Archive News
New mobile amongst the fastest in the world
Date Published: 12-Nov-2009
Galway now has some of the fastest mobile broadband you can get in the world. It will be spread to the rest of the country over the coming year, but Meteor has chosen us as the first place to experience their new high-speed service – twice as fast as any previously available.
Why? Maybe they just like us. But my guess is that Galway is a good size. (Microcosmopolitan, as it were.)
They have some of the new high-speed masts up and working in Dublin and Cork too, but coverage there is far from complete. Dublin’s too big, Cork is too insanely hilly, Galway. . . is just right. They can already provide coverage to the entire city centre and some of the suburbs.
So the modem you need to receive it – or dongle, to use the technical term (seriously) – is on sale here exclusively. Right now you can receive mobile broadband at speeds that put most fixed-line services to shame. That’s the theory, let’s test it.
Sitting in Eyre Square – well, O’Connell’s pub in Eyre Square. . . – I’m currently getting between four and five, even six Megabits per second. At the press launch earlier we were getting 10 Mbps or so – but then there was a phone mast right outside the window. (Actually now I notice I have a direct line of sight from here to the mast on the post office, but maybe Meteor don’t have an aerial on that one.)
Obviously speeds are going to vary depending on your location, and I will be testing it at various points around the city in the coming week. But even at this rate, it’s faster than almost all – if not all – fixed-line broadband available. Remember, this is the tested speed I’m actually getting, not what they’re claiming I "can" get.
What’s so good about such high speeds? Well it’s lovely to be able to watch videos on YouTube without them stuttering, yeah, but that doesn’t matter much to me. What matters is that this is now becoming fast and effective enough to really take the place of fixed-line. Six months ago I decided to cancel my ADSL (the technology that sends broadband over the phone lines) and go mobile-only.
In doing so I obviously saved money over having both, but I lost out on speed. With this service though I can get speeds as good as I used to – better in fact. What’s more, pricing is also becoming keen.
This had been my main criticism of Meteor, but now they’ve restructured their rates to go head-to-head with the 3 network, previously the lowest. It will be interesting to see how 3, O2 and Vodafone respond.
Competition is now intense in mobile broadband, whereas for ADSL it ranges from poor to effectively non-existent. The reason almost goes without saying: Eircom owns all the phone lines. They are under no obligation to upgrade the infrastructure, and they were under no pressure to – until now. Unless they change their attitude, Eircom will find that it has suddenly gone from being the monopolistic controller of the nation’s telecoms infrastructure to the owner of a lot of useless old copper wire.
The nice irony is, of course, that Meteor is part of the Eircom empire. Downfall it seems comes from within.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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