Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghlacadh leis an Aire Stáit as ucht teacht isteach tráthnóna agus éisteacht leis an gcás a dhéanadh.
The Minister of State will recall that when we were Members of another House this was a hobby horse of mine. Some progress has been made but not enough to satisfy me. As a great believer in technology I am always surprised at how slow technological industries, such as communications industries, can be in responding to the realities of modern life.
The telephone charge areas were instituted in 1956. At that time outside Dublin and the main urban centres the telephone service was operated manually. Telephones were few and far between. September marked the tenth anniversary of the introduction of an automatic telephone service in Corr na Mona where I live.
There was a direct link between the cost of making a telephone call and the distance of the call as one had to put it through a series of operators. The manual service was eventually phased out in the first half of 1987. Since then all calls have been made through an automatic system.
Dramatic changes have also taken place in the methods by which telephone calls are transmitted from single lines running on poles along railway lines and roads to microwave links over which the vast number of calls, particularly long distance calls, are now transmitted. Single cables can now carry a large number of telephone lines and calls.
The number, weight and cost of transmitting cables is, in absolute terms, decreasing rapidly with the development of technology, particularly through advances such as fibre-optics. Even in rural areas they no longer connect a cable in isolated farm houses, rather two small aerials are erected. Everything has changed, except the charging system. Some changes have occurred in the past ten years in the charging system but we are still operating a system which is based largely on charge groups and distance rather than on the cost to the provider of each individual call. There is a huge difference between the number of subscribers in each district with some areas having as few as 10,000 subscribers and Dublin city having in excess of half a million subscribers available at a local call charge.
The position currently is that in most counties a call to the county town from certain areas of the county is a trunk call. The huge difference in the cost to the subscriber living in different areas is apparent if one analyses the relative costs of making a telephone call in different areas. For example, a telephone call from Galway to Ballinasloe, or from Ballinasloe to Galway, is up to three times dearer during the day, and nine times dearer at night, than a local call. Similarly, a long distance trunk call from, say, Dublin to Galway or from Galway to Limerick is up to five times dearer during the day and can be up to 18 times dearer at night than a local call. That is ridiculous when there is no extra cost for these calls to Telecom Éireann when the infrastructure is in place.
I referred to multiples of three, five and 18 but it is interesting to compare that to the price difference between placing a call from Galway to Limerick, for example, and the cost of a call from Galway to London. Whereas during the day a call from Galway to Limerick is up to five times dearer than a local call, the call from Galway to London is only 1.3 times dearer than the call from Galway to Limerick. At night, the call from Galway to Limerick can be up to 18 times dearer than a local call, depending on the duration of the call, whereas it is only 1.6 times dearer to ring London than it would be to ring Limerick from Galway. That is extraordinary. Obviously competition has affected international calls but Telecom can continue to milk subscribers for the local trunk calls.
We must move towards a uniform cost structure irrespective of where one is calling to or from in the country. This structure would be in line with the way subscribers are currently charged for Eircell services and the weekend service. The first step in this direction would be the elimination of the A rate trunk call and the incorporation of the existing A rate areas into local call areas. This would sort out the Ballinasloe to Galway problem, etc. At the same time the B rate trunk call could be reduced to an A rate trunk call. There should then be a fixed time limit on a programme eliminating all trunk rates within the State and the whole State should become one call charge area.
Another issue of great importance is that all areas in the country be given equal access to all telecommunications services as they develop. This relates to the provision of Eircell services and other cellular phone services throughout the State, as well as the provision of ISDN lines, etc. It should be a firm policy of the Government that all telecommunication providers would have to service the entire State, without exception, on an equal service basis. Anything else will only further stunt the growth of rural areas and add to the problems we already have in relation to imbalance of population. Beidh mé ag súil le freagra dearfach ón Aire, agus tá mé cinnte go dtuigean sé an cheist.
