The latest JNLR survey estimates that 60% of Irish people don’t use e-mail. This was a startling statistic and one which I find slightly exaggerated in a attempt to grab media coverage. A more telling and trustworthy report comes from the telecoms regulator, Comreg, which reckons that 47% of the population do not have a PC in the home, relying on internet access in the workplace instead. The Central Statistics Office estimates that under 55% of Irish households have a PC, but this is as poor figure when you compare it to penetration in Sweden where it has reached 82%.
The bottom line is that Ireland as an information society is lagging behind the other OECD countries. In its most recent report, the OECD rated Ireland a poorly 13th out of 15 countries when it came to broadband penetration. While the government has been proactive in developing world-class online services such as Revenue Online (www.ros.ie) and Comhairle (www.comhairle.ie), it has not done enough to stimulate the uptake of PC and broadband usage.
VAT on a PC
Peter Evans, product director with broadband service provider BT believes that there should no VAT on the purchase of a PC. “An entry level PC can be purchased in Ireland at PC World for €350 but then the consumer is expected to pay VAT at 21%. This should not be the case.” Evans argues that if we are to get that 47% of the disenfranchised using technology then we need to look at how we provide this group with training and education to equip them with the basic computing skills. “In the UK, basic training courses are available through libraries, community centres, schools and retail stores. We need a similar initiative from government here. The ECDL is just too advanced for most of these users.”
Government initiative
Evans advocates a computing initiative from the government that truly caters for first timers and which does not, as happened in the UK, become a scheme that benefits people looking to upgrade. “Training, low rates of VAT on purchase and an affordable method of paying for it will drive PC penetration.”
Chicken and egg
So which comes first, PC ownership or broadband adoption? And does the ownership of a PC stimulate broadband adoption or is the opposite the case? Truly, it is a case of ‘chicken and egg’ but a sensible approach is to look at the PC as the primary access device for broadband internet access. There have been pretenders to the throne – such as the mobile phone and the Xbox 360 games consoles, but ultimately the desktop drives access.
Killer apps
On top of that, users need killer applications to get them to use their PCs, and these killer applications need internet connectivity. Now, whether or not they need broadband speeds or just dial-up ones is another question. E-mail, online banking and online shopping for flights and holidays are three basic killer applications for ordinary users. It’s more than likely that you don’t need a PC at home to complete any of these tasks, as long as you have a PC at work. So it seems highly probable that the majority of the 47% that don’t own PCs at home are in fact using an internet-connected PC at work to carry out these personal tasks.
And even among those who have PCs at home, they may not necessarily see the need for broadband. There are, according to Evans at BT, over 250,000 users of dial-up internet access in Ireland. They are using these slow connections to do the tasks we mentioned above, are spending little time online, and are happy to pay a low fee to do so. The challenge now is to educate these users on the benefits of upgrading to broadband.
Education process
Users need to be educated about the potential of Web 2.0 – the morass of multimedia content channels and applications that are being developed thanks to the availability of the fast internet pipe. The success of user generated content sites such as YouTube saw Time Magazine vote the online user as its ‘Person of the Year’ for 2006. People are creating their own videos, music, podcasts and video podcasts and uploading them to the Web for other users to enjoy. Peer to peer sites are starting to embrace legal music file sharing and TV companies such as Sky are looking to deliver their movies via DSL. It’s an exciting media revolution, but to be part of it you need a PC with a broadband connection.
Collective responsibility
Bruce Richardson, marketing manager with incumbent broadband provider Eircom sees the education process as a ‘shared responsibility between service provider, government and the media’. He says ‘Users need to understand the relevance of broadband, and while the young are informed, spending more time online than watching TV, the older groups need help from us in unleashing the potential of access.”
Broadband barriers
Evans at BT would argue that there are also many younger and very clued-in users who cannot display their prowess online because they cannot get access to a broadband service. ‘There is a need for more progress on local loop unbundling. If you look at the OECD score card, the countries that are racing up the broadband league table are the countries that are unbundling quickest.” Richardson at Eircom says that the incumbent is doing its utmost to make broadband available, with 100 new exchanges being broadband-enabled this year. For him, it’s more a question of application and educating the users on the ones that will be most attractive to them.
Broadband lobby group Ireland Offline recently carried out a survey which showed that internet users who move to broadband increase their internet usage significantly. Crucially, 73% of people who used dial-up access said they did not switch to broadband because it was not available to them. 73% of those who had switched to broadband had more than doubled their time on the Internet, and 75% spend more than 20 hours a week online. Price was only an issue for 18% of respondents.
Action points
It is clear that to make high-speed online access almost ‘ubiquitous’, action needs to be taken by three parties. The broadband providers need to increase the availability and speed of their offerings. Price is not a barrier at this stage. The government need to take steps to provide appropriate training to absolute beginners, offer tax incentives on the purchase of a PC, and remove or at least reduce the VAT charge on it. A Home Computing Initiative is required urgently. Finally, media such as PC Live! must continue to provide users with details of new ways of using their connected PCs –whether it be broadcasting to the world via a blog or podcast or just messaging and video conferencing with the relatives in the US.
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