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For the record 4 June 
Friday, June 04 2004
by Bryan Collins


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.