Introduction

It is with great pleasure that I have the opportunity to address this conference and to support the excellent work that is being carried out by the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and the Economics and Social Research Institute (ESRI), on the development and analysis of research statistics on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) deployment, research and take-up in Ireland.

The provision of accurate and relevant data collection in the area of ICT and the appropriate analysis of that data is fundamental to the perception and ranking of Ireland in the Global marketplace. The accurate reporting of the progress of ICT deployment, research and take-up in Ireland has significant implications for inward investment.

While it is important to ensure that the data collected for statistical analysis is accurate and up-to-date it is equally important to ensure that the presentation and meaning of that data reflect the real facts. In the words of Gregg Easterbrook^[1],

“Torture numbers, and they'll confess to anything.”

As our communications infrastructure develops and information and communication technologies continue to race ahead, they will bring sweeping economic and social change.

New technologies such as Optical Burst Switching and Sensor Web technology will provide us with some of the tools we need to embark on some of the urgent tasks facing us, such as:

· Accelerating our Economic Recovery,

· Maintaining our competitiveness,

· Reducing our long term unemployment,

· Bridging the digital divide and

· Reducing Carbon emissions.

The Irish Market

The Irish market has improved significantly since 2000 when there were only 4,000 broadband subscribers, 2 Mobile Network Operators and a Cable Operator in financial difficulty. In 2009 we have 1.125 million broadband subscribers[2], the Cable Operators are investing heavily in their networks and there are over 20 medium to large operators (plus many small operators). There are currently 4 Mobile Network Operators and these are now also offering wireless broadband services. Ireland has become a leader in wireless broadband “know-how” and broadband is also being delivered over a range of other technology platforms including DSL, fibre, mobile and satellite. In fact the fastest growing broadband sector in Ireland is Mobile Broadband. The majority of broadband subscriptions in both residential and non-resdential markets is in the range 2 Mega Bits per second (Mb/s) to 10 Mega Bits per second.

Why the improvement? It is a result of competition. Competition in voice from Mobile and Fixed Network Operators and competition in broadband from Cable, Wireless, Fibre and Mobile service offerings. The improvement is also attributable to investment certainty from government policy and the development of open access infrastructure.

Competition is delivering significant private sector investment with greater consumer choice particularly since the advent of mobile broadband. The quality of service is better with higher speeds and falling prices. (For instance some recent product launches include speeds of up to 12Mb/s from Eircom, 8Mb/s from BT, 12 Mb/s from UPC, 15Mb/s from Smart and 50Mb/s from Magnet.)

The Irish market is maturing. All of the large corporate companies are using high speed broadband. The latest available figures for SME’s show a greater than 83% take up of broadband. On the residential side, Ireland has caught up with its European peers. When mobile broadband is included we have over 24.3 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants compared with an EU average of over 21.7. Significantly, 60% of households now have broadband.

The National Broadband Scheme (NBS), recently launched by the Department of Communications Energy and Natural Resources, will address the remaining unserved areas of Ireland. The NBS was commissioned on the basis that 10-15% of households were unable to access broadband. A lot of work has already been done in ICT deployment. According to statistics prepared by ComReg last year, Ireland ranked 12^th among the 27 countries benchmarked[3]. Denmark and the Netherlands have the highest household broadband penetration rates at 86% and 82.9% respectively.

The Limitations of Statistics: Ireland’s Demographic Disadvantage

In relation to the use of certain statistics it is worth calling to mind the old adage,

“Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say[4].”

As an example of this I would like to refer to the most commonly used indicator for broadband and broadband take-up, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicator which measures “the number of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants”. What this indicator “says” for Ireland is that we have only 19.1 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants, thereby placing us at the lower end of the OECD table with. The OECD average is 21.3.

What the indicator does not “say” is that the average number of people per household is significantly higher in Ireland than in most other EU countries. The greater family size in Ireland and the younger average age of our population, means that this indicator does not reflect the true degree of penetration of broadband in our demographic. Ireland has the 18^th lowest number of houses per capita in the EU 25. This indicator has the effect of diluting the penetration by expressing it considering only the penetration per capita. It means that even if 100% of homes in the country had broadband, this indicator would “say” that we had a take up of only 35%. A far fairer indicator for our demographic would be the penetration of broadband per household.

We have been lobbying for a change in this indicator, but unfortunately international data on households is not widely available. In addition, this indicator does not take into account mobile broadband subscriber penetration. We have lobbied for the inclusion of mobile data with some progress. It is being proposed that two indicators are to be used to address both fixed broadband and wireless broadband (which will include mobile data). Our preference is for a composite statistic representing both fixed and wireless. It is important that advances made in broadband uptake in Ireland are appropriately reflected in international statistics to give the true picture.

An additional point of contention is that in the published statistics speeds as low as 256kb/s are considered to be broadband. We are of the view that broadband speeds should be no lower than 1Mb/s and have reflected this in the NBS programme.

On a positive note, Ireland rose^[5] from 26th place to 18th in a new index, compiled by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), that measures the advancement of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in more than 150 countries worldwide. Overall, Ireland was one of 10 countries that had gained most in a five-year period. Ireland's biggest gain was in the technology usage category, climbing from 32nd to 19th. The price of technology was another consideration that has a bearing on ICT uptake and was. an area where Ireland ranked 17th, one place ahead of the UK in the list of lowest mobile prices.

The Central Role of ICT in Economic Recovery

The Government’s economic recovery plan recognises the important impact of ICT on delivering a low-Carbon economy which is critical for a “smart” economy. In his speech^[6] on “Building Ireland's Smart Economy: A Framework for Sustainable Economic Renewal” the Taoiseach said that

“a key feature of the smart economy is building the innovation or 'ideas' component of the economy through the utilisation of the knowledge, skills and creativity of people, and their ability and effectiveness in translating ideas into valuable processes, products and services.

