Lack of rural broadband is keeping Ireland low on broadband league tables

An article on silicon republic points out that Irelands lack of rural broadband is keeping us below 20% penetration. I spent most of 2005 to 2007 working on my comnunity's behalf to get broadband for our area. My experience points to the fact that rural broadband is badly funded and being mismanaged by the Dept of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources.

The key stumbling block with the group broadband scheme was the simple fact that payments were made on the number of users connected regardless of location. So if you provided broaband for a town you received the same grant as those who attempted to bring broadband to isolated rural communities. There is considerable expense involved in bringing broadband to a rural area due to the number of links and APs required to propagate a wireless signal to remote locations. Yet the Dept did not want to consider this. Instead the accountants decided that a nice easy way was to count the number of subscribers only i.e. treat it like a water scheme.

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