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MORE THAN 250 homes in Cork have been pushing both the government and service providers to bring basic internet, mobile and landline service to their area.
Residents in the areas of Courtbrack, Foxes Bridge and Mathey – which are located less than 24 kilometers away from Cork City and eight kilometers from the town of Blarney – have been pushing for local and national services to rectify the situation for the past two years, but to no avail.
Since these homes are based in a valley which affects the signal in the area, it has meant that most of them have been without internet and mobile reception, and in some cases, without landline services.
One of the residents campaigning, Ronnie Dorney, has said while not having these services didn’t affect them too much in the past, the growing reliance on the web when working at home, or to study for second and third-level education, has put the residents at a disadvantage.
“It seems like we are falling between exchanges” said Dorney. “Nobody [we've been in contact with] can confirm to me what the situation is… we’re not even looking for high speeds at this moment, we’re looking for internet access.”
The lack of reception and infrastructure means committing to a contract from a service provider isn’t a possibility, leaving residents in a situation where they’re could be “paying three bills when we don’t have any satisfactory service.”
“Anyone who goes there is tied into a contract for 12 months and because [the reception] is so bad out here, it’s very difficult for us to commit to twelve months.” explained Dorney. “We would nearly have to get a trial or a guarantee out here [first before we could commit].”
Acknowledgement
The situation has become so bad that the locals are in discussion with a number of private service providers about erecting a radio mast in the area. She mentioned “there are plenty of high spots [in the area]” for a mast to help improve the situation.
Since then, the residents have received acknowledgement from Pat Rabbitte, from the Taoiseach and from Eircom about the problem, with the latter promising to visit the area next week to see if there’s a suitable site in the area for a radio mast.
Another broadband provider, Airwaves, will also be visiting the area next week to inspect a number of areas the residents have marked down as suitable for a radio mast.
Apart from the possibility of a radio mast being erected, the other solution is the ESB (Electronic Communications Network) Bill 2013. The bill, which is currently going through the Dáil and Seanad, would allow the ESB to offer its network infrastructure to deliver fiber services.
While that will help out, Dorney says they will continue to push ahead with their current plans on the off-chance the ESB bill ends up not being available in their area.
The locals have been supported by Fine Gael’s Cork North-Central Senator Colm Burke, who became involved six months ago. He described attempts to get answers and the response to his inquiries as “total and absolute frustration,” after been communicating with eircom and other mobile service providers during this period.
Burke recently put forward a motion which will require any houses looking for planning permission to have access to adequate communication services first before they have been built.
It’s expected this motion will be discussed at the Dáil on Thursday.
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Why just cork what about rest of the country
This country is way behind its a disaster
from cork and i agree the roll out of nationwide services is a joke name a county in Ireland and you will be able to find a community left outside in the cold. hope the action works for them and more communities do same
People choose to live in sparsely populated areas. Its expensive for phone companies to provide a service in remote areas. It wouldn’t make business sense to invest thousands in such infrastructure.
while i get spending hundreds of thousands on house is nuts it needs to be rolled out to as many as possible
one house
Bobby that’s a really poor comment. Be real the world is big enough to understand that near blarney is close enough to get proper broadband.
8kms from a small town.
Its hard for services to be economically viable.
People need to live closer together.
Simple as.
Makes a change to see people protesting to get a mast
Cork people usually don’t get good reception anywhere in Ireland……
Lets just bad mouth them they wont be even able to read this haha
I would lay a bet that many of these were out protesting against phone masts in the area at some stage.
The way cork people go on I thought cork was the centre of the universe.surely if it was that good they’d have basic services like this
Maybe it is because our government is dublin biased.
Third world county
Ah that’s right we all forgot Dublin have real issues to protest over, like residents objecting to concerts , and sure when the Dubs were wasting money putting up giant knitting needles in o Connell street the rest of the country was left fall behind , as for that clown that clown BOBBY , people can’t choose if they were born into rural areas with poor amenities .
Place of birth is not a choice.
Place of residence is.
If people choose to live in rural isolation, then they should accept that there are downsides as well as the many upsides.
With that mush you’d make a good clown. You sound very Bitter!!
Jeremy, as a person who knows this area, it’s about 20 mins from cork city and 5/10 mins from blarney. It’s a rural area but it’s not a desolate isolated one.
I think it’s disgusting there’s no reception :)
No reception sounds bad. No hall to have it in, sounds worse.
Dublin > Cork
Dubs are busy in the pubs at the moment !
Shut up
Where is the relevance (and accuracy) in that statement?
The esb will hardly help, they are only going to towns of 10000 people plus, and haven’t even started in those
The ESB like to flood the Corkonians !
No way should it be allowed. They are in Cork. No internet
we bow to your insight stop we have been told
How do they survive without the internet ?? What do they do ?? How do they communicate with people ?? They prob go the real doctor instead of google doctor . Bet they don’t even know about the #nomakeupselfies or anything .
I thought it had its own Republic and Passport? Let them eat cake!
They could be very independent they have plenty if gas and shortly oil.
If Cork had any sense they wouldn’t have ANY FF/FG/Lab representing them. Lets not forget what Dick Spring (Kerry – I know) did for Irelands gas – treacherous. Lab would rather rid Ireland of christianity than focus on a true fair social economic Ireland
Economic Aim of government- one of which is balanced regional development. You take the taxes you must provide the services.
Rural areas have always been and will always be massively subsidized by urban areas. Notice they aren’t allowing county councils to hold onto the property tax. It’s because rural areas don’t really pay any tax and would be screwed without transfers from urban areas. It’s fair enough but the complaining can be a bit much sometimes..
Cork isnt the centre o the universe??? N wah we didn’t have fone or telly a lot when I was growin up, God forbid these kids n other peeps should open a book.
Is that Corkonian you are speaking, because it sure isn’t English !
As an outsider living in Cork I am lucky if I can get 1mb. It does not matter where you are from. In 2014 that’s a f’ing disgrace. Then we have to turn on the news to listen to politicians tell us they support small businesses
Try sky they have a 30 day no quibble guarantee if ur not happy with the service with in the first 30 day u can cancel out of the 12 month contract
Not very rebel like are they
I can’t believe the comments here. The telecom companies make millions with their near-monopolistic arrangement. It is the Irish people who paid the price of installing the infrastructure on which these companies are based. It was then sold off by corrupt politicians to their buddies in the business sector for pennies on the pound.
Basically the Irish people have subsidized these companies. They shouldn’t be allowed to cherry-pick which communities they serve–scooping up the “profitable” and discarding the less profitable.
If you are providing a public utility, you have a responsibility to serve ALL of the public.
People don’t exist to serve business. Business exists to serve people.
Eircom have the monopoly on delivery of WAN services in Ireland, and now that Eircom are mostly if not all a private company its not in their interest to provide services to remote locations. I have heard it said that the buying back of Eircom into state’s asset would make perfect sense.
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