Natives of Mullinahone, situated near the Tipperary/Kilkenny border, who are starved of a reliable Internet Broadband system, have had their prayers answered, when locals discovered that a local graveyard, approx five miles from the village, can give them access to the World Wide Web.
But business people in the village are still angry that their village is so poorly served, forcing them to travel to Kilbride cemetery to download material from the Internet and to send necessary emails. This situation, plus poor mobile phone coverage has now driven Mullinahone’s business community to raise a petition calling for an improved broadband and mobile phone coverage, to bring them up to date with other areas.
Mullinahone isn’t included in the €223m National Broadband Scheme (NBS) that is rolling out high-speed Internet in rural areas.
The Department of Communications states: “In designing the NBS, which was approved by the EU Commission, the department needed to strike a balance between reaching as many non serviced areas as possible and minimising the impact of the scheme on businesses already providing broadband in rural areas, thus minimising market distortion in accordance with EU state aid rules.”
Now here were the locals blaming our own Irish Government and to be precise the Department of Communications when the European Union are really totally to blame. Sometimes it’s impossible to know just who is in charge of running this little country of ours these days.
Whoever is in charge however, please note that according to a new international study, Ireland’s existing broadband infrastructure will not be able to cope with the arrival of the next generation of Internet applications and services. Researchers at Oxford University looked at the capability of connections in 42 countries, to examine how they are equipped to benefit from services like high definition video and other enhanced content offerings. Of the 42 countries surveyed Ireland’s connection speeds and capacity is ranked only in 33rd place on the global table. The report states that Japan is number one and is the country best equipped to handle the roll-out of any such future services.
Broad band services are good in Thurles Town but areas close to the town such as Log Na Fola and Brittas are still waiting for services to be updated.
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