Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

If we add weekends to this figure, it is clear that this leaves many households hanging on for months at a time for a landline. The outgoing Minister has presided over this track record, but it is not one of which he can be proud. The Minister should have inserted provisions in the Bill to address these unacceptably long waiting times.

The communications regulator, Mr. Mike Byrne, said it takes ten days for a line to migrate from Eircom to a landline competitor. He asked why it should take so long and why it should not be instantaneous. We could have inserted in the Bill a general requirement for companies in this regard.

Parallel to the service contract failures that I have already mentioned is one of the most critical failures arising from the regulator's weak powers — that is the absolutely disastrous roll out of broadband. I understand that we are now reaching approximately 500,000 lines but that only amounts to 12% of the total and leaves us way down at the bottom of the table.

A recent ComReg survey showed that 33% of narrowband users have attempted to get a broadband connection at home and have been told that it is not available to them. This broadband blackout rate soars to 42% in the Connacht-Ulster region and 39% in Munster. These statistics reveal an astonishing failure rate. The figure is lower in Dublin but it is still remarkable that approximately 15% of Dublin narrowband users surveyed had been told that broadband is simply not available to them.

In OECD broadband scorecards, we are consistently at the bottom of the pile. Only states such as Turkey, Greece, Mexico, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Hungary usually perform worse than Ireland across the 30 OECD member states.

The Minister will recall that I represented some of his constituents in east Meath who were waiting patiently for broadband. Eventually, they had to resort to a wireless system in the Stamullen area. There are various problems underlying broadband roll-out but three critical issues are line failure, distance from the exchange, and the lack of local loop unbundling or LLU. The lack of LLU has in effect given Eircom a stranglehold on DSL broadband services and other operators are reduced to selling on Eircom's original product.

ln November, BT's chief executive office, Mr. Danny McLaughlin, described the ongoing LLU situation as "torturous". In my own broadband policy document, entitled Enabling Ireland's Future, I quoted John McManus of The Irish Times who compared the process of freeing the vice-like grip of Eircom over the last mile to the retreat of the German army from the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Mr. McManus wrote: "Defeat is inevitable but every foot of ground will be fought over and paid for in blood." Sadly, the outgoing Government has presided over these circumstances.

In the United Kingdom, the regulator, Ofcom, threatened extreme action against the incumbent BT if it did not act positively in the national interest. A settlement was eventually made between Ofcom and the UK Government to ensure proper access to the network. Ofcom was established many years ago with the kind of powers we are only now granting. As a result, the British broadband market has now soared ahead to become one of the best performing broadband environments across the European Union.

In contrast ComReg's actions in the broadband arena have been more like those of a poodle than a rottweiler. The institutional culture of ComReg currently displays too much deference to the wishes of the incumbent, Eircom. Eircom's position in the market involves endless spin about consultations on market failures that lead nowhere.

The Minister should have considered legislating for a universal service obligation for broadband. Why does every Irish household and business not have a legal right to a broadband connection? There is no excuse for procrastination or messing by the incumbent or any other operators. I will seek to amend the Bill in that regard on Committee Stage.

One of the main lacunae in the Bill is that it does not deal with the issue of convergence. Operators, including NTL and Eircom, are increasingly offering mobile, fixed-line, broadband, video-on-demand and other services. Today, we heard of a development whereby mobile handsets might be used to read bar codes. In Japan, people can apparently check the price of items with their mobile phones.

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