Community: April 2005 Archives

TIPPINST - Kilanerin the small parish in north county wexford where I grew up will be empty next Sunday, as several local football players will be playing in the Allianz National league football final against Armagh in Croke Park. Matty Forde (Wexford 1st football all star), his brother pat, John Hegarty and Jim Darcy will line out on Sunday. It going to be a tense exciting, exhilarting adrenaling pumping match (and thats just from the Wexford fans perspective).

Best of luck to all the lads, Loch Garman abu !!!

TIPPINST - The Waterford News and Star have an informative article on the community broadband scheme. In the article wireless is mentioned as being the technology of choice as far as the county council is concerned.

Its encouraging to see that Wi-Max is being pushed out by Intel into mainstream production, in the future it will probably replace Wi-fi due to its ability to cope with troublesome terrain such as hills, valleys etc

TIPPINST -The 2nd phase of the community broadband scheme is coming to a close and from talking to various people at public meetings it seems that there is a very strong interest in Tipperary. Neighbouring communities such as Holycross, Kilcommon, Doon, Borrisoleigh are all in the process of finalising applications. County wide I would estimate that there are 15 - 20 community groups that are interested.

When you compare this to phase 1 which had 33 groups across the whole country it really highlights the strong interest in broadband. Interest in Upperchurch is quiet high when compared to some other communities, I think this is in part to the IT centre in the local school which has been providing email, ECDL, internet training for the past 4 years as of last year over 300 people had passed through their doors. Pretty impressive for a rural hinterland community.

These community schemes I think are a good inniative as its puts the onus on the shoulders of the community to do something about it. Having a broadband coordinator for the area is also an immense help as they can assist and drive the scheme.

It look like by September we will have 512K up and down using Wi-fi, roll on the summer !

TIPPINST- I commented earlier this week on the release of phase 1 community broadband figures. 43% of communities elected to use satellite as their preferred method of access. I was quiet surprised by the high adoption rate.

I can understand if you are in a rural area with no other option than to use satellite, what has me surprised are some of the benefits that you miss out on if you do choose satellite.

There are two big problems with satellite they are bit error rate and latency. The latter is usually more noticable than the former. From talking to people who have employed satellite in business and educational premises, they have remarked upon how it can be slow.

There is confusion as to how much latency there really is, ildana.net point out that delay is 240ms (0.24 seconds) this is true based on the maths of calculating the length of time it takes a signal to travel from satellite earth station to another

(22300 miles uplink + 22300 miles downlink) / 186000 miles per second = 0.24 seconds (240 ms).

This answer however is deceptive as is does not take into account the additional time required for processing by electronic equipment at the originating, receiving, and repeater stations, which adds to the total delay. In practice, round trip transaction time can easily exceed 750 milliseconds

Satellite Internet access providers such as vsat systems are more open about the problem and point that the latency is in the 600 ms range , they offer tcp spoofing as a means to combat this problem.

So the 750 ms delay that satellite experience does have an impact on certain technologies, these include Voice Over IP (products such as skype), video conferencing and VPNS.

The phrase caveat emptor springs to mind when considering broadband products, all aspects must be considered. If VOIP, video conferencing and VPNS are not a requirement then satellite might well be the suitable choice for you.

TIPPINST- We are pleased to announce that we have identified a broadband provider who will be in a position to bring broadband to the Upperchurch-Drombane area. We received a strong level of interest from people who were interested in broadband. The North Tipperary Broadband Coordinator provided us with a list of potential broadband companies and we evaluated these company’s broadband products so as to identify a broadband service that would be suitable for the locality.

The criteria used for evaluating these broadband services included amongst others, cost, speed, technology, customer support and expertise. The broadband provider chosen is a local Tipperary company called Premier broadband (www.premierbroadband.net). The details of their service is as follows:

Cost domestic €29.99 per month (includes VAT), installation €200 (includes VAT)

Connection Speed 512K up, 512 down

Technology Wi-fi (Wireless)

Term of contract 3 month contract for domestic users

Customer Support Telephone support 24/7

We will now be submitting the list of interested people to the North Tipp broadband Coordinator (Anthony O’Reilly) this Friday (15th of April 05). Premier broadband will be carrying out a survey of the area shortly to identify the equipment required to bring broadband to the interested people. It is envisaged that broadband will roll out over the summer months.

We would like to thank all people who expressed an interest in acquiring broadband, with out your interest this would not have been possible.

The first phase of community broadband schemes that have been approved have been published to the Department of Communications, Marine and natural resources website

33 projects were approved and it is interesting to analyse the technologies employed.

Satellite - 15 communities - 43 %
Fixed Wireless Access - 11 communities - 33 %
ADSL - 7 communities - 24 %

The majority of satellite access was provided by Ildana Teoranta

2 of the schemes are being run by the community itself which is a big undertaking, it will be interesting to see how they get on, I wish them the best of luck. These two schemes opted for Fixed Wireless Access.

In most cases where ADSL was employed the provider was Eircom.

Digiweb and last mile wireless were the two main fixed wireless access providers.

We are currently in the process of applying for funding under phase 2 of this scheme. We hope to have selected our broadband provider by the end of this week.

Recovering from Robocode today, Tipperary Institute emerged victorious in a very exciting final that went to a tie breaker scenario.

Our other events went well also, Brain Teasers and Need for Speed racing.

By my reckoning we gave out over 35 prizes. Great day , great to see some many people at TI.

A big thank you to all our sponsors, with out them it would not have happened.
To all the backroom team and to Bernie our enigmatic commentator, Bernie you could have a job doing WWF commentary if you wanted !

We will be distributing information to people who we think may be interested in broadband. If you don't receive an information leaflet, they will be available in the following shops: O'Dwyers, Ryans and Fahy's of the metal bridge.

We have until Wed April 13th to finalise our list of people who are interested in broadband. The process after that will be as follows.

1 - The list of people who are interested will be provided to the North Tipp broadband coordinator.

2. - The North Tipp coordinator will identify a list of suitable broadband providers.

3- We will then hold discussions with the various broadband providers so as to identify a suitable provider.

4- Once we are happy with the provider , their service, pricing, support etc we will then proceed with the application.

5- At this point the identified broadband provider will carry out an initial survey so as to indentify what amount of equipment will be required to provide broadband to all interested people.

6 - The broadband provider will then complete a govt application form (called G1) which identifies what equipment will be required, suitable sites, planning issues if any as well as associated costs. This form will be co signed by the provider and the Upperchurch Drombane Broadband Scheme committee.

7 - If the application is succesful a roll out of the service will commence within ( 2 -3 months approx) At this stage people who are interested will be asked to take out a subscription to the service before roll out begins.