How the internet came to Ireland 1987-97

February

The National Board for Science and Technology (NBST) held a seminar to launch the Special Telecommunications Action for Regional development (Star) programme. This European Commission initiative, which ran from 1987 to 1991, sought to address communications deficiencies in Europe’s less favoured regions. The Commission classified Ireland in this category and allocated €50 million for the Irish section of the programme. Public agencies inside the country were required to match this funding.

The majority of this money went to Telecom Eireann for investment in its infrastructure. The European funding enabled Telecom to accelerate the laying of fibre optic cables and the roll-out of its Eircell mobile telephony service. The network operator also set up two small ISDN testbeds. Telecom’s annual spending on infrastructure averaged around €160 million at this time. The Star money topped up its budget, but did not alter the course of the infrastructure development plan.

A second strand of the programme received €7.5 million from the Commission to encourage the wider adoption of emerging technologies. The NBST managed this promotional work, which accounted for just 15 per cent of the Star spending but was hugely influential. The programme supported dozens of data communications projects, often focused on specific industries or regions. They raised awareness of the potential for online information exchange and allowed their developers to gain practical experience that they drew on when the internet arrived.

Mel Healy, the manager of the NBST’s information technology group, led a programme implementation team. They set out to identify feasibility studies and demonstration projects that could stimulate new data communications services, giving special priority to services for small and medium enterprises.

At this time the European Commission’s definition of ‘advanced telecommunications services’ covered electronic mail, voice messaging, personal computer networks, videotex, videoconferencing and cellular radio. The Commission was also a strong proponent of OSI networking standards and this preference came to be reflected in some of the projects that received Star subsidies.

In November 1987 the NBST announced Star support for two information networks – one designed for businesses and one catering for tourism – that would offer easy access to multiple information providers. Telecommunications service centres in Limerick, Letterkenny and Gaeltacht would assist local firms to access these online ‘gateways’.

The gateway model was abandoned before the five year programme reached its halfway point. The NBST received a much bigger demand for Star funding than it had expected and the proposals covered a much broader ranger of ideas. The implementation team began to think in terms of online information everywhere instead of designated access points.

Star’s promotional budget ended up supporting more than 50 projects. The most significant of these were Posvan’s feasibility study on electronic funds transfer, Videotel’s model for a national videotex platform and PostGem’s service for electronic data interchange among trading partners.

Read Tony McDonald’s testimony
Read Brian O’Donnell’s testimony

May

Just as the world’s airlines were early adopters of data communications technology, travel agents were among the first traders to transact business electronically. In Ireland the Travel Industry Multi Access System (Timas), had offered an online reservations service to travel agents since 1982. A joint venture company owned by Aer Lingus, the Irish Travel Agents Association and computer terminal maker Videcom controlled the service. The staff who ran it were seconded from Aer Lingus.

By 1987 Timas connected 136 agencies with the reservations systems of fifteen airlines, two sea ferry companies and three packaged tour operators.

The travel trade service lost money in its early years, but was now profitable. Timas had reached a point where it could employ its own workforce and reduce its dependence on the resources of Aer Lingus. Dick Brennan, who had worked on the service since its inception, became its general manager.

The technology that underpinned Timas was also moving into a new era. The company began to build a country-wide X.25 network that supported multiple communications protocols. Thus would reduce the use of older protocols specific to the aviation industry and eliminated the requirement for travel agents to install a leased line and a specialised terminal. Henceforth they could choose between leased lines and dial-up connections and could access the Timas system from ordinary PCs. These changes also made the service affordable by more agencies.

Read Dick Brennan’s testimony
Read Tom Coade’s testimony

May

Cognotec launched its Clientlink service for insurance intermediaries, providing videotex connections into Irish Life and Shield Life. The company supplied free terminals to brokers as a way of encouraging them to obtain quotations or process claims through its system.

The insurance industry was an obvious candidate for online information services in Ireland and this videotex initiative was the first of several attempts to establish more efficient links between insurers and their agents.

Cognotec had been established in 1983 inside the Confederation of Irish Industry (CII). It was the brainchild of CII economist Brian MacCaba, who had previously represented the group in a public videotex trial and become an enthusiast for the medium. It introduced services for electronic banking and financial information access in 1985, but was hampered by the limited capabilities of videotex and by its own financial difficulties. Cognotec passed through a succession of investment rounds and ownership changes in the mid-1980s.

In September 1987 Cognotec acquired another online service pioneer Patric Videotex. Established in 1980, Patric hosted databases for public institutions such as libraries and educational establishments.

Clientlink ceased operating at the end of 1991. By then Cognotec had decided to concentrate on banking applications and was assisting financial institutions to transact with their corporate customers.

Read Eóin Meehan’s testimony

September

Much of the impetus for computer networking across different organisations in the 1980s came from IT professionals who used the Unix operating system and the associated UUCP data communications suite. Ireland’s first connection to the European Unix Network (EUnet) was therefore a significant development.

HEAnet, the Higher Education Authority service that facilitated computer networking among Ireland’s seven universities, established a gateway to EUnet in Amsterdam as a resource for academic researchers. This was a dial-up connection through the University of Kent at Canterbury. It used a specially modified version of the UUCP data communications protocol in order to run over X.25.

EUnet was a collaborative effort under the auspices of the European Unix systems User Group. It had begun in 1982 with operations in Finland, Hungary and Norway and became the first public wide area network in Europe.

The Irish Unix Users Group also availed of the connection to Amsterdam and started to offer network services to its members. The National Software Centre – a state agency that provided technical advice and marketing services for software developers – initiated this activity.

American Unix users, meanwhile, had built up a cooperative UUCP-based network which supported an email service and the Usenet discussion system. It also provided online access to software source code and related information. In May 1987, after this network had grown too large to be run by volunteers, a non-profit corporation took charge of it. UUNET Communications Services – the name was an abbreviation of Unix to Unix NETwork – proceeded to commercialise the US services. In 1989 the company dropped its non-profit status and changed its name to UUNET Technologies.

September

An Foras Talúntais and An Chomhairle Oiliúna Talmhaíochta – two state agencies which merged to form Teagasc in 1988 – launched the AgriLine videotex service for farmers and agribusiness as a commercial operation. This launch followed two years of trials subsidised by the European Commission.

AgriLine created about 7,000 pages of information, as well as messaging services and problem solving ‘clinics’. The Irish Farmers Association ran a closed user group on the system. The most frequently accessed items were the clinics, price information and agri-weather.

The agencies behind the agricultural information service hoped that they could finance it by charging subscriptions, but this never happened. Instead 76 per cent of the trial users dropped out when fees were introduced. A sales and marketing campaign failed to compensate for these departures.

One year later there were just 110 farmers paying to use AgriLine – fewer than the 120 subscriptions to the Teagasc service that came from farm advisers and agricultural colleges.

October

California-based Retix announced a software development centre in Dun Laoghaire to create communication products based on Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) standards.

