Aehso’s Output

Eircom and Monster.ie - Busy week for the Irish Blogosphere

First the Eircom router wifi security fiasco and now a Monster fiasco is brewing. Wonderful stuff, watching the Irish blogosphere (or rather James, Tom, Michele and Damien) in action.

I wonder what the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s view on this one is - do they ever make public statements on cases like this?  Matt Cooper had some gob from Eircom on The Last Word this evening, trying to explain away their mess, it’d be great if someone from Monster.ie (the culprit himself perhaps?) would go on air tomorrow evening…

Vodafone Ireland offering 500Mb for EUR9.99 per month.

[Update: See comments on this post and my followup post before signing up for this service!]

Yesterday I was on the phone to Vodafone “Customer Care” to inquire about their mobile data rate plans. The response I got when I told the rep that I wanted to send/receive email by using my mobile phone as a bluetooth modem was priceless: “That would be very expensive. You really don’t want to do that”.

It is nice when service reps tell you what you do or don’t want isn’t it?

Of course with the pricing plans Vodafone had it would indeed have been prohibitively expensive so he was trying to help. But yet Vodafone were offering USB 3G modems for a flat rate (5Gb cap) a month. So why couldn’t I just use my existing handset instead? Could he explain the price difference? I’ll let you guess the answer.

Clearly I wasn’t the only person to ask this question - or maybe I was and I have far more clout than I thought Later that morning Vodafone announced a flat-rate plan for data access from mobile handsets - 500Mb for EUR9.99 per month for post-pay customers, EUR0.99 per day for pre-pay customers. [Update: see comments below and my followup post - this plan does not allow use of isp.vodafone.ie gateway]. You couldn’t replace your home broadband connection with it but if you are a bit of a road warrior (e.g. N770/N800 users or if you have a laptop and occasionally leave your house at weekends/evenings) then it might be of interest. Don’t even think of using it abroad though - those foreign bits are so different they cost way more to move around.

I suppose you can only strangle the market for so long with exorbitant pricing before the regulators start sniffing around. Of course this plan makes the current O2/3/Meteor data plan offerings pale in comparison so I suspect within a few weeks they will announce either an identical price plan or a plan that effectively costs the same amount per Mb per month - <cough>oligopoly</cough>. Watch this space.

BTW, for OS X users out there here are modem scripts and settings a variety of handsets as a bluetooth modems with OS X. I’ve used the SonyEricsson scripts and they work beautifully. If only the service was as free…

Eircom raise line rental to €25.36 per month.

Eircom have raised their line rental charge per month to €25.36 (from €24.18). To put this figure in perspective, over €300 of your yearly landline bill now goes to Eircom (unless you are with SmartTelecom), just for keeping that twisted-pair line from your house to their exchange alive. Broadband subscriber growth may be increasing in Ireland but we are being gouged for the privilege.

The timing is interesting, announced on the day that Eamonn Ryan (Green Party) was appointed minister for the new Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. Eamonn’s own site contains a number of broadband related resources and the Green Party Election Manifesto on Transport and Communications (2007) suggests carrying out a feasibility study into the State re-taking control of Eircom (Damien Mulley has some good comments). Lets all hope Eamonn gives the issue due attention. This is a critical national resource; it should not be controlled by a foreign owned commercial monopoly.

Meanwhile, the utterly useless ComReg continue to ponder their navels.

Irish Election, gurilla voice journalism via MySay

I see irishelection.com have a big stonking MySay election count widget on their home page and it is looks to be working extremely well. Kudos to SOS and the boys at MySay, this really is excellent!

The broadband-less Irish knowledge based economy.

EC Telecoms Market Commissioner Viviane Reding:

You cannot have a knowledge based economy if large parts of society don’t have broadband.

This quote, in the context of yet another EC report has re-confirmed just how poor broadband services and competition are in Ireland. It also largely calls into question our government’s assertion that they are really building a knowledge based economy.

Who is to blame? The toothless COMREG don’t seem to be capable of doing anything to drive competition (apparently the maximum fine they can impose on a telco is 3,000 euro - is that true?) and the EU report calls for further reform.

