This was sent to me in response to the news that Ikea are opening a store in Dublin. One of the funniest responses I got...

Here goes :

Sad but probably true.

I will tell you lads, your Saturdays (or Sundays) will never be the same. You will be dragged there. About half an hour later (after you have spent 2 hours getting a parking space) you will realise that the "it's only a table we need" is not quite what it seems, as you will have to traipse around the whole blo*dy place to find that table, and on the way, sure there is this little thing and that little thing that would look lovely in the front room/back room/bed room/kitchen/stairs/garden/loft/on the Christmas table (even though it's only March)/toilet/bathroom/distant aunt's/the kennel - don't knock the kennel, you will end up sleeping there !

Big hint, even if you like Swedish Meatballs - don't say so, it only encourages them to say things like "but you love the meat balls, why don't you have some and I will have a look around". First the restaurant is before, yes I said before, the half way mark, and secondly it only gives them more time to pick up this little thing and that little thing that would look lovely in the front room/back room/bed room/kitchen/stairs/garden/loft/on the Christmas table (even though it's only March)/toilet/bathroom/distant aunt's/the kennel

By the time you reach the till, you know why their trolleys are so big, but unfortunately the wallet isn't - let alone the car/MPV/bus/large Truck (or in for my family - a horse box). Then it's out to the car and another two hours to get out of the car park.

Then you get the dammed stuff home and the rest of the day is ruined because you have to build it, and the kids want to help !! and because it's made of dense Swedish timber it weighs a ton, and even though it was decided that that was where it was going it never really looks "just right" (of course it doesn't, you didn't need it in the first place). Then while you are trying to move it, her friend comes in and after the ooh'ing and ahh'ing they decide it would look much better somewhere else altogether.

Sometimes you have a friend come to visit while herself is away for the weekend with the kids. You have a picture in your mind of a nice relaxing weekend with the mate having a few beers and anything else going. Your mate has the same concept. BUT NO. She has been to IKEA and bought a load of stuff that you really need the help of someone to build "and sure wont it be great that the two of you can do that" - NO IT BLOODY ISN'T. The head is hanging off ya, your mouth is like sandpaper on a bad day in Delhi, you have an idea that it would be good not to move to far away from the toilet. The last thing you want to do is build IKEA furniture.

If I was you guys, I would find out who were the planners/councillors who voted for this to be allowed, and..............................

As you may of guessed, I do not like IKEA

I feel better now for getting that out of my system. Nothing like a good rant.

PS they have a catalogue and a website so you do not have to go to the shop, and you can pay them to "erect" the shi*e

Ticketmaster are thieving swine

I spent the day today trying to print out tickets from Ticketmasters weblinks.
Every time I try to print I get the ever helpful "system is unavailable" message.
So I thought I'd ring their "customer service", seemed logical to me.

But being Ticketmaster it's not, obviously.
First of all it's an 0818 number which costs 30c per minute.

When you ring you are offered a number of choices, no matter what option you choose
(except one option) you get put on hold, no "mood" music to whittle away the exorbitant costs of the call, just a useless announcement that "your question will be answered as soon as possible".
Great sounds reasonable, the phone just keeps ringing and ringing and ringing.
Nobody picks up 30c after 30c goes into their bank account.

If you want to speak to a representative you can ring a Dublin number, so I thought I'd ring that and guess what It's out of service. You get an announcement to ring their overpriced and useless
"Customer Ripoff" line.


In short it's a scam and Ticketmaster are thieves.

Not only can they not deliver tickets they lighten your pockets with their utterly useless
24 hour "Customer Ripoff" line.

I feel a formal complaint coming on but they don't care about that either.

Ireland builds mobile dialup networking

So here we have it, finally the NBS has been unveiled. We get mobile dialup!
This is unbelievable did the Department really think this is a solution?

Let's look at the proposed solution a little bit.

The solution is to provide HSDPA style "universal broadband".
To provide the solution a mobile company is to roll out 160 new cell sites.They will provide a minimum download speed of 1.2Mbps and a min upload of 200kbps. For areas that they can't "reach" they will provide a satellite system.They will spend, all told, approximately 223 Million euros on this system, 79.8 Million from government funds with 30 Million from the EU.
160 new cell sites will service 33% of the land area.

My reaction
Firstly, I can't believer the EU would even consider this nonsense.
Secondly is this some kind of a joke, rough calculations tell me that a minimum of 10 times that number of cell sites are required to provide the required coverage, so this looks like it will be a satellite only network in reality.
I wonder why all the real telecommunications players abandoned the scheme?

Some thoughts on bandwidth.