Retix was just two years old, but had risen rapidly to prominence with a product set that supported all seven layers of the OSI model. Its software included protocols, migration tools, internetworking products and X.400 email applications.

The company was well known among communications software developers as the creator of colour-coded OSI charts. These identified many components in the complicated OSI model and mapped the connections between them.

October

Inter-organisation email was still largely confined to academic and research networks. The services available to others usually ran through corporate switches or were limited to users in a single country. Nine service providers and twelve IT vendors mounted a worldwide interworking demonstration to show that these barriers to exchanging messages were coming down.

The focal point of their exercise was a multi-vendor exhibit at the International Telecommunication Union’s Telecom 87 conference in Geneva – an event that took place just once every four years. And the enabling technology for their collaboration was the X.400 specification from the OSI standards suite.

The proof-of-concept demonstration in Geneva not only showed messages moving from one email service to another across the stand, but also how they could be transferred through X.400 switching centres in Europe, the USA and Japan. The exhibitors ran over 500 tests to prove that their different systems and services could connect effectively. Their success was widely reported and raised awareness of email’s potential for commercial businesses.

AT&T, Dialcom, Swiss PTT, British Telecom, KDD, Telenet, Deutsche Bundespost, NTT and Transpac were the service providers on the Telecom 87 stand. Danet, Philips, Digital Equipment Corporation, STR Alcatel, Hewlett-Packard, Sydney, IBM, Telesystemes, Nixdorf, Telic Alcatel, Olivetti and Unisys supplied the hardware and software for X.400 interworking.

October

Digital Equipment Corporation announced that it would support the implementation of OSI protocols on the European Academic Research Network (EARN). IBM had sponsored this international project since its inception in February 1984 and had linked EARN with the BITNET academic network in the US. When the academic computing group needed a new backer, it turned from one major computer vendor to another.

The new partnership between Digital and EARN promised an OSI-based network across Europe for messaging and file transfer among universities and research organisations.

In 1987 EARN connected 300 institutions in 21 countries. It coexisted with Réseaux Associés pour la Recherche Européenne (RARE) – another grouping of national research networks. RARE was established in 1986 to promote standards-based connectivity across Europe. Like EARN at this time, it was also an active advocate for the OSI protocols.

The president of EARN was Dennis Jennings from University College Dublin. He had recently completed an assignment at the National Science Foundation in the US, leading the project that established the NSFnet network of computer centres in research institutes. NSFnet adopted the TCP/IP protocol suite in preference to OSI.

Read Dennis Jennings’s testimony

December

Effective email communication required agreement on the rules for user addresses and inconsistencies from one network to another were causing difficulties. HEAnet’s technical group introduced a new policy that would reduce these constraints on academic messaging.

This involved adopting the RFC-822 format – user@subdomain.domain – which was evolving into an international standard. RFC-822 had originated in the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense. ARPA’s wide area network, where TCP/IP also began, was the first to use it in 1982. But RFC-822 was now being implemented by other networks and in other countries.

HEAnet had previously employed a UK scheme that placed the country code at the start of each address. The technical group reversed this structure so that Irish addresses would end with .ie. It also decided against the use of second level endings such as co.ie for commercial organisations and ac.ie for academics.

In January 1988 the Network Information Center at SRI International, a research institute in California, approved the allocation of .ie as a top-level domain for Ireland.

The user@organisation.ie format for Irish email addresses was thus established more than three years before the first internet connection in the country.

Read Tom Wade’s testimony

January

Cooperation for Open Systems Interconnection Networking in Europe (Cosine) was a flagship project in the industry-led Eureka research and development programme, in which 18 countries and the European Commission were active.

Cosine set out its objectives when it issued a joint statement of direction with EARN and RARE – the two representative bodies for European academic and research networks – along with EUnet. By joining together the groups hoped to create an open, integrated networking infrastructure for all European researchers, whether they were located in universities, research foundations, private companies or government agencies.

The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model was the centrepiece of this plan. The networks undertook to migrate to OSI-based services, including X.25 packet switching, X.400 email and X.500 directories. They also agreed to implement technical specifications that Cosine planned to release in mid-1988. The statement of direction discouraged the consideration of alternative standards from the TCP/IP world.

Irish representatives joined several of the Cosine working groups. The Europe-wide scheme also influenced discussions about improving network resources for researchers inside Ireland.

Eolas – a new state agency that took over the functions of the National Board for Science and Technology in 1988 – was keen to draw the universities, other higher education colleges and the commercial partners in European research projects into a common communications infrastructure. Among the suggestions that it floated was one to offer Ireland as a testbed for Cosine and thus to obtain some of the project’s funding for pilot trials.

The prospect of a national research network based on the OSI model also led HEAnet to consider implementing an X.400 email system.

The earliest recorded TCP/IP implementation in Ireland took place at Silicon and Software Systems (S3). This chip designer was a Philips company and engineers travelled over from the Netherlands to install TCP/IP routers on S3’s computers in Dublin.

They succeeded in transferring data between a group of technical workstations from Apollo Computer and a Digital Equipment VAX system. TCP/IP was Apollo’s preferred networking protocol and the implementers sourced a TCP/IP stack for the VAX from Novell.

Read Robert Baker’s testimony

A consortium of airlines and cargo agents established Cargo Community Systems (CCS) in order to pilot electronic data interchange (EDI) services. The project was based on Edifact – a standard sponsored by the United Nations as a replacement for proprietary EDI protocols. The International Organization for Standardization had recently approved Edifact’s syntax rules as part of the OSI model.

Michael Giblin from Aer Lingus was the project manager for CCS.

In 1989 Cargo Community Systems commissioned Philips to develop a message switch – the Irish Community Air Cargo Real-time Users System (Icarus).

The Irish section of the Digital Equipment Corporation Users Society (Decus) launched Dinet, a dial-up service that linked the email systems in different member organisations. This project, led by Tom Wade at UCD Computer Centre and Joan Murphy in Bord Fáilte, employed the PMDF email suite from Innosoft International.

Decus members who had used Dinet were prominent among the early adopters of the internet email services that followed in the early 1990s.

Read Tom Wade’s testimony

November

Allied Irish Banks, Bank of Ireland, Independent Newspapers and the Quinnsworth supermarket group formed the Videotel Eireann consortium. Its purpose was to study the feasibility of creating an Irish version of Teletel – the France Telecom network that supported the Minitel infrastructure.

This partnership was a product of the Star programme. It envisaged that the tried-and-tested Minitel videotex standard could further Star’s objective to build information service gateways.

Videotel convened working groups to study the technical, marketing and financial aspects of its scheme and planned to commence pilot trials in 1990.

Mel Healy, the NBST manager who had set up the promotional strand of the Star programme in Ireland, fronted this new videotex initiative. Also involved was well-known broadcaster Mike Murphy. His participation, along with big names from the business establishment, signalled that Videotel would cater for a broad clientele and expand the availability of online information.

