in most of the larger towns in Mayo and in intermittent – and seemingly random – places in between. The vast majority of Mayo is not serviced by reliable and fast 3G broadband, but by the much slower GPRS – which is akin to dial-up internet.
To access mobile broadband you buy a modem off your preferred supplier and simply plug it into your computer. With O2 for example – who claim to have 3G mobile broadband coverage in more of Mayo’s larger towns than Vodafone or 3 – a 7 Mbps modem costs €109 to buy and a subscription with a 10Gb download level per month is €15 for the first three months and €30 per month thereafter. Usage charges after 10Gb stand at between one and three cent per page.
Mobile broadband, like wireless, is a good option where the price is fixed by a download limit and no phone line is needed. However, trial and error is the only way to find out if an acceptable quality and consistency of this broadband is available to you.
In parts of Mayo such as Belmullet, Swinford, Foxford, Charlestown, Kilmaine, Kilkelly, Crossmolina, Ballycroy and Achill, Vodafone say that 3G mobile broadband is not available from them. Yet O2 claim to supply this service in all these areas.
Satellite Satellite broadband is another option and is accessible anywhere via a two-way link-up between a southern facing dish on your home and a satellite. Current providers of this service include National Broadband Ltd and Digiweb, and it can be supplied to you no matter where you live in Mayo or on any of the islands off the coast. Satellite was the preferred way of getting broadband to rural schools in Mayo in recent years, but this type of broadband tends to be very slow.
The two-way satellite broadband offered by National Broadband Ltd is an always-on service, which does not require a telephone line and operates on a download speed of 512 kbps. However, given the large equipment costs and initial outlay this is by far the most expensive type of broadband to set up. In an attempt to offset these costs, National Broadband Ltd have developed an equipment rental scheme and, including a €200 deposit – refundable at the end of a 12-month contract – the hardware/installation cost is between €400 and €500. Thereafter you will pay for equipment rental along with your chosen monthly package. Digiweb charge an equipment fee of €945 and an installation fee of €395. Their most basic package ‘Sky Star,’ costs €99 per month.
National Broadband also offer a ‘Triple Play’ package, which bundles your broadband, phone and satellite television packages together into one.
At present the Department of Communications is introducing a national broadband scheme which is intended to provide broadband in rural areas where the service is not currently available. Under the terms of this scheme the successful tenderer will provide a nationwide broadband service where people will receive a certain standard of broadband at a fixed price – regardless of where they live. The Department of Communications will subsidise this in order to make it viable for operators in areas where it might not otherwise be feasible for them to provide such a service.
Broadband from Clearwire (a national wireless operator) and broadband which is provided by cable television companies like NTL is not available in Mayo at present.
the National Picture
Broadband uptake rates have grown rapidly in Ireland in recent years. According to a report by the Commission for Communications Regulation (Comreg), at the end of September 2007 there were a total of almost 1.2 million active internet subscriptions in Ireland, while, including mobile broadband, broadband subscriptions stood at 793,600 – a penetration rate of 18.4 per cent of the population. In the second quarter of 2007, 63 per cent of all subscribers connecting to the internet in Ireland used a broadband connection.
Broadband subscribers using DSL for their connection in the second quarter of 2007 fell to 68 per cent – down from 74 per cent in 2006. At the same time the share of broadband subscribers using fixed wireless access grew marginally from 14 per cent to 15 per cent, while just six per cent of broadband connections in Ireland last year were through mobile broadband.
Research also indicates that Ireland had the third-fastest growing internet audience in Europe up to September 2007, while the total internet universe in Ireland grew by 16 per cent between September 2006 and September 2007. The average European internet audience growth for the same period was 5 per cent.
This growth is illustrated in the fact that the number of households in Ireland with a broadband connection, as a percentage of households with internet access, more than doubled from 26 per cent in 2006 to 54 per cent in 2007. Of those countries for which data is available, only Greece, Romania and Cyprus reported a lower percentage when compared to Ireland.
The percentage of Irish enterprises with a broadband connection has also more than doubled from 32 per cent in 2004 to 68 per cent in 2007. The EU27 average for this in 2007 was 77 per cent.
Last June, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), calculated Ireland’s broadband penetration at 15.4 per cent, compared to an average of 18.8 per cent across the 30 OECD countries. In terms of growth between 2006 and 2007 however, Ireland was top of the OECD league table, an indication that attitudes to broadband in Ireland may finally be changing.
Research carried out by Comreg last August showed that in a European price table of DSL products, Ireland was ranked in fifth place.
No broadband
Lesley McNeely,
Bayside Services, Achill “We moved to Achill Island in October 2006 and run our road safety awareness business from home. My husband and two sons are on the road and I scout for new business and liaise with schools prior to their visits. However, both our phone and internet systems are prone to breakdown, and even when they are working there is no guarantee of them being reliable.”
“It used to take 32 minutes to send our brochure on dial-up, which was impractical, and it took 30 minutes for me to send invoices, which could often be several a day. The lack of broadband was becoming critical and we even installed an ISDN line which worked, but, again, it was too slow. The only real option then available to us was satellite broadband, which we installed. This worked fine for simple tasks but it would not allow e-mails with large attachments to be sent and the weather – which tends to get wild at times in Achill – affected it.
“Our business depends on being able to communicate directly and efficiently and we need broadband to be able to do this. It is suffering without broadband and this is becoming such a factor that either our business will go to the wall or else we will have to move out of this beautiful part of the world to continue it elsewhere.”
Broadband access
Róna Doherty,
Estate Agent, Mulranny “I am from Mulranny and set up my business in January 2007. It would be next to impossible to run this type of business without a good, reliable broadband connection as estate agents need to be able to upload properties and pictures and change details quickly and efficiently, and you couldn’t be relying on dial-up for this.
“I use a Westnet wireless connection as there is no DSL in Mulranny and the availability of broadband in Mulranny is critical to my business as it basically allows me to operate in the way that other estate agents do. The real bonus is that it means I don’t have to leave my native place to do it.”
Options at a glance DSL Shares the same copper wire as your telephone connection, to bring you broadband without affecting your phone services.
For High-speed internet by Irish standards. Connects easily where suitable phone lines exist.
Against Not always available, depending on the local exchange and your distance from it.
Best for Urban locations
Sample price*
Eircom home starter bundle – 1 Mbps always on broadband and unlimited weekend local and national telephone calls with free modem and free installation from €51 per month.
Wireless Innovative service delivering reliable flat-rate broadband access to your business or home.
For No phone line required.
Against Only available in certain areas. Easily obstructed. Usage must be of a ‘reasonable’ level.
Best for Rural locations where available.
Sample price*
Westnet residential package. 512 kbps always-on for €35 per month plus €200 installation fee.
Mobile Uses mobile and 3G technology to bring broadband via a small USB modem.
For No phone line required.
Against Expensive once page download limit exceeded. Signal can be unreliable and obstructed.
Best for Urban locations where no phone line is available/desired.
Sample price*
O2, 3G broadband. 10GB download limit per month. €79 for 3 Mbps or €109 for 7Mbit modem plus €15 per month for first three months and €30 per month thereafter.
Satellite Uses a satellite dish to deliver internet services.
For Available everywhere in Ireland. No phone line required.
Against Often the slowest option and most expensive.
Best for Isolated locations.
Sample price*
National Broadband always-on satellite broadband – 256 Kbps speed – plus 400 minutes for calls to local and national phones for initial fee of €483 (incl €200 refundable deposit) plus €80 for each month after the first.
* Each package is subject to the customer entering a minimum 12-month contract. Upload speeds may be much slower than download speed.
