STRATEGY: A High-level Government strategy group will recommend a range of new policies to kick-start investment in internet infrastructure worth up to €1 billion.
The proposals, which will be brought to Government shortly, are based on a vision to make affordable high-speed internet services available to consumers and businesses within three years.
The strategy would focus on building local telecoms networks in 66 key development towns throughout the State. These would be financed through public partnerships with the private sector and managed by a new industry body offering infrastructure to all competing telecoms firms at cheap prices.
If accepted by Cabinet, this would represent a policy shift. The Government has previously supported public-private partnerships on a one-to-one basis, where companies would gain State funding for a project and retain ownership of the networks.
Under the new plan, companies would be co-owners of the new infrastructure, which would be offered for use by all firms on an equal and competitive basis.
The plan would also promote wireless and satellite broadband technologies, and may even set a longer-term vision to make local networks capable of delivering massive chunks of data, such as video-on-demand, to homes and businesses in the State, over the next 10 to 15 years.
Mr Ira Magaziner, US technology tzar of the Clinton administration, put this long-term vision for the Republic's internet networks to members of the telecoms industry last week in Dublin.
Mr Magaziner, who played a key role in advising the Government to focus on e-commerce in the 1990s, told industry leaders the action was needed to make the Republic a leader in technology.
The strategy group hopes the new proposals, if implemented, would reassure key investors in the economy that the Government is serious about its pledge to create an e-commerce hub. The strategy could cost the public and private sectors €1 billion, industry sources said.
Several technology companies here, including Microsoft, have recently warned Government that local networks are inadequate.
In a further blow to the State's technology ambitions, it was recently ranked at the bottom of a technology scorecard in a survey by the European Telecommunications Association.
The proposals will face opposition from the two dominant mobile firms, Vodafone and Digifone. Mr Gerry Fahy, director of strategy at Vodafone, said yesterday they appeared to favour fixed telephony and could render uneconomic certain investments in wireless technology.
"The wireless sector urges a significant review of the proposed policy to include equal consideration of wireless as a potential gap-closing technology with the avoidance of any discrimination," he said.
The group may also face opposition from the incumbent operator Eircom, which would be concerned rivals could not bypass its network in favour of a competing one subsidised by the State.
The strategy group comprising senior civil servants from several Government departments and chaired - unusually for a telecoms project - by the Department of the Taoiseach, will finalise its report to Government within the next two weeks.
The strategy could also raise tensions between the Department of Public Enterprise, which has the responsibility for developing telecoms policy, and the Taoiseach's Department.
Several projects being proposed by the Department of Public Enterprise are understood to have been temporarily stalled due to the review.
The final report is expected to conclude the Government should not be in the telecoms business, which may run contrary to plans by the Department of Public Enterprise to fully fund similar local fibre rings in the regions.