Minitel was already a mature service in France. Launched there in 1982, it was best known as an online version of the telephone directory, but also supported a variety of information and reservations services and was developing its own email capability. In addition Minitel had introduced a ‘kiosk’ billing system that enabled customers to pay for third party services through their telephone accounts. The Videotel consortium was interested in all these options.

December

Telecom Eireann and Digital Equipment launched the Posvan project in order to evaluate the market potential for electronic value added transaction services in Ireland and overseas. Pat Kirby, a former a payment systems specialist at the Department of Social Welfare, led the research. The Star programme and a scholarship from the Industrial Development Authority provided financial support.

This investigation found that different categories of data services were converging and that a national managed data network could cater for EDI and online funds transfer alike. Such a network, it suggested, might suit public service transactions as well as commercial and banking applications.

The Posvan study was completed in 1989. Some years later Pat Kirby took charge of the European arm of Transaction Network Services, a US company that operated payment processing services for banks.

The NSFnet research network in the US had grown impressively since its foundation in 1985. This TCP/IP-based backbone was now known as the Internet Backbone. And the term Internet – with a capital I – was generally understood to refer to the network of networks that the National Science Foundation (NSF) had created for universities and government agencies.

The NSF’s draft acceptable use policy specified that the Internet Backbone should only be used for research or education, or used in support of research or education. What this policy meant in practice, however, was that just one specific backbone network was obliged to remain non-commercial.

Other internet backbones appeared in the US in 1989 and service providers began to sell dial-up internet access, mainly for email, to customers outside academic research. Some restrictions on commercial activity still applied, but these were loosened in the early 1990s.

February

University College Dublin announced the formation of UCD Computing Limited – a new subsidiary company headed by Dennis Jennings, the director of the university’s computer centre.

Its primary role was to manage the EuroKom electronic mail and computer conferencing service under a contract from the European Commission. This activity had begun at UCD in 1983 as a pilot project in the Commission’s Esprit programme. Six years later participants in more than 20 different European research and development programmes were using EuroKom to identify new international partners and to draw up project proposals. And the Commission had just extended UCD’s contract for another two years.

The computer centre staff who ran the messaging system on VAX servers became employees of UCD Computing. The new firm also announced its intention to diversify. It opened a marketing office in Brussels to seek new ways of selling its experience in the management of online services.

By the start of 1991 UCD Computing was trading under the EuroKom name and its annual revenues were higher than its running costs.

Read Seamus Conlon’s testimony

March

The Department of Industry and Commerce announced the national inauguration of a videotex service that had originated in a Star project. Hookline was developed by SUS Research in association with the Central Fisheries Board and the TCD Department of Computer Science. It gathered up-to-date information on angling conditions and opportunities from the board’s officers around the country and made it available through public access terminals.

Following a seven-week pilot trial in the previous year, the service went live in spring 1989 on screens in 20 locations –  fishing tackle shops, tourist information centres and hotels. These installations were required to pay an annual subscription of £350 and a usage charge of 30 pence per minute.

Hookline exemplified Star’s concept of delivering news and guidance through a tourist information gateway. But the service was short-lived and shut down in 1990.

Technical factors contributed to its failure. There was never a single standard for videotex systems. Hookline had used the Prestel variant from Britain, whereas Videotel was aiming to build a national videotex infrastructure based on Minitel technology from France.

May

A meeting in Amsterdam established Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE) as a coordinating body for TCP/IP-based networks in Europe.

Fourteen representatives of six countries and eleven networks attended the launch. They agreed to take initiatives to set up, co-ordinate and support IP connectivity. Their initial priority was to assess the level and size of existing and planned IP networks in Europe.

This event marked the inauguration of regular RIPE meetings that anyone could attend to discuss internet issues, developments and policies.

The Department of Computer Science at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) took over responsibility for the Irish Unix User Group’s dial-up gateway to the EUnet network.

This was the second relocation of the access point in less than two years. It had originated in the National Software Centre, which shut down in May 1988. The ICL Information Technology Centre in Leopardstown stepped in to replace it. The TCD Department of Mathematics, meanwhile, developed a UUCP-over-X.25 gateway and used this as an alternative route to EUnet.

When EUnet insisted that there should be just one access point in each country, the Unix users turned to Michael Nowlan and Cormac Callanan in the Department of Computer Science. They undertook to manage the connection on a semi-commercial basis and started to run the gateway with about a dozen customers.

The UUCP-based connection was mainly used to access a store-and-forward email service. Its process required users to specify the routing for each message. The performance of the service became more reliable following the introduction of addresses in the .uucp top level domain.

Read Michael Nowlan’s testimony

October

The first annual general meeting of the EDI Association of Ireland (EDIAI) was attended by representatives of 42 organisations. This meeting elected Michael Giblin from Aer Lingus to chair the EDIAI council, while Howard Bell from Philips Electronics became its secretary.

EDI services based on proprietary technologies had been available for some years, enabling closed groups of trading partners to exchange documents like invoices and purchase orders. Some large companies, most notably IBM, had connected suppliers in Ireland into their corporate ordering systems. But these systems had limited reach, because they were based on different protocols and product codes.

The launch of the EDIAI followed a fresh wave of international interest in the technology. This was spurred by the emergence of Edifact as a common transaction standard for EDI. Edifact was developed for the United Nations and added to the OSI communications model. The European Commission, meanwhile, had launched its Trade EDI Systems (Tedis) programme, which aimed to accelerate the adoption of EDI throughout Europe.

The Commission, indeed, had just awarded a Tedis contract to Baltimore Technologies, a Dublin-based software firm, to stimulate EDI activity in Ireland. Baltimore proceeded to offer technical and management consultancy to air cargo companies so that they could connect to the Icarus switch that Cargo Community Systems was implementing.

The Article Number Association of Ireland – an organisation that oversaw the use of product barcodes in the retail trade – had run a pilot trial for the retail trade during the summer. This allowed supermarket groups Quinnsworth and Superquinn to use Edifact for communications with five of their largest suppliers. The project was facilitated by An Post, which was introducing a national EDI service. Another state-owned company, Telecom Eireann, was planning a similar service.

In summary, there were multiple initiatives to demonstrate the benefits of paperless trading in Ireland at the end of the 1980s. And there seemed to be a real possibility that Edifact would take off in the new decade.

Read E-commerce pioneers assemble

October

Statistics issued by Telecom Eireann, the dominant communications service provider in Ireland, provided some context for all the efforts to roll out telecommunications services that the European Commission defined as ‘advanced’. Most strikingly, perhaps, these figures showed that inter-organisation email continued to lag far behind the older, and much slower, telex service.

Telecom reported that 4,890 of its customers were still using telex. Another 164 organisations were accessing its Pactex product, which allowed computers to send and receive telex messages. In contrast, there were just 594 users of its Eirmail electronic mail service.

The four-year-old Eirpac packet switched data network supported 264 customer organisations with direct connections. There were also 1825 users with dial-up modems.

