Consumers demand cheaper Net

Key players involved in the provision of internet services came face to face this week with angry consumers demanding cheaper Internet access.

Top officials from Eircom and Esat, together with the director of telecommunications regulation, Ms Etain Doyle, and the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, all addressed a conference organised by Irelandoffline, a consumer interest group campaigning for affordable internet access for homes and small businesses.

The group is calling for universal unmetered access to the internet, complete local loop unbundling by Eircom and universal access to broadband services.

The high cost of internet access is a barrier to the development of e-commerce and is unfair to people who work from home, the group argues.

In her opening address to the conference, which was well attended, Ms O'Rourke said that, despite the "despondency" currently overshadowing the sector, "there is no going back".

She spoke of how the issue of complete unbundling the local loop by Eircom had become a contentious issue over the past few months.

The chairman of Irelandoffline, Mr Martin Herran, asked why the relevant decisions and movement on the provision of broadband internet access were taking so long. "It's been some two years since the first trials of ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line), and there's still no broadband access," he said.

Mr Herran referred to a recent OECD report, which showed that 0.01 per cent of the Irish population had broadband access and that only 10.8 per cent of people subscribed to an internet service. He said that, such was the cost of internet access, it was no surprise to learn that the average number of hours spent online per user per month in the Republic was five, compared to the US and New Zealand, where the average was 35 hours per month.

Ms Doyle said she supported the efforts of Irelandoffline to raise consumer awareness of the issues involved.

She also supported the need for a quicker decision-making process, saying that a "speedy planning process could be just as clear and as transparent as a slow one".

Irelandoffline was established following the decision by Esat Fusion to withdraw the only unmetered internet service available in the State. Mr Derek Kickham, chairman of Esat Fusion, told the conference the provision of internet access had been "stuck in a time warp" since 1999.

He said Esat wanted to expand its services but, because of the current situation with Eircom, it was not able to do it.

However, he confirmed that the arrival of DSL or the unbundling of the local loop would not mean a return to the flat-rate service. "At this point, there is no economically sustainable model that will allow us to offer flat-rate access," he said.

There was a mixed reaction to the address by Ms Soula Evans, Eircom's director of consumer and business markets, who said the Republic was less expensive than nine other countries for 20 hours of peak-time access.

She insisted that cost was not a major issue for those considering buying home internet access.

She also pointed to research that showed 47 per cent of Irish adults had no interest in using the Internet and that boredom was the number one reason for stopping internet use.