The Smart Economy is also a 'Green Economy' in that it achieves greater output for fewer inputs and results in a lower reliance on natural resources to drive economic growth.”

The Taoiseach highlighted the following as key elements of the framework in bringing this about,

· “ building on Ireland's significant multinational presence and Ireland's stock of highly-skilled workers by incentivising greater investments in high-value research and development areas in science and technology;

· capitalising on the Government's unprecedented €8.2 billion investment in science and technology with a plan to create a similarly R&D-intensive indigenous enterprise sector through the provision of considerable supports for start-up companies and entrepreneurs;

· a substantial suite of tax incentives for investments in R&D; and,

· substantial support for start-up companies including an innovation fund for early stage innovators.”

· (and to) implement a 'new green deal' to move us away from fossil fuel-based energy production though investment in renewable energy and to promote the green enterprise sector and the creation of 'green-collar' jobs”

The European Context

At a recent meeting^[7] the EU i2010 High Level Group highlighted the central role played by ICT in driving innovation, productivity and growth. It stated that ICT remains crucial to the innovation capacity of the European Union and it is the biggest spender in R&D in Europe. It stated that companies and Governments should not be cutting back on R&D and innovation activities as these lay the foundation for technological progress on which Europe will capitalise in the future.

Science Foundation Ireland and ICT

Research in ICT and Emergent Technologies is a critical factor in our economic recovery. Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) was established to develop Ireland as a centre of research excellence in strategic areas relevant to economic development, including Information Communications Technologies, and more recently Sustainable Energy/Energy Efficient Technologies.

SFI is a key contributor to successfully delivering on the objectives set out in the National Development Plan 2007 – 2013, the Government’s Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation 2006 – 2013 and more recently, “Building Ireland’s Smart Economy: A Framework for Sustainable Economic Renewal”. SFI funding is contributing significantly to creating the knowledge and driving the discoveries to underpin the future competitiveness of the Irish economy.

The consequences of SFI funding are becoming far-reaching across the Irish economy in terms of Foreign Direct Investment, employment, and Ireland’s reputation in International world-class science.

The last few years have seen increased leveraging of Ireland’s investment through SFI, which has been realized by IDA Ireland locating key R&D centres here. 40% of IDA “wins” in 2007 were R&D related on the back of SFI funded research, a stark contrast to 10/15 years ago when IDA Ireland struggled to attract any significant FDI.

Multi-national companies now see Ireland as a location for R&D activity and this will help embed these companies in Ireland around high value-added activities. In terms of SFI funded ICT research, companies such as Lucent Technologies, CISCO, Intel, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Nortel and Vodafone have all chosen Ireland as a home for significant research activity.

In a relatively short period of time SFI has been the main contributor to growing Ireland’s international reputation in the world of scientific research which has seen Ireland reposition itself from a relatively poor under-performer to a significant force in the strategically important area of ICT.

Research in ICT and Emergent Technologies

Total investment by SFI in ICT and Emergent Technologies (IC&ET) research to-date amounts to almost €600m involving in excess of 1,000 researchers. SFI has invested approximately €19m to-date in The Tyndall National Institute National Access Programme (NAP) based at University College Cork and the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) at NUI Galway.

ICT Research Support

Research support by SFI in the area of ICT includes software (computational thinking and value-chain engineering), hardware (opto-electronics); and the combination of software and hardware in grids, sensor and other networks. As a result, there is now considerable strength in sizable research teams including the areas of photonics, telecoms, information security and sensor networks.

Outputs and Success Stories (Some Examples)

The output from SFI research projects includes human capital. Investment in human capital is well demonstrated by a recent (6th February 2009) statement by John Dunne co-founder of Intune Networks (a high-tech company) on RTE Drive Time, when talking about support received from Government to support high tech companies:

“Science Foundation Ireland have funded over the last 5 years a huge amount of R&D work and we’ve actually hired a significant number of graduates out of those programmes. Now if those programmes didn’t exist we would have to go to other countries to try and bring graduates in”.

InTune Networks is a dynamic young Irish photonics company working in Telecoms. It is one concrete example of where SFI’s work is paying huge dividends.

InTune Networks works with the Tyndall National Institute in Cork, and is a partner now with the CTVR, Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research, CSET at Trinity College, Dublin.

Conclusion

It is clear that ICT has a critical role to play in our economy and society, not least in helping us to bring about our economic recovery and the development of a “smart” low Carbon economy. Indeed this role extends not just to our own economy but to that of Europe and the rest of the world.

It is important that Ireland continues to invest in innovation and R&D in ICT through SFI and other programmes to achieve this goal and to continue attracting inward investment.

The use of statistics, what they measure, how they measure it and how these data are reported in international benchmarking reports have a significant and direct impact on our economy, its perception and foreign direct investment.

For these reasons it is important that we strive to perform well under the various benchmarking indices and, where these are inherently unsuited to our demographics, that we influence the future benchmarking undertakings to better reflect the reality of our achievements in this field.

I wish all present well in your endeavours to further the progress of the development and application of these statistics, and I would like to thank you for your attention this morning.

By way of conclusion , I would like to remind you of the advice of the Nobel Prize Physicist, Richard Feynman[8] , which I feel can be extended to cover the use of statistics in benchmarking our progress in ICT,

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. “

Roger E. O’Connor

Director of Business & Technology

Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources

Tel: 01 678 2305, 086 836 9245

Email: roger.oconnor@dcenr.ie

10th March, 2009