IOFFL - Report on Public Meeting
Martin Harran
wants to correct or add anything, please feel free to do so.
Once again, thanks for such a high turnout, great participation and the many
messages of support.
Martin
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Report on IrelandOffline Public Meeting
Held on Thursday 19th July 2001
at Mercer Hotel, Dublin
1. Opening remarks by Acting Chairman
Martin Harran welcomed everyone to meeting. He pointed out that there was a
lot of things to be covered in the time available and that it was important
to give some time to each of them. This might mean cutting short the
discussion on some items but these could be further discussed among people
who could stay on after the 'official' close of the meeting at 9:30.
Martin then gave brief update on progress to date - in just over 9 weeks, we
have taken our membership to 612, have met all the key players in Internet
access and raised our profile in the media. In his opinion, we have
established IrelandOffline as *the* representative body for Internet users
in Ireland.
He then went on to thank the people who had helped get IrelandOffline to
this position - his fellow committee members, people who had helped out in
the background such as the member who arranged the meeting with Mary O'
Rourke, the many people who contributed to boards.ie and ie.comp, boards.ie
for hosting the forum, the 612 who had subscribed to the organisation, those
who had offered financial support and other support and those who had come
to the public meeting. He said that on behalf of the committee, he would
particularly like to thank all those who sent messages of support - trying
to lead a voluntary organisation can often feel like a thankless task but in
this case the level of support from members was overwhelming.
Martin then directed a few words towards the media who were present. He
pointed out that IrelandOffline was a superb example of how the Internet can
be used; there had only been one previous physical meeting with 17 people.
IrelandOffline was effectively a 'virtual organisation' and had mainly been
developed through a website, a forum, newsgroups and email. This meant that
everything was carried out in the public arena. A downside to this was that
internal arguments were open to public view and could give a misleading
impression of the organisation. The plus side was that any member was able
to air their views on any issue at any time of the day or night, any day of
the week! This meant that the committee were able to get an accurate
understanding of member's opinions and views. Members of IrelandOffline had
strong views and he expected a very high level of debate at this meeting,
which again was in public; he asked any media present to bear in mind the
nature of the organisation when reporting on the meeting.
2. Update on meeting with Eircom by David Long
A written report on the meeting with Eircom had been circulated before the
meeting. David went through the main points in this and explained in more
detail some of the issues relating to ADSL particularly the concept of
'choking' where, rather than imposing capping limits, ISP's could offer a
reduced bandwidth option e.g. 64 or 128 Kbs at a lower cost.
There was a lot of discussion on a range of issues arising from David's
report. Key points included:
Flat Rate Access - Whilst broadband is the desirable solution, Flat Rate
Access will help in the meantime and is particularly important to people in
rural areas. There was general acceptance that Ireland's population size
means that Internet access cost are going to be higher than, for example,
the UK. People can live with this provided it is not an exorbitant price,
they are mainly concerned that it is made available quickly and that the
cost is fixed so that they know exactly what it is costing them and cannot
unintentionally run up large telephone bills. It was also generally agreed
that tiered packages for light, medium and heavy users is a good approach
rather than a "one size fits all" model.
LLU - there were mixed views on Eircom's claim that they had put a lot of
effort into LLU but that ISP's weren't interested; some people were
generally surprised that 13 out of 14 OLO's had dropped their interest once
LLU was available, others felt that the lack of interest was due to Eircom's
attitude to pricing.
Broadband - people are totally opposed to any form of capping with add on
charges - again, people want a fixed cost with no risk of unplanned high
phone bills. The concept of different bandwidth options at different prices
was generally perceived as an acceptable approach - many users would be
quite happy with always on 64Kps at a low cost, others need high bandwidth
but are prepared to pay for it, provided it is a fixed cost
Connectivity - the IOFFL committee were still not clear about Eircom's
requirement to supply high speed connection. The ODTR had seemed to suggest
that Eircom had an obligation to do so and Eircom hadn't disputed this. One
participant stated that he had definitely been told by an Eircom engineer
that his line was not up to standard for ISDN. It was agreed that the IOFFL
committee would take this specific case on as a test case to determine
exactly what Eircom's obligations are.