October

An Post, which had incorporated PostGem as its online services subsidiary in 1988, held an official launch event for the organisation and announced three services.

Its electronic data interchange offering, PostEDI, was already used by customers like Quinnsworth, Superquinn and Digital Equipment. At this stage PostEDI was hosted on a mainframe in England owned by the service’s software provider Istel, but PostGem had ordered an IBM mainframe to take over the work.

TelePost was a remote printing service based on a Digital Equipment VAX 8250 and a Xerox laser printing system. It received email messages and forwarded them as hard copy letters that incorporated the sender’s logo and the writer’s signature.

PostGem’s third service was PostNet – a national X.25 packet switched network powered by a Northern Telecom DPN 10 switch. The company was setting up twelve regional nodes for PostNet and planned to add more during 1990.

David O’Meara, the former head of communications business development at An Post, had planned and implemented the establishment of PostGem.

Read David O’Meara’s testimony

October

Dublin-based start-up Sysnet became the country’s first TCP/IP integration specialist when Wollongong Group, a developer of multi-system connectivity software, appointed the new firm to distribute its products in Ireland. Wollongong’s TCP/IP stack enabled private networks to transfer data across systems built on different processors.

Sysnet was founded by Tom Moynagh and Robert Baker, who had been the systems and network managers at Silicon and Software Systems – a pioneer user of private TCP/IP routers. They initially expected to sell the Wollongong software to OSI users as well as to TCP/IP adopters.

Read Robert Baker’s testimony

December

The Board of the Revenue Commissioners approved plans to automate customs import/export procedures, starting in January 1991. The Customs and Excise Service would set up an Automated Entry Processing (AEP) bureau for this purpose, while more than 100 customs stations would be linked to a Bull mainframe at Revenue’s computer centre.

The AEP service aimed to replace the millions of physical documents that traders submitted to Revenue each year with millions of messages through an X.400 email platform. The project required a new data network so that traders could access this system. Six companies and groups had already declared an interest in managing the network. This work would not only be lucrative in its own right. The chosen contractor would also be well placed to develop and sell additional online information services.

Finance minister Albert Reynolds surprised the applicants in January when he instructed three of them to combine their resources and to run the network as a consortium. One of the three was a private company, International Communications and Information Systems (ICIS), whose majority shareholder was engineering contractor PJ Walls. The ICIS proposal was endorsed by the Irish Port Authorities Association, whose members claimed to handle 75 per cent of the country’s trade. State-owned communications service providers Telecom Eireann and An Post would complete the consortium.

ICIS, however, withdrew from the AEP project in early 1990. It tried to convince its new partners to include a cargo management service in the network plan, but this suggestion met strong opposition from industry groups that foresaw it resulting in an undesirable monopoly.

The end result of the contracting process was the formation of the Irish National Electronic Trading Agency as a 50:50 joint venture between Telecom Eireann and An Post. This new entity would be responsible for running the AEP network.

January

UUNET Technologies, which ran communications services for Unix users, launched its AlterNet service. This was a privately owned IP backbone network, where users would not be subject to the NSFnet policy on acceptable use. UUNET was larger and better known than the other fledgling internet service providers (ISPs) in the US, which usually operated in limited geographic areas.

Performance Systems International also emerged as a commercial ISP in 1990. Based in Northern Virginia, the company subsequently traded as PSINet.

February

Travel trade communications company Timas announced that it had become a distributor for the international Galileo system, expanding its range of reservations services and online information for travel agents.

The Galileo global distribution system had been formed in 1987 by a group of airlines that included Aer Lingus. It had recently opened a facility in Swindon, England that housed multiple IBM mainframes and was said to be the largest non-government data centre in Europe. Galileo not only provided detailed airline timetables and seat availability, but was also developing services for booking hotels, railways, car hire and sea ferries.

Timas ran its multi-access reservations system in parallel with the Galileo connection for the next four years. By 1991 it was operating the largest private X.25 network in Ireland. At the end of 1994, when the transition was complete, Timas changed its trading name to Galileo Ireland.

Read Brian Dent’s testimony

March

Telecom Eireann launched a new subsidiary, Eirtrade, as its electronic trading services business. Three months later it named John Thompson as general manager. He was previously the business manager for mobile network operator Eircell, another Telecom company.

Eirtrade offered an electronic data interchange service based on proprietary technology from INS, a joint venture between ICL and General Electric. All of its EDI transactions were initially processed by INS computers in Britain.

In April 1991 Eirtrade took over responsibility for Eirmail, the email service that Telecom had introduced in 1985. Nine months later it introduced an X.400-based version of Eirmail, running on a Digital Equipment VAX computer in Cork.

Eirtrade also announced that the VAX would host its EDI service in Ireland for the first time, using a new EDI protocol, X.435, that was derived from X.400. Telecom referred to this system as ‘the national X.400 platform’.

May

RARE and EARN – the main associations of European research networks – held a joint conference in Killarney. TCP/IP was a major topic at this gathering. More and more academics across Europe were requesting IP connections and the national networks needed to plan their response.

Further evidence of the rise of TCP/IP followed in June when Mike Norris from UCD addressed a RIPE meeting in Geneva. He reported that HEAnet was establishing an internal IP service and seeking contacts to assist with international connectivity.

June

Allied Irish Banks (AIB), Credit Lyonnais, France Telecom Intelmatique and Telecom Eireann launched Minitel Communications Ltd as a joint venture that would market and promote third party videotex services under a national umbrella. It would also supply special-purpose terminals to its customers and planned to charge monthly rental fees for these devices.

The new company superseded the Videotel Eireann consortium and introduced a different group of shareholders. AIB was the only member of the Videotel partnership that stayed on board.

Minitel Communications proceeded to hire a management team. This did not include Videotel founder Mel Healy who set up a consultancy business, Star Telematics.

In November Minitel named John Fitzpatrick, a former director of the National Lottery, as its chief executive.

June

A group of solicitors set up a company, Lawlink, to introduce a secure email service and online database access to the legal profession. Progress was rather slow until it appointed Eirtrade as its service provider in August 1993.

Lawlink prioritised connections to the public databases at the Land Registry and the Companies Registration Office. Eirtrade’s Eirmail 400 system and client software from EDI Factory enabled users to retrieve Land Registry data and to examine the documents required for property transactions.

June

The European Commission issued Directive 90/388/EEC on competition in the markets for telecommunications services.

Often referred to as Article 90, this document required member states to withdraw all special or exclusive rights for the supply of telecommunications services other than voice telephony. It also set rules on the licensing of new services, on the supply and pricing of leased lines to facilitate their introduction and on the technical interfaces that would enable them to use public networks.

In addition, each member state was directed to set up an independent body to grant operating licences, oversee the approval of network equipment and allocate frequencies for radio-based communications.

The changes specified by Article 90 were phased in during 1991 and 1992. The Commission subsequently added further regulations and measures to prevent state-owned telecommunications authorities from inhibiting network services run by other organisations.

