[IIU] Re: [ILUG] OT But esat unlimited has been scrapped

[Chris Higgins]

> Perhaps IIU, or some of its people are interested in setting up a local 
> ISOC chapter? There is no operational Irish chapter at the moment (Alex 
> Gogan made a stab at setting on up a few years ago). ISOC carries much 
> international weight, and Ireland is one of the few civilized countries not 
> to have a chapter.
> 
> An ISOC UK rep will be in Dublin in a couple of weeks if anyone's 
> interested in meeting him to discuss.
> 
> Alex.

Alex, 
I think that it's important that we don't create 'representative' bodies 
without
strong community support. Otherwise, everyone that's anyone will start their
own, and no-body will get anywhere. 

All that will happen, is the few people that are interested will end up on
a 'committee', or will be 'the' committee... and we'll have the Irish ISOC
chapter... and they'll go visit other ISOC chapters and talk about what it's
like in Ireland.. 

But nothing will get done.. we'll have a tick in the box that says 
"Ireland has ISOC chapter"[1]. People will *want* to do something, 
but without real community support it will go nowhere..

Look at the ".ie Usenet Committee", for years when he was in IEunet, Nick 
Hilliard ran the hierarchy, after he left I took over and I ran it for
years, and now that I've left, Dave Rynne has got it... The last real changes
that were made to the hierarchy were made by Nick. Then along comes the
Usenet committee, and there is loads of .ie needs a committee and we need
to be able to say that we have a committee.... So a committee is created
and now we have a committee, and the committee are the committee, and 
still nothing has happened... The www site is a joke, someone half completed it
and as far as I'm aware nothing else has happened... The people involved 
believe
in the idea, but dont' have the time or the resources to do much with it.. and
there is sod all community interest - so they aren't being pushed to do much..

At the moment without a strong community cry for an ISOC chapter, all that will
happen is that we'll get the same all over again.. A few people will put
'founder of Irish ISOC chapter' into their CV and go play politics in a bigger
field.

What we need to tackle the broadband issue in Ireland is 
a/ Information
b/ Ammo
c/ Targets

(a) Information :- We need to have every member of the IIU list, ILUG, 
    the IIA, all of the readers of ie.*, and everyone else we can get our
    hands on to be aware of the issues.. Not just a few people who feel
    strongly about it.. This has to get the attention of the larger community.
(b) We need all of them to be given the bare simple facts (this country needs
    local loop unbundling if we are to go beyond 56k)
    What Eircom control, and why it needs to be pulled from their grip.
    
(c) Everyone then needs to bombard their TD, MEP, the Telecoms Regulator, 
Eircom,
    Esat and anyone else you can get your hands on with a simple request..
    What are *you* going to progress with LLU.

I believe that two faxes a day to the regulator from 'concerned citizens',
asking where the ***k real LLU is, will have more effect than a single petition
signed any one group..

Especially if you follow your fax up with a query two days later looking for
a response... Hmmm... hylafax and cron... :)  

See - that's where the ILUG could help... write the scripts and write a FAQ on
how to do it... we could even build an LDAP database of all the target numbers
and host it with the linux.ie WWW site... Then everyone's hylafax config
(or efax, let's not get religious about it) could query the next number...

We'd just have to make sure that is doesn't become distributed denial of 
service
attack on the ODTR fax machine. 'cause that would just have the reverse effect.

Alternatively, we continue to do what we have always done - sit down and take 
it.


[1] Not too sure if we get a tick in the box marked 'civilised' though


<DISCLAIMER> Comments are as usual my own, and do not reflect the policies
of my employer (past or present)</DISCLAIMER>


-- 
** Chris Higgins                         e: chris.higgins at horizon.ie **
** Technical Business Development        tel: +353-1-6204916            **
** Horizon Technology Group              fax: +353-1-6204949            **