3. PR Report by Elana Kehoe
Elana gave a report on what we had achieved to date and what more we need to
do. She had an interview being published in Irish Times the following day
and is also talking to DotIE; she is also currently working on getting Prime
Time and/or Nationwide interested in our campaign. She has also been given a
contact with 20/20 and is following this up. Elana believes that we must do
more to get a wider interest outside the technical media. She thanked people
who had already passed media contacts to her and asked people to keep doing
so.
4. Open Discussion
There was a high level of audience participation with a number of views
expressed and ideas put forward. Some of the items that generated a lot of
discussion included:
With the possibility of a general election this autumn and certainly within
the next 12 months, it was agreed that we should start an active campaign of
political lobbying. One member pointed out that, in his experience,
opposition politicians are quicker to respond to issues like this. Some
people asked for sample letters to be prepared for members. Martin reminded
people that early in the campaign, he had circulated a single page fact
sheet for sending to TD's - Niall O'Keefe undertook to put this up on our
site as a downloadable Word document and PDF file.
Another member suggested that we should do more on in regard to social
inclusion aspects of Internet access - it was a agreed that not only was
this important in its own right, it would also help generate more human
interest media coverage and help make it a political issue.
It was agreed that the development of regional branches would be good both
for the benefit of members and for local publicity drives - e.g. interviews
on local radio.
5. Formal election of IrelandOffline committee and officers
Brendan Kehoe took over the chair for election of the Chairman. He nominated
Martin Harran for the post of Chairman. There were no alternative
nominations and Martin was unanimously elected as Chairman.
Martin then put forward a block proposal from the existing committee:
David Long to be Vice Chairman
Elana Kehoe to be PRO
Niall O'Keefe to be Webmaster
John Marcus to be Treasurer and Membership Officer with David Long as
co-signatory on the bank account.
Justin Mason to be Technical Officer
Brendan Kehoe, Dermot Frost and Marco Heine to continue
as committee members.
There were no alternative nominations and this proposal was approved
unanimously.
Martin then stated that the committee believed there was a need for
additional people to take on specific responsibilities for fund raising and
co-ordination of regional branches. As there were no nominations or
volunteers for these posts, it was agreed that the committee should have the
power to co-opt members and would approach individual people in this regard.
6. Discussion on IrelandOffline response from to ODTR consultative
paper.
There was not enough time to discuss this in detail so it was agreed that
the committee would prepare a draft response for circulation to members.
It was also agreed that apart from the official IOFFL submission, as many
members as possible should make individual submissions to ODTR.
7. Discussion on seminar on 29th August.
It was agreed that the seminar should be done to a good standard but not in
an expensive environment - as an organisation promoting affordable access we
should be leading by example. It was agreed that entrance charge for members
should be about £10 but non-members could be charged more.
Possible locations discussed included the Newman building in Stephen's Green
or some of the university facilities. The committee will explore these
possibilities.
In regard to funding, Martin stated that he had made an informal approach to
the Eircom PR manager about Telco's assisting with funding of the seminar
and he thought they probably would. After some discussion on the principles
of this, there was a clear majority who believe that we should not take any
funding from any Telco.
There was some discussion around the issue of Eircom's statement that they
would only take part if they could be assured that it would be a positive
forum and not just a 'blame Eircom' event. Martin stated that he believed
what Eircom are asking is what members want. He will write to each of the
participants beforehand, emphasising that people will want to hear what they
are and their organisation are actively doing to improve internet access,
not a moan about what Eircom are not doing. He also gave the view that with
the Minister, ODTR and Esat taking place, in reality, it will be very
difficult for Eircom to refuse.
8. Website Statistics - Niall O'Keefe
Niall reported that in 8 weeks, we had about 20,000 hits which in his view
was a remarkable performance for any new site and especially one that had no
external promotion.
9. Other Points
The meeting officially closed at 9:30 p.m. at which stage a number of people
had to leave. About half the audience stayed on for about another hour
discussing the various points further.
Participants were asked to contribute £4 to cover cost of room hire. After
the meeting, John Marcus sent the following summary:
quote
"I think we had about 75-80 people last night. 59 signed the attendance
sheet +4 committee members who didn't plus those that probably slipped
through
the net.
Contributions totalled £302.16 in cash. At least two people dropped in
twenties and declined taking any change, there were also a couple
tenners and many fivers.
The hotel was £200, so our balance is now £127.16 including the cheque
for £25 that came in via Martin. Will start looking into the bank account
situation. "
end quote
Martin Harran
Chairman, IrelandOffline