[ILUG] ireland offline 'strike'

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> ah well then, *special* dsl.  with like what, faerie dust on it?
>
To be fair to Genesis, there's no magic, and no faerie dust. The technology
they - they being "he", Gary Keefe, at the time - first started promoting
was VDSL (Very high rate Digital Subscriber Line)[1], which can
theoretically do up to 55 Mbps[2]. As far as I can gather, Keefe signed some
sort of exclusivity deal for VDSL in Europe, and came to Ireland expecting
to roll it out here and then expanding across Europe.

When he brought some techies on-board, he was informed (possibly with
supressed giggles) that VDSL wasn't viable in Ireland, and they refocused on
something (apparently) more realistic, ADSL. And as the regulatory battles
continued, they kept having to refocus, until Genesis looked like becoming
Just Another ISP. I guess that's the straw that broke the camel's back -
Ireland doesn't need any more plain vanilla ISP's.

> to paraphrase a much better saying, for any sufficiently advanced
> technical person, marketing is indistinguishable from bullshit.
>
It was a huge marketing error. It doesn't matter anyway though, because the
whole thing was screwed from the off because of the regulatory situation. A
pity really, because I think they would have been a pretty cool company.
(They bought me pints. And I was hoping to get a box in their NOC.)

adam

[1] http://www.dslforum.org/aboutdsl/vdsl_tutorial.html
[2] If you're next to the exchange. In a laboratory.