I think the is unfair to pick on the fixed line broadband services only though. Voice services in Ireland are also crap, they should have highlighted that too. And don’t get me started on mobile data services.

No doubt the government will just rename COMREG to something else, ignore the report completely or promise that it’ll be better next year, after the election.

New Toy: Nokia N800.

The Nokia N800 rocks. I picked one up two weeks ago and I’m more than happy with it.

The pluses:

• Great design, great form factor. The build is Nokia quality.
• Vivid 800×480 display.
• Great WiFi network connectivity and easy bluetooth phone pairing.
• Both Opera and Minimo browsers.
• Several email clients.
• Canola media player.
• Cisco VPN client.
• VNC client (and server!).
• ssh client (and server!).
• Remote Desktop Client.
• UPnP streaming client.
• Mplayer client.
• Gizmo Project (VOIP) client.

Try that on your iPhone!  One other positive comment has to be around the user community - both maemo.org and Internet Tablet Talk seem to be busy which bodes well for future development for the platform.

There are minuses but importantly most are software issues (and are hence addressable)

• No obvious contact/calendar/task list sync app.
• RSS feed reader usability sucks - no OPML import.
• Flash video framerate still isn’t quite there, even after installing the latest IT OS 2007.
• GAIM doesn’t seem to want to install.
• The virtual bluetooth keyboard (XKbd-BTHID) doesn’t seem to want to run.

The lack of a decent flat rate data plan from my mobile provider (O2) continues to restrict my usage but perhaps that will change in the near future.

Now I’m just waiting for the GPS Navigation Kit to be released…

Babelgum in Dublin

Interesting to see Babelgum are setting up shop in Dublin. It is nice to see them cite the availability of skilled technical people as the key reason for locating here though I suspect that favourable corporation tax rates may also have been a key factor.

Coincidently, Read Write Web has a timely comparative review of Babelgum, Joost and Zattoo. (It also mention ChooseAndWatch and FreeTube but I guess Democracy doesn’t fit into the IPTV category?).

N9/N10 Kilcullen - Waterford Road Scheme.

The N9/N10 Kilcullen - Waterford Road Scheme site should be of interest to anyone living in the sunny south east of Ireland (useful maps). Wexford and Waterford folks might also be interested in online details of the Gorey, New Ross and Waterford bypasses. (Note: to Tramore House: get a web site designer who knows more about usability and less about mouseOver events)

So we will soon have two quality corridors to use to get out of Dublin, nice to have the choice when contributing to our escalating national carbon emission levels. My home town, Borris, is nestled between both routes so its residents should benefit somewhat from both schemes.

Anyone living in the rest of the country can look at the NRA’s Publications/Resources page to find your nearest bypass/toll road development…

Do you think apartments are expensive in Dublin?

It’s a relative thing really, expense: The Telegraph is reporting

Four flats overlooking Hyde Park are on sale for a rumoured £84 million each, the highest price ever asked for a British flat
…..
The complex will also have a spa, squash court and private wine-tasting facility.

The wine-tasting facility is probably the clincher for any prospective purchaser really. That and the prospect of having an arms dealer living next door…

(via BldBlog)

Municipal Wi-Fi for Dublin?

Dublin City Council have notions of building a municipal Wi-Fi network? From SiliconRepublic.com:

According to reports this morning, Dublin City Council has put out a tender for consultants to offer advice regarding technological, regulatory and financial issues if such a service was deployed.

I hope they are better at planning wireless networks than they are at planning everything else.

Another interesting snippet from that article:

A recent survey by UK telecoms regulator Ofcom revealed that Ireland has surprisingly the largest penetration of Wi-Fi hotspots per head of population in the world, with 18.3 hotspots per 1,000 people.

I for one am very surprised by that, even if there is no shortage of open Wi-Fi networks in the commercial districts of Dublin 2 & 4. This figure is probably driven by the broadband providers switching over to supplying cheap DSL/Wi-Fi routers. Maybe the Ofcom guys should broaden their survey a little, go war driving around California for a couple of days maybe…