PodLeaders - Thought Leaders podcast

Episode 41 of the PodLeaders show - 15 mins 40 secs

This podcast is slightly different from the usual PodLeaders shows. It is shorter and the intro and outro music is not the usual. This is because this interview was done in conjunction with the IT@Cork members podcasts and is being cross-posted there. My guest on the show this week is Danny McLaughlin - Danny is the CEO of BT Ireland.

Danny and I had a fascinating discussion on BT Ireland, VOIP and the (lack of) broadband in Ireland.

Here are all the questions I asked Danny along with their times during the interview:

Welcome to the show.

Danny, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to be Chief Exec of BT Ireland? - 0:24

I didn’t realise BT had operations in France and the US… - 1:03

What do BT do in Ireland? - 1:25

How long have you been the chief executive of BT Ireland? - 2:33

And how are you liking it here in Ireland? - 2:42

Where does BT Ireland lie in the Irish telecoms market? - 3:15

Dell has started blogging recently to address negative press and I notice BT UK are getting into blogs, are BT Ireland going to get into blogging/podcasting as well? - 4:01

Is voip affecting the telecoms sector negatively for voice traffic? - 5:09

And are programs like Skype affecting your network traffic given that they are peer to peer applications? - 6:19

Looking at the OECD figures, Ireland ranks very poorly when it comes to broadband both in terms of availability and price - what would you put that down to? - 6:54

I have heard COMREG referred to as a toothless tiger - they haven’t taken a case against any of the telcos yet and they have been in place quite a while now. Do you think they could be given more teeth to take people to task? - 8:01

Recently you guys walked away from the local loop unbundling discussions and that seems to have given them the reboot that was needed. Would you agree with that statement? - 9:10

Staying on the LLU theme, the BT LLU offering seems quite poor compared to the 6mb and 12mb offers from the likes of Smart and Magnet, and in the UK BSkyB will now be offering 16mb. What are BT Irelands plans for their LLU products? When are you going to start using ADSL2+? - 10:22

What do you see coming down the line in the next 2/3 years which will significantly affect the telecoms industry in Ireland? - 12:23

And finally, why did BT Ireland join IT@Cork? What benefits are you seeing from membership? - 14:26

Download the entire interview here
(17.9mb mp3)

Oops - I have just realised Danny’s surname is McLaughlin not McLoughlin as I have in the title here. I don’t want to change the post title for fear of breaking links to the post so I’m correcting it in the article and adding this notice.