Telecom subject to unfair criticism on Microsoft links deal

For a prime example of how technology issues can be used to advance individual agendas to a blinded-by-science public, look no further than various newspaper reports that Ireland had lost a large and important Microsoft Website project.

The two key points of the reports do not stand the test of scrutiny: first, that the project was one of the most advanced high-tech projects in the world and therefore a grievous loss to the nation; secondly, the assertion that it was lost because Telecom Eireann did not have the infrastructure to support the project.

While Microsoft was not available for comment, Telecom disproved the latter point in a press conference yesterday, at which it announced the signing of two new projects with Microsoft for connections which considerably exceed the one it purportedly could not offer for the Website. This confirms that the loss of the project was for a variety of reasons, not a general question of telecommunications connections.

This should have been clear to anyone familiar with the telecoms industry in Ireland and Europe. But the core issues - which are multi-faceted, complex and pan-European in scope - have been presented, ridiculously, as not only uniquely Irish, but uniquely the responsibility of Telecom Eireann.

The Microsoft proposal was for a basic mirror Website which could be maintained by a handful of people. Mirror sites simply duplicate the contents of heavily-accessed sites, easing the demand on the principal site's hardware, software and Internet connections. Far from being cutting edge, mirror sites are one of the least technically demanding of Internet projects, according to Mr Richard Woods, public relations manager for UUNet in Britain, a global network provider which handles Microsoft sites worldwide.

The site was also tagged a potential "IDA flagship in the new communications technology market". Perhaps, but a far more interesting project already exists. Dell Computer recently placed its European Website in Bray - not a mirror site, but the principal corporate site, which handles $5 million (£3.5 million) worth of online orders weekly, in 11 languages for 17 countries.

What the Microsoft project did require, unlike the Dell site, was a huge chunk of "bandwidth". Bandwidth is the transmission capacity of an electronic line, which is often likened to the size of a pipe. Capacity is measured by the rate at which a given pipe can transmit bits (the smallest unit of digital data) per second. Microsoft wanted a 34 megabit per second (Mbps) connection for its mirror site.

Contrary to some reports, European analysts and even Telecom Eireann's rivals, have said they have no doubt that Telecom could supply 34Mbps of bandwidth to Microsoft. However, how such connectivity would be supplied and whether it could be offered at an agreeable cost is a different, valid question.

The typical size of a pipe supplied by European providers like British Telecom or Telecom Eireann is 2Mbps using a traditional copper-wire phoneline, known as an €1 connection. Telecom's rivals say that Telecom will only supply bandwidth in costly multiples of such 2Mbps connections. Mr Alfie Kane, chief executive of Telecom Eireann, stated yesterday that this was untrue. Like Esat, he says, they will provide higher-capacity fibreoptic based bandwidth as well. Fibre cables provide gigabits (a gigabit is a thousand megabits) of very clean digital connections.

However, preparing a custom-designed network to handle large-capacity connections takes time. Both Esat and WorldCom, two of Telecom's competitors, say they could not have immediately provided a 34Mbps network for a mirror site either. Nor could many other European countries - they don't have the necessary capacity yet for a fast rollout of such "broadband" connections.

There's no question that Ireland will need a stronger Internet backbone and much greater bandwidth capacity to handle the data-transmission needs of business, particularly the high-tech companies Ireland has prided itself on attracting.

But lack of cost-efficient broadband infrastructure is a European - not just Irish - problem and a major worry for the European Commission, according to Mr Barry Flanigan, of London-based analysts Ovum. Most of the investment in new broadband infrastructure is driven by competition, which has arrived late to Europe, and only recently in the Irish broadband market.

According to information technology consultant, Mr Patrick Kelly, of London-based PA Consulting, Ireland would currently fall in the middle to lower end of European broadband preparedness.

"The key message here is that operators have to start," says Mr Flanigan. "What they're putting in the ground now is going to determine how they function in the next decade."

Karlin Lillington is at klillington@irish-times.ie