Europe’s early internet service providers could have faced much greater obstacles if the Commission had not laid down its groundrules before they commenced operations.

June

Value added network services provider Infonet signed an agreement that made PostGem its representative in Ireland. The company proceeded to extend its international network into the country for the first time.

Established in 1970, Infonet was owned by eleven major telecommunications administrations in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Partnering with a postal authority to deliver its communication and computer services was a departure from its usual practice.

The bulletin board system (BBS) was an entry level form of data communications, usually run by young computing enthusiasts and seldom interacting with the world of commercial network services. BBS operators circulated their modem numbers and invited computer users to dial in for message feeds, discussions and hobbyist resources like games, utilities and shareware.

In 1990 David Doyle began to publish the Definitive Irish BBS Listing as a way of supporting bulletin board system operators. He kept this service running during the early years of the internet, producing regular updates of the lists and allowing readers to redistribute them free of charge.

Doyle was also the developer of the To Operate by Providing People with Services and Information (Toppsi) database series for community organisations, which had been launched in 1987. Toppsi expanded into a set of seven online databases. These included lists of politicians, funding providers and training courses. In 1991 Toppsi obtained funding from the Star programme to make this information available through the Minitel infrastructure.

Read Andy Mowatt’s testimony

Bord Fáilte and Northern Ireland Tourist Board awarded a contract to Digital Equipment to develop the Gulliver tourist information and reservation service, using its Rdb relational database. Gulliver had originated in a study under the Star programme.

The initial budget for Gulliver was around £4 million over three years. Because of the all-Ireland dimension of the project, the International Fund for Ireland would provide the largest share of this funding. The European Commission would not only contribute to the costs of Gulliver through Star, but also via its Impact programme which aimed to grow the wider market for electronic information services.

Phase one of the Gulliver project planned to distribute information on transport schedules, accommodation listings and event guides to tourist offices, hotels, bed and breakfasts and other visitor-oriented locations. This phase would also include preliminary testing of an accommodation reservations system that the tourism authorities hoped to extend into all sections of their industry.

Following pilot trials in 1991 the Gulliver information service went live in March 1992 on Minitel videotex terminals inside Bord Fáilte and Northern Ireland Tourist Board offices. The tourism agencies subsequently obtained free Minitel sets for hundreds of accommodation providers. They soon learned, however, that potential users would prefer a PC-based service. They also decided to place more emphasis on the reservations side of the project.

In 1993, faced with mounting losses from the project, Bord Fáilte concluded that the original Gulliver specification would not deliver the planned functions at a sustainable cost.

September

Developers at McGill University in Montreal produced the Archie tool for indexing FTP archives. This made it possible for people who did not have personal login accounts on more than one machine to find and retrieve files on wide area networks.

Archie was subsequently described as the first internet search engine.

Some months later, developers at the University of Minnesota released the first Gopher protocol for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents over the internet. The Gopher ecosystem was the effective predecessor of the World Wide Web.

October

The board of Eolas, the state agency that advised the government on technology policy, approved the establishment of a national programme in advanced technology (PAT) that would focus on telecommunications. It aimed to accelerate the transfer of new technologies into industry by harnessing expertise in higher education.

The programme established six centres of expertise to make this happen. Five of the centres were inside universities while the sixth was at the National Electrical Test House – an organisation that carried out technical assessments of telecommunications hardware to ensure that it complied with required standards.

Initially known as the ‘Telecoms PAT’, the programme was renamed Teltec Ireland in 1992. By the middle of the following year it was engaged in sixteen research and development projects, employing fifteen contract staff and 60 postgraduate students.

October

AIB Group, Cara Data Processing and French technology developer Meta International established a Dublin-based joint venture, EMTel Solutions, to develop and support services on the new Minitel Communications system.

EMTel planned to host videotex services of its own, but the company gave priority to consulting work. It assisted other companies to participate in the Minitel infrastructure and subsequently to switch from videotex to newer technologies.

The joint venture lasted until 1995 when AIB and Cara withdrew and sold their shareholdings.

December

Baltimore Technologies launched its Sitric electronic mail software, an X.400-based system that the company had originally developed for the Jutland Telephone Company in Denmark.

Telecom Eireann participated in the design of Sitric, but never implemented the product for the management of its own services.

EUnet set up a company, EUnet bv, in the Netherlands to run its central network as a commercial service. Michael Nowlan from Trinity College Dublin became the chairman of this new entity.

In addition to running UUCP-based online services, the network for Unix users had started to support the TCP/IP protocol back in 1988. In its new guise, as a company rather than a voluntary association, EUnet would become more visibly involved with IP-based communications.

EUnet subsequently grew to be Europe’s largest internet service provider with partner organisations in a dozen countries.

January

The Cosine project awarded a contract to Dublin-based Baltimore Technologies to update its plan for network interconnection across Europe.

This review came halfway through the three-year specification phase of Cosine, which had instigated pilot sub-projects and services based on the OSI model. Baltimore had previously worked on Cosine’s security and authentication requirements.

February

The information technologies division at Eolas issued a call for outline project proposals for the Irish section of Telematique, the successor to the Star programme.

Telematique would run from late 1991 to 1993. It focused on online services that stood a reasonable chance of becoming commercially viable. Star, in contrast, also supported awareness schemes and demonstration projects.

February

Retix founder Andy de Mari established another company, Isocor, to develop email software. Its name was an acronym for International Standards Open COmmunications Resources.

This new business was headquartered in California, but from the beginning it located its primary research and development activity in Dublin. Most of Isocor’s revenues would come from Europe.

Twelve months later the company launched its first products, all based on OSI specifications. Most notably, these releases aimed to bridge the gap between EDI and email services by implementing a new protocol, X.435, that encapsulated EDI messages for use with X.400-based email.

Isocor’s software portfolio included an X.400 transport engine, X.400 user agents for local area networks, a family of EDI access units based on X.435 and security modules for Edifact documents and other X.400 messages.

March

HEAnet, which had led academic networking in Ireland since 1986, set up a ‘futures committee’ to consider the next stage in its development.

Now that all seven universities were connected with each other and to institutes in other countries, HEAnet was interested in expanding its operations into other areas of higher education and research. It had already discussed this possibility with the regional technical colleges, Dublin Institute of Technology and Eolas. HEAnet also needed to address the rise of IP networks.

The futures committee, led by Michael Nowlan from TCD and Dennis Jennings from UCD, proposed the implementation of a router-based network that could support several protocols over X.25 connections, but would mostly handle TCP/IP. It then commissioned Euristix, a Dublin-based communications software development company, to recommend the design for such a network.

Read Dennis Jennings’s testimony

March

Minitel Communications’ national videotex system went live with more than 20 different providers delivering 35 services. Five bureau operations were offering to develop and manage additional services on the system.

The first batch of Minitel services targeted business users, including industry-specific groups like publicans, petrol stations and transport companies. The launch of consumer-oriented services was deferred until the autumn.

