In December, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Alex White said he planned to issue a public tender for state intervention to service locations not currently commercially viable with connectivity by the end of 2016. “By ensuring access to high quality broadband we will help attract investment and ensure that businesses in rural Ireland can stay in rural Ireland, ensuring jobs. We will also enable people to live in their local communities and work from home if that works for them,” he said.
Historically, smart phones and tablets found their way into use in a lot of industries because there was no wearable technology that could do the job, Dan Cui, Vuzix
At the moment for people considering setting up new businesses, or relocating an existing businesses to less built-up areas, the harsh reality is that whether you can count on a business-class broadband service is largely a matter of luck. However, schemes like these seem to herald the end of the dark ages of regional connectivity in Ireland.
At the same time, new wireless technologies are soon to be launched that may fill the gap that will be left between these plans being announced and actual connectivity arriving. Time-Division Long-Term Evolution (TD-LTE) will offer companies who fall between the broadband cracks an alternative to slow fixed line bandwidth.
TD-LTE is a 4G wireless technology that promises to offer fibre-level broadband speeds to parts of the country where it would difficult to justify laying cables. “It’s basically a very big last mile pipe from the nearest fibre point to the customer or business premises. It’s a last mile solution — the silver bullet that regional rural Ireland has been waiting for,” said Brian O’Donohoe, commercial director of Imagine.
“It’s fine to say you’re going to do fibre to the home, but we’ve seen that the economics of that just don’t work. Because of that, we believe that TD-LTE is going to be transformational for Ireland.”
TD-LTE is a very similar technology to WiMAX, using similar protocols and spectrum, but it can provide 100mbs with significant throughput to even small regional locations. By the end of 2015, it’s envisaged that around 500,000 customers currently located in broadband black spots will have access to speeds of 100mbs or more.
MOBILE CLOUD
With smart phone and tablet penetration at all-time high levels, one thing is certain — the challenge of bringing the full benefit of cloud computing to mobile users will continue to dominate the conversation this year.
A growing number of enterprise software stalwarts, including SAP and IBM, are now developing enterprise-class applications with mobile-first in mind and this mainstreaming of cloud mobility shows no sign of slowing. In December, IBM and Apple’s long-awaited software collaboration was finally unveiled, with the launch of range of enterprise-class iOS apps under the MobileFirst brand name.
TD-LTE — It’s basically a very big last mile pipe from the nearest fibre point to the customer or business premises. It’s a last mile solution — the silver bullet that regional rural Ireland has been waiting for, Brian O’Donohoe, Imagine
These mobile cloud apps include Plan Flight and Passenger+ for the travel industry, Advise & Grow and Trusted Advice for the banking and financial industries, Retention for the insurance sector, Case Advice and Incident Aware for government, Sales Assist and Pick & Pack for retail, and Expert Tech for telecommunications industries.
“This is a big step for iPhone and iPad in the enterprise, and we can’t wait to see the exciting new ways organisations will put iOS devices to work,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “The business world has gone mobile, and Apple and IBM are bringing together the world’s best technology with the smartest data and analytics to help businesses redefine how work gets done.”
Meanwhile, IDC is predicting that worldwide IT and telecommunications spending will grow by 3.8% to more than $3.8 trillion in 2015, and that fully one third of this spending will be focused on new technologies such as mobile, cloud, big data analytics and the Internet of Things.
Wireless data will account for the largest chunk of this at $536 billion and will be the fastest growing segment of telecom spending.
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