It was the meeting that everyone had been waiting for and which nobody believed would happen. In the banqueting hall of Dublin's Conrad Hotel, an air of excited expectancy had been building. Net consumers, frustrated at the crippling price of access that is still metered across an old voice network and charged for by the minute were finally being given the opportunity to raise their concerns with all the key players in Ireland's telecommunications industry.
Irelandoffline knew this was its day. A pressure group still in its infancy - it was formed in May of this year - was proving, by the very fact of this meeting, that the Internet is a powerful medium and that, if only some initiative were taken by the Government and the telecommunications companies, Ireland could truly sell itself as the e-commerce hub of Europe.
This was the message Martin Harran, chairman of Irelandoffline, was determined to give to the unlikely gathering of the State's warring telecommunication factions represented by Mary O'Rourke, Minister for Public Enterprise; Etain Doyle, director of Telecommunications Regulation; Derek Kickham, CEO of Esat Fusion; and Soula Evans, Eircom's director of consumer and business markets.
The language was direct and to the point: "When our Government talks about us becoming the e-hub of Europe, it isn't just a pipe dream, it's something we are perfectly capable of achieving. We can only do it, however, if we get off our asses and deal with the things we have to deal with".
Anyone who has strayed into Ireland's technology forums and Internet magazines over the last two years will have encountered the ferocity of feeling out there. Home and small business users have watched in frustration as deadline after deadline for infrastructure change in the telecommunications industry has passed, leaving ordinary consumers paying hefty telephone bills for a service that, in most cases, is vital to their daily business.
Taking the brunt of this rage is Eircom. As Irelandoffline explains on its website, "Eircom is the owner and controller of the local loop in Ireland. They alone have access to what is known as the 'last mile', which links each of their customers from their homes and businesses to their local exchange". This means that companies wanting to offer an alternative service to their customers must first strike a deal with Eircom on the usage of the local loop.
In 1999, Esat Fusion seemed to have succeeded in doing just that, and their IOL NoLimits flat-rate package proved immediately popular. However, when a curt letter of termination was sent round last May to 2000 of its "heavy usage" customers, effectively blaming them for Esat Fusion's financial problems with the service, consumers were served their bitterest illustration yet of an industry in crisis.
Almost overnight, the disparate and irate voices of the forums galvanised into a proactive and unified consumer lobby group. Explaining the history of its formation on the website, Irelandoffline describes "the great anger" caused by Esat Fusion's decision.
If Kickham, Esat Fusion's CEO, was aware of this anger among meeting delegates, he showed little sign of it in his speech. On the contrary, his tone was one of assertive justification. "We pushed the markets as far as we could push it. We sustained the losses in the expectation that these things \the regulatory, economic and market situations could be managed to be turned around in a reasonable amount of time.
"But as I stand here today," Kickham continued, "the only economic model that can be used on a sustainable basis pay-by-the-minute. You have to pay for it by the minute, that is a fact."
Economic and commercial sustainability, these were the catchphrases of the day, each speaker seeming to take courage at their repetition. The phrases appeared to have such a palliative effect on Kickham that, by the end of his speech, the tone was one of solidarity. Casting out a few more references to "economically sustainable packages", Kickham acknowledged that with "98 per cent of those people with Internet access paying for it by the minute, there is a problem.
"We need vision," he said stirringly, "we need leadership, we need action, and we need it now." All of which might have made O'Rourke rather uncomfortable if she had not already quietly slipped away halfway through Kickham's speech.
Part of the problem dogging the telecommunications sector at the moment is the relative powerlessness of the industry regulator. Esat, unhappy with Eircom's pricing over the local loop that allegedly choked its flat-rate service, has made no public moves to the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation on the issue. Until it does, the regulator can do nothing.
It's a situation that leaves Doyle looking like piggy in the middle. Asked when she would decide that things are progressing too slowly, she replied, "it's up to the parties to come in and say they have an issue".
Presumably unsure of what to expect from this new consumer group, Eircom sent in one of their "customer facing" representatives. Soula Evans, director of consumer and business markets, quickly informed the audience that she was "not a technology person". Her job, she explained, was to "understand what drives demand". Laughter rippled around the room when Evans presented the results of an Eircom survey revealing boredom to be the number one reason for ceasing Internet use. "People say I've been there, I've seen that, I don't like it, bye-bye."
Even more alarming to both Evans and the audience were the figures showing 47 per cent of the adult population in Ireland have little or no interest in using the Internet. To Irelandoffline chairman Martin Harran, however, this was exactly his point. "Ladies and gentlemen of Eircom," he urged, "have you lost the plot completely? How the heck can you expect people to make more use of the Internet if you don't give them decent access?"
Harran's exasperated appeal was backed up by figures from an OECD survey showing the Republic as the 9th most expensive country for peak-time Internet access, with broadband penetration "just 0.01 per cent of the total population". "Big businesses", emphasised Harran, "grow out of small businesses. Our members include a lot of small software development companies - maybe just employing two or three people, but these are the businesses that can grow and prosper if they are given the right tools. How can companies in Ireland hope to compete against, for example, similar businesses in the UK who have broadband for about £40 sterling a month when the Irish ones are depending on 56k modems for which they typically pay up to £400 per month - a 10th of the speed for 10 times the cost!"
Naturally Harran's speech drew warm applause from his audience. Since the meeting, however, the mood among Irelandoffline members seems to have plummeted. Forum chats reveal the level of "depression" at no hard commitments from the key speakers. Members reproached the speakers for trotting out "PR material we've heard a million times before". To home and small business Internet users, it was a meeting that promised much but delivered little. The real winner was Irelandoffline, which came of age as an organisation through the meeting. As one forum contributor observed: "You guys are the only hope we have".