The company expected its users to install dedicated videotex terminals from two approved manufacturers – Alcatel and Philips. It announced the prices and distribution channels for these Minitel sets in conjunction with the launch of its services. Users could choose to rent or buy the equipment and would also pay a once-off registration fee.

Minitel Communications said that it intended to connect 10,000 sets to its system within twelve months.

A consortium of insurance firms in Ireland set up a steering group to establish an industry-specific network for EDI, email and online sales.

Eirtrade was subsequently chosen as the group’s preferred service provider, but the network never materialised. This project was abandoned in 1993 after some of the insurers decided to go it alone and develop alternative online services.

April

Ireland’s first commercial internet service provider, IEunet, was established as a limited company on 04 April 1991. It was the first campus company in Trinity College Dublin, which owned 15% of the shares. The university was entitled to a seat on the company’s board and later nominated computer science professor John Byrne as a director.

IEunet’s founders, Cormac Callanan and Michael Nowlan, had previously managed the Irish Unix Users Group’s dial-up gateway to the EUnet network. On 05 June the IUUG and IEunet signed a formal agreement under which the ISP would provide ‘a professional network service’ to the group. The agreement stated that all IEunet subscribers must be current members of the IUUG. The company never enforced this rule.

The installation of an internet connection from TCD to EUnet followed two weeks later on 17 June. This enabled IEunet to commence operations as an internet service provider to the IUUG members and others. Email and newsgroup access were its core offerings.

IEunet issued its first invoice in July. Its customer – middleware developer Iona Technologies – was another TCD campus company and was based in the same building as the internet firm.

Read Michael Nowlan’s testimony

April

Irish National Electronic Trading (INET) began to connect traders through its managed network to Revenue’s long-awaited Automated Entry Processing (AEP) customs service. INET – a joint venture between Telecom Eireann and An Post – described itself as a clearing house for X.400 messages. The company had installed a Digital VAX computer and message handling software from SD Scicon to deliver administrative documents for exports and imports into the AEP system.

INET was acutely aware that the forthcoming introduction of the Single European Market would reduce the traffic on its network to a trickle. Five sixths of Ireland’s customs transactions involved other countries in the European Union and would no longer be subject to the AEP procedures from January 1993 onwards. INET therefore needed to convince freight carriers and cargo agents to invest in data input systems in the knowledge that these would have little work to do less than two years later. It was also planning to launch additional online services, mainly for the transport industry, on the messaging platform that it had established.

The situation was complicated further by the response of the EDI Association of Ireland (EDIAI) to INET. It challenged the organisation’s monopoly right to gather and reformat export/import data for transfer into AEP. The government had determined that there should be just one managed network to do this job at a time when the European Commission was taking steps to open up the market for online data services.

The EDIAI council issued a position paper that was highly critical of INET’s strategy and practices. INET responded that its allegations were damaging an important national initiative.

May

Three former Retix managers founded software firm Synaptics in Blackrock, Dublin. The new company offered consultancy and training in two fields – OSI communications and software project management.

Synaptics subsequently partnered with US systems integrator TRW to create a nationwide X.500-based directory system for the Canadian government. Along with TRW it also joined a consortium that tendered for a US defence messaging system. After failing to win this business, however, it wound up its operations and shut down in August 1995.

June

A new 19.2 Kbps line to EUnet in the Netherlands connected the O’Reilly Institute at Trinity College Dublin to the internet. The costs were to be shared for one year by the TCD Computer Laboratory and campus company IEunet, each of which invested in its own networking equipment.

The link from Dublin to Amsterdam went via the University of Kent at Canterbury and depended on three infrastructure providers – Telecom Eireann, BT and Mercury Communications which supplied the local loop in Canterbury.

The TCD Department of Computer Science completed the commissioning of its internet connection on 17 June. Two days later the department’s internal IT unit invited staff to test the new connection, but warned that it could not yet guarantee a reliable service

Read ‘The internet is now available for testing’

July

University College Dublin was connected to the International X.25 Infrastructure (IXI) backbone established by the Cosine project. UCD obtained separate lines to the IXI access point in Amsterdam for HEAnet and for EuroKom.

The university initially used X.25, X.29 and other OSI protocols on these lines. The IXI access point in Amsterdam subsequently introduced an X.25-encapsulated IP connection, providing UCD with its first link to the internet.

August

The World Wide Web made its debut as a publicly available service on the internet, following the publication by Tim Berners-Lee of a summary report on recent development work at CERN in Geneva. This project had created the first web browser, produced the first web pages and turned a NeXT computer into the first web server.

The first web server in Ireland followed in April 1992 when a research database of early Irish language manuscripts went online at University College Cork.

See the Web pioneers 1992-99 timeline and read the related testimonies

August

A UCD Computing Services team took over administration of the .ie top level domain from Harvard University. The new administrators regarded their task as a form of public service.

This transfer paved the way for the subsequent creation of the IE Domain Registry (IEDR) in 1992. The staff of UCD Computing Services performed administrative tasks for IEDR in its early phase and Niall O’Reilly became the responsible manager.

The governance of the internet was also evolving in the US. In September 1991 the Defense Information Systems Agency contracted Virginia-based Network Solutions to operate a domain name system registry. Initially the company gave out names free of charge in the .com, .org, .mil, .gov, .edu and .net top level domains.

Read Niall O’Reilly’s testimony

September

The Ebone consortium was established at a RIPE meeting in Geneva and drew up plans for a pan-European internet backbone for academic and research users.

Its formation marked a turning point away from Cosine’s OSI-based strategy and pointed the way towards an academic network infrastructure built on internet communications. The change was supported by the growing proportion of campus computers, especially technical workstations, that came with preinstalled TCP/IP software.

Ebone commenced operations as a cooperative venture in April 1992. It combined existing academic resources into a unified structure, establishing an initial IP backbone with 256 kbps links.

In November 1994 the consortium remodelled the legal structure behind its European internet backbone by forming the Ebone Association under French law. Dennis Jennings from UCD became secretary of the first executive committee of the association.

December

The Star programme concluded at the end of 1991. Eolas reported that its advanced telecommunications strand had supported 57 projects over its five year duration.

The agency noted that Star had facilitated the introduction of thirteen commercial services and that all of these were still operational in December 1991. It described Minitel, Gulliver and PostGem as ‘flagship’ services.

Another outcome of the programme was the establishment of fourteen telecommunications service centres in small towns and rural areas.

Also in December, the European Commission gave its formal approval to the Irish operational programme for Telematique. The country secured €20.1 million or 5.5% of the total Telematique budget. The European regional development fund allocated €11 million, the Irish government provided €0.9 million and €8.2 million came from the private sector.

Eolas issued its first call for full project proposals in January 1992 and received a much greater response than it had expected – more than 400 proposals from 174 organisations.

