Fergus Cassidy

No going back

THE flowers may be blooming and the days may be long and bright, but for some lucky citizens tomorrow will be Christmas.

Because by midnight tomorrow, another bunch of people will have access to a broadband internet connection for the first time. It's like a cyclist getting behind the wheel of a car for the first time. Okay, the car may be only 4-stroke, with no heater or stereo, but it's a car nonetheless.

The roll-out of ADSL and the introducing of flat rate connection is proving popular since the beginning of July. It's too early to use the word successful, but things are heading in that general direction.

At any rate, the demand is real and that alone is progress. In less than a year the industry smog proclaiming the lack of demand for broadband has lifted.

That was a very difficult hurdle to get over. Proving that there was demand for broadband was always going to be impossible. It was a chicken and egg situation. The dramatic collapse of the dotcom bubble didn't help and created the illusion that the net's 15 minutes of fame were up.

In the minds of many, the net was just a passing fad. Not at all confirming the predictions and forecasts much beloved of the information superhighway tourist board. Maybe the cliche has a ring of truth about it: that we overestimate the long term effects of technology and underestimate the short term effects.

I happened to spend a couple of hours recently doing something that is still very special to the internet and the web in particular. I just followed links from one site to another without bothering too much where I was heading. Er, surfing I suppose.

I came across rafts of sites that hadn't been updated or changed in maybe two or three years. Some of these sites were moribund businesses but an awful lot of them belonged to non-profit or non-governmental organisations and groups. I came across a long list of Irish voluntary organisations. The majority had a web site and listed an email contact address. I didn't check the email addresses but I tried to visit most of the sites listed.

Many were still up and running, well-maintained and full of relevant information. Others though were badly out of date while some have disappeared off the web completely. What hit me was the amount of thought, time and energy that must have gone into the sites. Not to mention the money. It's like stumbling across the ruins of a previous civilisation. All the buildings are there, some lights are on but there's nobody at home.

The good news is that the vast majority of the organisations listed are still around, in real life, as the net heads have christened it. RL for short. The groups that have let their web sites drift appear to have backed away from the web. Or at least don't see it as important enough, especially when finance and resources are scarce.

This may be a negative side to the first chapter of the internet's arrival in Ireland, but it's not worth dwelling on. The positive side is that invaluable experience has been gained. It might be dormant right now, but I've no doubt that it will appear again in the future.

And that's where broadband comes into play. The move from ordinary dial-up to broadband is almost impossible to describe. It really is one of those things that has to be experienced to be understood. It really will change the way people fundamentally think about the internet. Speed is obviously the first important benefit. For most people this is so quantifiably different from what they're used to, that it tends to be talked about the most. But there are other significant advantages.

For some, keeping the phone line free is almost as important. What's the point in being able to have online communications, while offline no one can get through to you on the engaged phone line? These are the real problems which confronted, and still do to some extent, the growth of the internet in Ireland.

There are technical hurdles as well, but these have been dwelt on far too much for my liking. The same thing happened when television sets appeared in this country and look at what's happened since.

The social and cultural implications of internet technology are just as significant as the minutiae of technical prowess and knowledge, in terms of internet take-up. In some cases, even more so.

A freed up phone line is just one of the changes that will quickly become accepted as the norm. It will be like the old Smash ad: 'and their phone lines were engaged... neh neh neh; and it took them five minutes to connect... neh neh neh; and they paid by the minute... neh neh neh; and they could only download text... neh neh neh'.

There are certain constraints on cultural behaviour that have been with us now for a long time. No one feels comfortable worrying about how much a call to a friend is going to cost. Or juggling calls to suit a particular tariff. There are certain calls to mobiles I can't make from my land line because I can't afford it.

So it's not just speed that is the great attraction of broadband. There are important social considerations as well and these will be a significant driver of broadband take-up. The roll-out of broadband is still in its infancy but there's no going back now that it's here. Those lucky enough to be connected to a water main will never want to return to the well.

There are many, many others who became disillusioned and frustrated with the net and seldom go online now. Their expectations of the web were deflated and frustrated by infrastructural backwardness. Eventually, the hassle and the cost (in time as well as money) outweighed the potential.

Hopefully, a lot of those people will return when they catch a glimpse of broadband. Its real potential lies in bridging the gap between people's expectations of the internet and what it can really deliver.

With broadband the net will cease to be a mirage.

NEXT WEEK...
IrelandOffline has played an important role in campaigning for decent internet access in Ireland. That campaign is by no means finished and I'll be talking to Christian Cooke, the group's new chairman, about what's next on the agenda.