EU law would doubtless have a lot to say about how such a scheme was implemented, and could certainly make a specific plan illegal (because of lack of transparency in the tendering process, say), but it’s a big jump from there to say that any such plan would be illegal.

Does anyone out there have any specifics on why Dublin City Council thought the plan would have been contrary to EU law?

That said, I think it’s utterly stupid. I think it’s very important to give people a basic network connection. This can only improve education, as well as consumation. (Order from the comfort of your home, etc.)
Make it so that people have a basic level of connectivity, enough for email and light browsing.
If you want more, pay a normal ISP to give you a regular line, complete with youtube, bittorrent, counter-strike, the works.

Only, that way the ISPs would have to compete on service instead of price, or at least point them more in that direction. This is not what ISPs want.

Ahem

Remember what totalitarian governments did to the phone systems they ran? Total surveillance.

It would make what Bush and Blair and the rest of them are doing now, look like little more than window snooping.

Yeah, I REALLY want the government to be able to control my internet connection, be able to intercept, record and monitor it at will.

In private hands this become more difficult, and you can switch service providers when you want to.

There is a reason China and Burma and other countries hate the internet and block, filter and monitor it constantly, where they permit it at all.

Do you really trust Bush, Blair or even your local mayor to NOT snoop on your connection?

And as for not even Cory picking up on the speculation that this is not the real reason, but that it was actually due to pressure from the telcos, well….

Also, DJS, Republic of Eire =/= Britain

Yet another symptom of the “free” market disease: It’s not allowed to give something for common good if there a buck to be made out of it.

“Oh we’d love to provide this service, but unfortunately Brussels won’t let us” is a classic cop-out in any EU country.

Justin Mason @ 7:
That was my guess, based on how the EU gets used as a scapegoat in the UK. I kind of hoped Ireland might be more enlightened than that, being in the Euro and all, but I guess politicians are much the same everywhere.

Almost all state aid to companies is illegal in the EU but there is likely nothing to stop the council setting up its own wifi corporation if it really wanted to. Except of course economics and lack of demand. Chicago recently scrapped a similar plan too not sure what excuse they used.

http://s4dd.yore.ma/eircom/

No needs to spend €27m! :)

They already do. In some countries, they need a warrant. In others, not so much.

What makes you think that private corporations will not snoop on your email? At least with the government, the bottom line isn’t profit. With a corp, pretty much anything that makes money will be done. Sell your emails to Mr. Spammer A. Spam? Done. Sift through your browsing history to see what you really need to buy next? Done. Keep this information forever? Done. Get bought up by a bigger fish, pooling more of your data? Done.

Again, even with everything in private hands, the government STILL gets to see your data. There’s no need to worry about that.

So yes, I would really like to see basic connectivity from my government. They have libraries as well (and they keep track of what you borrow! Gasp!) and schools (they know what you know!!!) and toll booths (they know where you are!!!!!!), so this would be a logical step.

Either way, my point is that it would be good to have the wifi, and bad to have a totalitarian, snooping government. These two points can certainly be combined into WIRELESS UTOPIA! WHO’S WITH ME!

EU competition policy forbids the use of public money to subsidize unfair competition.

What is unfair in this case is that one competitor – the city as ISP – gets state funds while others – the commercial ISPs who also operate in Dublin – don’t get the same support.

Where there are NO commercial providers of Internet access – e.g. in poor rural areas – the European Commission has ruled that there is no problem giving as much state aid as anyone wants.

Where only the incumbent telco is offering access, state aid is probably OK, too, especially if used to create competition to the incumbent.

In other cases, it’s either not allowed or is subject to review and approval by the EC on a case by case basis.

This is all explained in a 2007 powerpoint presentation by the head of the telecom section of the EU’s competition directorate. Here is the link.

I haven’t checked the EC website, but I would guess that Irish ISPs filed a complaint with the EC when the Dublin plan was announced, the EC looked at it and agreed that free WiFi would compete unfairly with the ISPs.

Dublin isn’t the first case where this has happened. Prague was the first, last May. But the biggest controversy about this issue has been in Spain. I wrote about that in my “View from Europe” blog for the Wireless Internet Institute: “Spaniards Ask, Is Wireless Internet a Private Business or Universal Right?”

More recently, I moderated the mayors and CIOs panel on “Regulation and Funding” at the Wireless Digital Cities European Summit where state aid for municipal Wi-Fi was THE hot topic. Read about that discussion here.

Something still doesn’t match: you say that the European Commission allows state-funded wifi networks in poor rural areas where there is no corporate competitors. However, there are many examples of state-funded wifi in wealthy urban areas: Oulu, Finland, houses one of the fastest-growing IT sectors in Europe, but (as far as I know) there never was any talk of the free network being unfair competition.

(Their FAQ states that “PanOULU does not compete with commercial services. It does not offer extensive user support nor same reliability than commercial operators.”) http://www.panoulu.net/faq.shtml.en

Same here in Portugal: the towns that are now building their free wifi networks are small to mid-sized, none of them particularly poor.

Well in English (our language of commerce) it’s the Republic of Ireland. The ‘official’ (read: Irish language) name is Eire, but English-speaking Irish people almost never refer to the country as such.

Indeed, it seems the only people who actually do say ‘Eire’ on a regular basis are the British, probably as shorthand to distinguish the ROI from Northern Ireland (though that doesn’t make it any less unusual/amusing to me).

But back to the topic: I would be inclined to agree with others here that the city council is just making excuses. Allegedly, they have a sorry reputation for half-completed projects, so it’s not much of a surprise.

thought it should be noted that Dublin City Council only covers a small part of what is generally called Dublin!

We have an incumbent telcom in this country that throws its weight around regularly and as a result our broadband offerings are in the stone age.

I still cringe when I recall Bertie Ahern (our glorious leader……) standing in front of an audience of EU leaders during Ireland’s stint with the EU presidency. He claimed that Ireland was the ‘digital hub of Europe’. Unfortunately, broadband access was still at least a year away and we were connecting to the internet over dialup and paying by the minute for the pleasure!

It is still not possible to get a broadband connection in parts of the centre of Dublin due to patchy infrastructure. Free WiFi is a pipe-dream, we cannot even get WiFi if we pay for it!