January

Eolas estimated that between 200 and 250 organisations in Ireland were using electronic document interchange services. The pace of adoption remained slow, despite the awareness raising activities of the EDI Association of Ireland, the European Commission and Eolas itself, despite the promotional efforts of the two indigenous service providers, Eirtrade and PostGem, and despite initiatives in Ireland by international operators such as General Electric and IBM.

A similar pattern of EDI underachievement was evident in financial services, where the Irish Banks Standing Committee was developing a strategy to support the technology. One of its recent reports noted that just 70 to 80 organisations were submitting creditor and trade payments electronically to their banks.

April

The RIPE Network Coordination Centre (NCC) began operations in Amsterdam as a not-for-profit membership organisation with initial funding from EUnet and the academic networks RARE and EARN. The NCC was structured separately from the RIPE forum, but would provide it with technical and administrative support.

The aim of the NCC was to ensure the proper management of IP networks on a European scale by overseeing the allocation and registration of IP addresses and by producing statistical reports on internet usage and performance.

May

EuroKom announced that it had won a three-year contract to develop and operate an EDI-style service for 5,000 veterinary health units across the European Union.

The new service, Animo, would record and report animal shipments between countries in the Single European Market, following the removal of border checkpoints that had previously collected such information.

Read Tom Wade’s testimony

May

Minitel Communications held a meeting with its service providers to discuss the lower-than-expected uptake of its national videotex system. After more than a year in operation Minitel had fewer than 4,500 subscribers. Some of the service firms argued that they could play a bigger role in attracting more users.

The meeting resulted in a plan to give free videotex terminals to 5,000 new customers. The service providers would nominate recipients in their target markets. These organisations would pay Minitel’s regular usage fees but the charges for equipment rental and registration would be waived for twelve months. At the end of this period the users could choose between renting or buying a set. Minitel Communications, the service providers and the terminal manufacturers and distributors shared the costs of the giveaway.

This exercise showed how the videotex industry was still trying to rent out dedicated hardware, instead of encouraging potential customers to access its services through their existing PCs.

In August Minitel reported that the distribution of the free devices was underway and that the demand for sets had exceeded the number of units on offer.

September

The Department of Communications issued a value added network service provider’s licence to IEunet under the government’s liberalisation policy for telecommunications services. The internet service provider was the fourth recipient of such a licence. The department had awarded the first to Telecom Eireann in May.

IEunet had recently reported a customer base of 45 organisations, most of which were software and networking companies.

Read Jim Smith’s testimony

November

IEunet, TCD Computer Science, Telecom Eireann’s R&D section and UCD Computer Laboratory formed a consortium to develop an X.500 directory of email users in Ireland as part of the implementation phase of the Cosine project. IEunet took on project management responsibilities.

X.500 was a series of electronic directory standards within the OSI model and had been introduced to support X.400 email services.

The Irish directory consortium collected lists of email addresses, added photographs where available, and loaded this information into the Paradise database, a Europe-wide pilot system financed by Cosine. The project ran until 1995 but struggled with data privacy issues and data quality problems. It ground to a halt when Cosine stopped funding Paradise.

December

Netherlands-based EUnet bv set up an Irish-registered company, EUnet Limited, to act as its vehicle for marketing international network services to commercial clients. This for-profit entity was jointly owned by the EUnet service providers in each country (including IEunet) and by EurOpen, the European Forum for Open Systems.

The company’s incorporation in Ireland did not result in any new activities on the ground. EUnet’s international operations centre remained in Amsterdam.

December

HEAnet began to migrate its data communications services for Ireland’s seven universities to a leased line infrastructure and appointed Mike Norris as its network co-ordinator. The new connections would replace Telecom Eireann’s Eirpac public packet switched network, which was ill-suited to handle the growing levels and characteristics of internet traffic in the universities.

The new arrangement required the creation of a network operations centre (NOC). HEAnet launched a tendering process to select the location and choose University College Dublin. The NOC opened there in 1993. It was run by three HEAnet employees and overseen by a voluntary committee of systems and network managers from the seven universities.

The leased line network was a star configuration that gave each university a direct connection with the operations centre. Academic and research networking continued to expand and HEAnet subsequently became Ireland’s largest internet service provider.

February

Cosine awarded a three-year contract to PTT Telecom in the Netherlands to provide a backbone data network for the European research community. The contract included associated services to support multiple communications protocols. This backbone would be known as EuropaNet.

HEAnet introduced an Irish connection into EuropaNet in July 1994.

April

Eirtrade launched Agrinet – a subset of its electronic data interchange service that was tailored for online document transfers among agri-business firms at national and international level.

Avonmore Foods and Waterford Foods, which had already adopted EDI for their transactions with the retail trade, both endorsed Agrinet.

May

Tom Coade, who had previously been the network manager at Timas, opened International Network Systems (INS).

The Dublin-based company became a network service reseller for Euro Datacom and Sprint. INS also sold communications products, consulting and technical support, initially focusing on travel and transportation businesses.

Read Tom Coade’s testimony

June

Eolas issued its second call for online service proposals in the Irish strand of the Telematique programme.

New services supported by the previous call emerged in the months that followed.

In December the Companies Registration Office ran pilot demonstrations of an electronic filing project, enabling accountants and solicitors to submit statutory reports on Irish companies via Eirtrade’s EDI service. This project employed applications software from two Irish developers, Datacare and EDI Factory.

In early 1994 the Committee on Library Co-operation in Ireland launched its Telematique-backed IRIS information retrieval and document supply service. IRIS subscribers had online access to the library catalogues inside five universities and Forbairt. IEunet managed the server.

In total Telematique subsidised 79 projects in Ireland, most of which catered for specific industries or professions. Many of the services that began under the programme subsequently migrated to the internet.

June

The launch of Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe (DANTE) – a non-profit organisation backed by ten European countries and a consortium in the Nordic region – marked yet another effort to co-ordinate academic and research networking at a pan-European level.

Based in Cambridge, England, DANTE aimed to develop a high-speed infrastructure that would support videoconferencing as well as conventional messaging and file transfer. At its inception the new entity agreed to take over contract management for the EuropaNet multi-protocol backbone network and announced a gateway to Ebone – the other major network provider. This, it claimed, would help users to access both services, which had not previously been possible.

Ireland was not one of the shareholder countries in DANTE, partly because its communications services for higher education were underfunded by European standards and partly because the country’s academic networking policymakers were much closer to the Ebone initiative. Some saw monopolistic tendencies in the DANTE model.

DANTE operated until 2014 when it was absorbed into the GÉANT Association.

August

The Irish National Electronic Trading Agency (INET), the Eirtrade-PostGem joint venture, launched its INET-TRANS range of value added network services for the transport industry.

INET-TRANS offered EDI and consignment tracking applications for air, sea and road transport companies. The new services could be accessed through connections originally established for freight companies and traders to communicate with customs and excise computers.

September

The Valuation Office became the first civil service workplace with an internet connection. TCP/IP integration company BakerRyan set up an internet access account with IEunet on behalf of the government organisation.

