Dancing at the crossroads
10 March 2007 3:19 am
Choreography is a skillful art. At its best providing seamless flow, the joins melding into a seamless whole.
Well in the case of a new dance routine about to hit the Irish telecom's stage, it has been a failure. The new production is called NGN: Next Generation Networks and it's hard not to see the choreography at work.
This new production took its first step on February 25 when Eircom announced is was going "to spend €60 million over the next three years upgrading its core telecommunications network".
The minister for communications then showed us his moves last Thursday at a ComReg forum on, of all things, NGN: "We have many 'bandwidth hungry' consumers out there and we cannot afford to delay the development of a fully competitive market in Next Generation Networks".
The next day, out stepped ComReg commissioner in an Irish Times editorial slot. "The Irish telecommunications industry is at a crossroads. The networks and business models that have underpinned the industry for decades are about to undergo radical change", wrote John Doherty.
This is the same crossroads Ireland has been at since Telcom Eireann was sold to the private sector. Nothing has changed since then and the choreography surrounding Next Generation Networks reinforces that.
Eircom makes a move and the government and ComReg jump. It will remain so until that choreography is reversed.