New York up to speed on the Net

From Manhattan, the contrast between the Government's desire to establish the Republic as an e-commerce centre and the woeful experience of the Irish Web user is stark.

As the prospect of digital subscriber line (DSL) roll-out in this lifetime recedes like the Eircom share price, and the cable guys politely inform us that, er, no, they've decided not to provide cable Net access after all, what's a poor geek girl to do but quietly weep and short out the keyboard?

The incident that induced this sense of despair came as I sat in my best friend's apartment in New York on a Sunday evening. As we shared the mammoth New York Times Sunday edition - a weightlifting exercise as well as a weekend paper - she opened the cabinet that used to hold the TV and now holds the PC and asked what kind of music I felt like listening to.

The she fired up Spinner.com, a website that serves as a central directory of online radio stations and a broadcasting resource. Download the Spinner console and from around the world you can tune in everything from merengue and salsa to house, big band or Christian rock.

Liz, like many Americans, has a cable modem that zaps the always-on, flat-rate Net at broadband speed into the house. That means you can suddenly do an amazing number of ordinary, everyday things with the Web - like have it serve as your entertainment centre.

On my 56k modem in Dublin, online stations drop in and out because the speed at which the bits are sent are subject to Net traffic jams. You wouldn't want to use it as background music. But this was excellent quality and ne'er a glitch in the transmission.

Then we got to chatting about music file-sharing program Napster. Why not try it yourself, I suggested. Napster is not a particularly large download but could take anywhere from five to 20 minutes, perhaps, on a phone modem.

Liz literally clicked the button and it was there on her PC. Then, a seven-minute Maria Callas aria - which means a very hefty music file - whizzed over to us in under two minutes (for me, that would be a 20- or 30-minute download).

Well, Napster got enthusiastic user number 57,000,001 in the form of Liz, and I got a depressing reminder of how far behind we in the Republic are getting as an "information society", with no resolution in sight.

The State should not be measuring its successes merely in terms of the software companies, data centres and chip and PC manufacturers it lures into the country, but also in the digital vision it offers to the people at large.

Right now we hear much about our desirability as an ebusiness location and the possibilities for e-government, wired schools and beefed up Internet access for all. But we increasingly lag and have no hope of leading when home broadband remains so elusive.

This is more than a source of frustration, it is a growing threat to the perception of the Republic abroad as companies increasingly look holistically at nations when they consider investments. Factors such as the penetration level of PCs in homes and schools, use of the Net by consumers and broadband access are becoming as important as quality of employees, tax rates, grants and whether a country has good connections to the Net backbone.

But of course there are amusing ironies in the Big Apple as well - like flogging the stock market as entertainment. How's this for an example of how democratised the financial world has become: the Nasdaq - referred to as "the tech-heavy Nasdaq" in the press for the number of tech companies it lists - now has a Disney-esque market "experience" in the centre of Times Square in New York.

This self-billed "high-tech preview of the future of investing in a digital world" is in the heart of the theatre district, on the corner of Broadway and West 43rd Street, and those who thrill to the buy/sell song and dance can buy tickets to this extravaganza.

They then receive an assigned date and time to attend. The "highlights" - and that is, indeed, how the Nasdaq impresarios refer to them - feature a studio where you "experience" live financial news broadcasts. The tour also includes the largest permanent LED display in the world (i.e., a towering Nasdaq ticker display with all your favourite companies' listing abbreviation and logo streaming by), and a multimedia tour.

The tour is billed as "the ultimate chance for you to interact with the most exciting stock market of today - and tomorrow".

One would have thought one could do so simply by frenetically dumping one's Idiotcompany.com shares. And that last "tomorrow" certainly sounds wanly hopeful given the antics on another New York street not too far away, known as Wall.

klillington@irish-times.ie[RO