HSPDA
5Mbps down and 1.8Mbps up is what they are claiming at a minimum of 1.2Mbps and a min upload of 200kbps. In a perfect world and only one person on the cell site this might be possible
(of course you'd have to sit beside the mast for that).
It's most likely that you'll end up having speeds which are closer to dialup speeds than "broadband" speeds. For this reason alone the solution has been called "midband".
Now let's add some others to the cellsite, let's say 10 people.
7.2Mbps is the current speed for IHSDPA.
7.2/10 will give the real bandwidth being delivered. Now let's add 10 more...you get the picture!
(Note the overhead involved actually makes things far worse, the speed degradation INCREASES fast than proportional with 3G/HSPDA) and we are still way less than the 36:1 contention being provided for.
Can this contention ratio be controlled (even if it provides 36 users on the site with similar to dialup speeds) no it can't...

I believe that currently each site is fed by 2Mbps backhaul (certainly the remoter sites)

Some thoughts on cellsites
I believe that 10 times the number of cellsites will be required to deliver this service, so in reality most places will end up getting satellite service.

This is just a taste of why this NBS scheme will never work.

Now lets look at a similar spend in another EU country:

"Fast broadband for the whole of Finland by 2015

19/09/2008

High-quality and high-speed broadband connections has been a primary goal of the Finnish electronic communications policy.

The government of Finland has announced that a fast, high quality broadband network should be made available across the whole country, reaching almost all households, businesses and public offices by 2015.

A report compiled by Harri Pursiainen, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Transport and Communications recommends that the speed of the broadband should be at least 100Mb/s and it would be delivered through an optic fibre network or a cable network.

Presenting the report to the government this week, Minister of Communications Suvi Lindén said that implementing the objective represents a historic step in the development of the information society in Finland.

Finland currently has more than 1.5 million broadband connections. According to Lindén, the widespread availability of affordable, high-quality and high-speed broadband connections has been a primary goal of the Finnish electronic communications policy.

Finland’s National Broadband Strategy was implemented in 2004-2007. During the first two years of the strategy period, the growth in the number of broadband connections in Finland was the fastest in the world and even in the third year it was the third fastest in Europe. Finland’s broadband ranking has risen from sixth to third in Europe and from fifteenth to seventh worldwide, according to Lindén.

The government wants to ensure that the country’s communications networks meet the needs of the society both now and in the future. According to Lindén, the availability of broadband connections has enabled the use and development of advanced digital content and services, playing a crucial role in the Finnish information society development."

Strangely the investment required is almost identical

"at least 200 million euros is needed to reach over 99 per cent availability"

"Last December, our government accepted the programme and promised 66 million euros for it"

Now Finland is a big country with lots of lakes and even has artic conditions in the northern part of that country, yet they can manage to rollout broadband to remote areas in even more difficult conditions than "remote" Ireland. We must also bear in mind that Finland is roughly 10 times bigger than Ireland and while mostly flat(ish) it is covered in dense forests.

Comreg have sanctioned a new line rental increase for eircom

Comreg have sanctioned a new line rental increase for eircom(or have they?)

This will make us the most expensive country in europe for telecommunications with the least advanced telecommunications network and services (both mobile and fixed line)

This is not a guess or an estimate...its a fact.

The problem here is that our regulator seems to be "making stuff up" and we need to look to the UK regulator for actual hard facts.

So according to our own regulator we are the cheapest. Yet using the same figures the UK finds that we are the most expensive in Europe for telecommunications.


For instance:
pg 59-61
In 2005, Japan had the highest per capita telecoms spend with an average £592 over the year, followed by Ireland with £520. (Figure 2.14). Average spend in the US and the other European countries studied all fell into the £350-£450 per year range


Here is a link to the UK regulators report:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/icmr06/icmr.pdf

Questions:
So why the difference between our regulator and the UK regulator?
What are Comreg hiding and why are they allowing an increase?
If our per capita spend is so high why are eircom looking for more money?
If we spend as much as the Japanese why don't we have similar "modern" services?

Comreg utterances

more wonderous quotes from the abbey street gang (Comreg)

"We are one of the best providers of access products. The European Commission defined us as the third most open market in Europe. There seems to be no recognition of the progress that has been made on broadband. We have one of the cheapest broadband services, taken up by 8% of the people. We have one of the highest trajectory growth paths. People seem to ignore the fact that we are ten times as high in local loop unbundling as we were 12 months ago, which is genuine progress."

Telecoms Poodle

The fabled Irish telecommunications regulator, Comreg (affectionately known as Comwreck) The one that doesn't actually do anything.

The glorious morons that when trying to interpret the EU directive concerning Functional Internet Access , gave us 0k (that's zero) as a working speed. Then they relented and gave us 28k (yes 28k) in the 21st century. This mythical 28k is couched in so many maybes and hopefully type comments as to be utterly useless.

It also somehow managed to regulate for the incumbent and let them get away with charging the highest line rental in the EU, if not the whole world. For our exorbitant line rental we get no guarantees of any type of service.

This shows the contempt that the Irish regulator has for those it is supposed to be protecting, the hapless consumers of Ireland.

Kafka would be proud.