For the record 4 June
04-06-2004
by Matthew Clark

New report showers praise on Esat BT for its hosted VoIP service | IE Internet offers free hosting and e-mail to small firms

Dermot Ahern, T.D., the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, has formally switched on the new Limerick broadband network in the city, one of the country's 19 new Metropolitan Area Network (MANs), funded by the government. The new Limerick network consists of 42 kilometres of fibre running through the city and was built at a cost of EUR5 million.

Research and consulting group Current Analysis has issued a report praising Esat BT's new Hosted VoIP (Voice over IP) product, which will let businesses with broadband connections make lower-priced voice calls on the same lines they use for Internet and data services. Current Analysis said that the product will be highly appealing to small and medium sized businesses (SMEs), and will make VoIP a real possibility, since much of the hassle associated with the technology will be handled by Esat BT. The firm did warn however that pricing would be key to commercial success. "A hosted IP telephony service will give them (SMEs) zero TCO (total cost of ownership), yet they will benefit from free inter-site calling as well as support for home workers, hot deskers and a growing workforce. This is the first time that Esat has been able to offer a feature-rich telephony service and this will at last give it some firepower to win business customers away from incumbent Eircom," the report said.

According to media reports, the government of North Korea has banned the use of mobile phones by citizens. The move has occurred only weeks after the government there decided to allow foreigners to use mobiles. North Korea has only had a mobile service since 2002. The government said that it worried that terrorists would use mobile phones to remotely trigger bombs.

On-line pornography sites get around three times the number of visitors per day as other top ranked Web sites and search engines such as Google. US-company Hitwise says that visits to Google, Yahoo Search and MSN Search accounted for about 5.5 percent of all Internet visits among US users during the last full week in May. However, "adult" sites accounted for about 18.8 percent of visits. "Entertainment", "business and finance" and "shopping and classifieds" accounted for 8 percent, 7.4 percent and 7 percent of visits respectively.

Irish company IE Internet.com said that it will offer members of the Small Firms Association (SFA) free Web hosting and free dot-com (.com) domain registration for a year. The package normally costs EUR146 (excl. VAT) and it includes Web site hosting, e-mail and virus protection. Pat Delaney, director of the Small Firms Association, welcomed the initiative as "an opportunity for SFA members to launch their online presence."

Storage hardware maker EMC claims to have extended its lead as the world's top supplier of information storage systems in the first quarter of 2004. Quoting Gartner figures, EMC said that it is the only storage systems vendor among the five largest suppliers to gain revenue share on a year-to-year basis during the quarter, capturing 23.6 percent of the worldwide external controller-based disk storage market.