The report also includes information on broadband penetration, drawing on OECD figures. Here it’s interesting to note that Ireland has the third greatest increase in penetration in the past year, although penetration rates are still somewhat below the OECD average, at 18.1 subscriptions per hundred inhabitants, compared to an average of 20.0. A major limiting factor may well be that only 31% of copper lines are DSL enabled, as opposed to an EU average of 33%, and a high in the Netherlands of over 60%.

The OECD figures are for December 2007. Comreg has collected data for Q1 2008, and claims that penetration in Ireland is now 18.6, and 22.9 if mobile broadband is included (something not yet tracked by OECD, though seemingly it will soon be included in their comparisons). Of course, mobile and fixed line penetrations should be treated differently – a DSL line into a home can enable access by all members of a household, perhaps even simultaneously, while an internet-enabled mobile device is more likely to have a single user, and of course does not (usually?) allow simultaneous connection by multiple users.

I’m also unsure of the connection speeds offered on so-called ‘mobile broadband’ services. I do note that Comreg break out connection speeds, with their definition of broadband seemingly going as low as 144kbps (presumably high enough not to include ISDN, but low enough to catch everything above it). The number of subscribers on under 1Mbps, though, is low (3.7% of residential users, 4.8% of non-residential users) and most residential connections are split evenly between the 1-2Mbps and 2-10Mbps ranges. (Non-residential connections tend to be larger, with 27% in the 1-2Mbps range and 67.7% in the 2-10Mbps range.) For those interested in the relevant weightings, 76% of broadband connections are classed as ‘residential’, though the fact that this includes 100% of cable connections indicates there may be some shortcomings in the data.

Finally, the Comreg data indicates a drop in the number of Wifi Hotspots available in the country. The drop from Q4 ’07 to Q1 ’08 is 2.6%. The data for hotspots doesn’t go far enough back to have a year-on-year comparison, but they were collecting Wifi Access Point figures last year (1 Hotspot = 1 or more Access Points) and the Q4-Q1 drop is 4.8% and the Q1 ’07 to Q1 ’08 drop is 3%, indicating that this is a somewhat recent development.

MyBBCRadio [which will] use peer-to-peer technology to provide “thousands, ultimately millions, of individual radio services created by audiences themselves”.

. Elsewhere it says the technology will build on podcasting and the BBC iPlayer, so it seems a bit unclear as of yet, though it may be the case that they will link podcasting with bittorrent-style technologies (to minimize the bandwidth load), and presumably some algorithm for building a personalized playlist. Could be interesting – as with so much of the BBC research work these days.

Dredging up memories of my previous career, my sense is that population density has some impact, but so too does the variance in density. That is, two of the examples given by Sascha as having higher penetration rates than the US, despite lower population densities, are Iceland and Canada. Both of these countries are known for having populations concentrated in a small number of urban centers. So, despite having low overall density, most of their population is actually situated in a small area. In contrast, the US has several large conurbations, but large segments of the population are spread among smaller towns and suburban areas.

I seem to remember managing to drag up some data on this in the past, but I don’t have anything to hand at the moment. I’d suggest that some readily available online sources probably have some figures on patterns of population density that could help inform such an analysis. Suggestions (or actual analysis) are welcome.

By way of comparison, the micropower unlicensed radio movement provided both an immediate means of communication and an impetus for policy changes in DC, which helped begat LPFM. While I did write my Congresscritters on LPFM, I’ve also lent support to the microbroadcasters who pushed the boundaries (and still do). Now we have LPFM and micropower stations continue to fill the gaps.

The question he then raises is a provocative one – can we, with this issue, go beyond seeking to regulate the big players (that is, vesting agency in our political representatives, and leaving the field to industry players and government-mandated regulatory responses)?

This got me thinking about some of my observations of the telecoms industry as I finished working with eircom. I became convinced that the big telcos will eventually content themselves with the backbone infrastructure – that’s where the power is, that’s what everyone else feeds into. It’s all very well setting up a CUWiN network, or even a local telco co-op – and you can incrementally undertake actions that will siphon away the last-mile business from the traditional telcos – but you eventually need to, as Paul notes, connect to the larger network. In Ireland/Europe where competition has been regulated even on the backbone (big players have to provide transit on a cost-plus basis) you may be limited in your return, but you’re still guaranteed a minimum RoI.

Strangely, thanks to companies like Atlantic Crossing (Enron for telcos) the world has far more dark fiber capacity than we need, but the cost of just turning it on requires major investment, and it’s not necessarily in the right places.

Also, internet peering will be necessary for any new player looking to enter the internet backbone game, and that means you have to enter as a big player. (Incidentally, if we’re looking for a useful partner for the grassroots, why not look to the Universities. They probably have as much capacity as Google, if not more, with nodes in more places. I know in Ireland one of the largest internet backbones is HEANet, a consortium of educational institutions. They do stress exclusive focus on education and research, but other educational networks may be more open to broadening their interaction with social organizations.)

Incidentally, in Ireland the government, after selling off the state-owned telco has now contracted companies to roll-out backbone facilities for connection of MANs (Municipal Area Networks).

He argues that automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology should be applied in new ways to help defray costs of cameras and to catch offenders. “One of the good things about ANPR is that people are often multiple offenders so it would provide useful intelligence,” he said. “Those responsible for 7/7 got to Luton station by car.”

Earlier catching people not wearing seatbelts is given as a use, presumably as a good way to make money from the system. Here we get money and scare-mongering mixed. Talk about a winning combination

The compromise, agreed by the major party groups, seems somehow incoherent – it doesn’t set a common period for retention, it removes provisions for compensating ISPs and telcos for the costs involved in retention, and it includes the standard fudge about being a temporary measure subject to review in three years time.

Due to my travel schedule I didn’t get around to blogging about this at the time, but that’s OK, because data retention is such a hot topic now that there have been several other developments since that deserve to be squeezed in.

First, Boing Boing reported on UK plans to track all car movements – keeping the records for two years. At first this seemed a little unlikely – perhaps an overstatement of their policies or plans – but further research showed that this was merely an extension of the application of their ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) system, which draws from the huge number of CCTV cameras in the UK, the largest in the world. From the first of January, i.e. yesterday, the ANPR system is being expanded to put all sightings of number plates into a database, which can later be mined for who-knows-what.

And then, pat on cue it comes, a report in the Irish Times that the Garda Síochána, the Irish police force, are to purchase and install an ANPR system. Or rather, they have a request pending at Garda Headquarters to do so. According to the article, the request is expected – by whom it doesn’t say – to be approved shortly. Among the advantages of the system listed in the article are more efficient tracking of cars without insurance or tax, or of stolen vehicles – the system will interact with a fixed set of cameras on 50 Garda traffic unit vehicles.

It’s probably not surprising – given the manner in which the article seems to be uncritically acting as (pardon the pun) a vehicle for a Garda press leak – that no questions are raised about possible shortcomings of the system. I wonder, though, just when proposals will be made public to fully leverage the capabilities of the system by expanding its remit to retaining records of all car movements.

extended to cover all criminal offences, including piracy, and not just “serious” crimes, as the original proposal states.

The aim, as originally stated, of the directive, is to aid governments in their fight against terrorism and organised crime in the radically different world in which we live, etc., etc. If the music industry gets its way – and the UK, which holds the EU presidency until the end of the month, has indicated its support – the new surveillance processes will also be used against file-sharing and other copyright infringements.

human rights campaigners call it an example of the mission creep of draconian new anti-terror powers.

Even the Bush administration is not proposing such a ludicrous policy, despite lobbying from Hollywood, Gus Hosein, a senior fellow at Privacy International, told The Guardian.