Irish Regions Office Website

April 21, 2008

i2010: a mixed bag report for Ireland

A report released on 18 April on the results so far for i2010, the EU's digital-led strategy for growth and jobs, shows that of the more than 250 million EU citizens regularly using the internet, 80% have access to some form of broadband connection. However, the key focus of the report is that this accessibility is far from evenly spread. On the issue of universal broadband service provision, market liberalisation in telecommunications has led to a concentration on providing service infrastructure to urban areas – leaving rural, remote, aging and poor areas which are seen to entail increased investment costs and unattractive rates of poor returns with substandard or no service. This is why EU rules on state aid permit public financing or partnerships to deliver broadband or other new technologies to such areas. With 64% DSL coverage in rural areas (2006), Ireland trails the EU average (72%) but its urban-rural gap is not as pronounced as Greece, Slovakia, Latvia, Italy, Poland, Lithuania or Germany. All told, i2010 contains a mixed bag of information society development reviews for Ireland: · National broadband coverage stands at 86% (2006) – slightly below EU average (89%). · At 17.4% of the population (2007), the gap is rapidly being closed on EU average broadband penetration (20%). · Broadband subscriptions doubled from 2006 to 2007 to account for 54% of the market, but the older narrowband technology remains very widespread (there are an above average number of households with an internet connection) – thus, on the more bandwidth consuming services and applications, Ireland is placed among the lowest ranking countries. · Public (32%) and (particularly) business (89%) use of e-government services is impressive despite more needing to be done to make such services fully available online and more sophisticated. · Medium and high Internet skill levels in the general population are not high; · While ICT skill levels are close to the average for the workforce there are concerns as to the falling percentage of employees having specialist skills. · The economy is among the leading performers in e-commerce and in use of certain related applications such as e-invoices. · There are very high levels of ICT use in facilitating coordination and greater integration between agencies (notably the Revenue Commissioners and the Companies Registration Office) and in making it easier for business to be set up and to meet associated compliance procedures. The Commission's i2010 report is available at: http://ec.europa.eu/i2010

Posted by iroronan at April 21, 2008 08:20 PM