IT staff at the Valuation Office initially saw this new resource as an aid to software management rather than as a communications medium.

Read Gilbert Storrs’s testimony

October

Dublin-based Siemens subsidiary Software and Systems Engineering (SSE) launched its OpenPath suite of email and file transfer applications based on OSI protocols. The company noted that OpenPath had already been installed at customer locations in four countries. It also released SEDI-Server, an advanced EDI server product for electronic data interchange gateways or clearing centres.

SSE was originally an OSI development group within Nixdorf Computer and had built up its communications software experience through European Commission research contracts. In 1993 it employed more than 100 people.

December

Minitel Communications announced a significant shift in its business strategy. The videotex operator would henceforth prioritise services for professional associations and closed user groups. This change followed the adoption of a new five-year development plan by Minitel’s four shareholders.

The national videotex system now claimed 8,500 registered users while about 140 different Irish services were available. AIB’s banking service and Telecom Eireann’s electronic directory were reported to be the most popular.

January

Galway-based bulletin board system operator Ireland On-Line (IOL) became the first official reseller of IEunet’s internet access service. IOL, which was founded by Barry Flanagan in January 1992, first began to offer internet connections via IEunet in August 1993. The companies signed a formal agreement five months later.

This new arrangement was the first in a series of moves to extend IEunet’s geographic reach. During 1994 it also set up access nodes for the southwest and midwest and selected regional partners. Dial-up customers in these areas were then able to connect with the internet for the price of a local call.

One of IEunet’s new partners, Shannon Internet Services, was a joint venture with Shannon Development and was led by the agency’s IT manager John King. Cork Internet Services was set up in collaboration with Access Technology and headed by Mark McGloughlin. IEunet subsequently became its outright owner.

Dublin-based BakerRyan also became an IEunet reseller. Robert Baker and Mike Ryan had founded their business in 1991 to sell and implement connectivity products from TGV Software.

Read Barry Flanagan’s testimony
Read John King’s testimony
Read Robert Baker’s testimony

February

Telecom Eireann announced the commercial introduction of its integrated services digital network (ISDN). A Europe-wide launch of this new generation of digital communications networks had taken place two months earlier. The key advantage of ISDN was its support for video, data and other services, as well as voice calls, over the public switched telephone network.

In Ireland the ISDN would coexist with Telecom’s Eirpac packet switched network, which had more than 500 X.25 customers and some 2,500 registered X.28 installations.

The roll-out of ISDN across the country proceeded more slowly than intended. Within a few years, however, many internet users were attracted onto it as a more rapid means of dial-up access than the public telephone network.

March

Belfast-based Genesis Project – whose name was a Star Trek reference – went live as the first internet service provider in Northern Ireland. It was founded by a team from the University of Ulster. Technical director Dermot Bradley, who worked full-time for the company, had been a computing researcher there.

The company catered for both business customers and personal users and offered a choice of dial-up or leased line connectivity from the beginning. Genesis accessed the outside world through a link to Pipex in Cambridge, England.

The company expanded across the border in August, when it opened a node in Cork. This operation traded as Genesis Project Ireland. It was managed by Ron Hahn, who had previously worked at Neutron Technology Systems in Cobh.

Just six months later the Cork organisation severed all links with its parent in Belfast and changed its name to Eirenet.

May

Infonet, a Cork-based bulletin board operator headed by Diarmaid O Cadhla, introduced an internet service. It had run its local bulletin board system, and supplied international data connections through the Fidonet network, since 1992.

As an ISP Infonet offered email, file transfer, network news and online access to databases in the Companies Registration Office. With these new internet capabilities it planned to target accountants and solicitors across the Munster region.

This Cork company was unrelated to the international value added network services provider of the same name that PostGem represented in Ireland.

June

European Union leaders convened in Corfu to consider a document – ‘Europe and the Global Information Society’ – that recommended a common regulatory approach to grow the market for information services across Europe. Produced by an expert group chaired by Martin Bangemann, the European Commissioner for the internal market and industrial affairs, this report initiated discussions on the potential for the ‘information society’ to improve the qua­lity of life of Europe’s citizens as well improving economic efficien­cy.

The Bangemann report asserted that private investment would drive the forthcoming information environment. It called on member states to accelerate the liberalisation of their telecommunications services and to end monopolies that put Europe at a competitive disadvantage. It saw the ISDN as particularly well suited to meeting the needs of small and me­dium sized enterprises and as a stepping stone to a future world of integrated broadband communications.

There was little mention of the internet, which many in Europe’s political establishment still regarded as an American intruder in its information technology agenda. The one section that did so rendered the term in capital letters.

‘INTERNET is so big, and growing so fast, that it cannot be ignored. Nevertheless, it has flaws, notably serious security problems. Rather than remaining merely clients, we in Europe should consider following the evolution of INTERNET closely, playing a more active role in the development of interlinkages.’

August

New arrival Internet Eireann launched an internet service, positioning itself as the first ISP in Ireland to charge a flat monthly fee for dial-up access. It also offered all users a web address inside its own domain.

Managing director Steve O’Hara-Smith wrote most of the software that controlled customers’ connections, delivered their email and generated their bills.

Internet Eireann started operations with international bandwidth to Canada supplied by SM Communications.

Read Steve O’Hara Smith’s testimony

September

Apple installed an access node in Dublin for its eWorld electronic information service, where the options included internet email.

In the US eWorld competed with America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy and the Interchange Online Network. None of these other services had a presence in Ireland at this time.

October

The European Academic and Research Network (EARN) merged with Réseaux Associés pour la Recherche Européenne (RARE) in a move which acknowledged that something should be done about the fragmented condition of Europe’s research networks. At the same time, RARE changed its name to the Trans-European Research and Educational Networking Association (TERENA).

The combined organisation was headquartered in Amsterdam. Its initial membership consisted of national networking organisations from 38 countries, along with representatives of the CERN particle physics laboratory and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

TERENA aimed to develop new pan-European services for its members and undertook to provide education, documentation and support services for users of international research networks. It also ran an annual conference for academic networkers.

October

Trinity Group, a Dublin-based Digital Equipment reseller, introduced its Team 400 messaging service.

Developed by Eoin Meehan, Team 400 offered both X.400 and internet email and highlighted its ability to bridge the two standards. The company routed messages through its own VAX platform, partnering with Eirtrade and IEunet as gateways for X.400 and internet email respectively.

Team 400 subsequently added a low-cost option for small suppliers to link into EDI services through its system.

Inn June 1995 Team 400 extended its X.400 and internet email services into London through a local partner company called Advantage. It claimed to have 40 Irish customers with around 3,000 end users.

Read Eóin Meehan’s testimony
Read Jonathan Mills’s testimony

November

A new internet service provider, Connect Ireland, began operations as an offshoot of the To Operate by Providing People with Services and Information (Toppsi) bulletin board system and database series.

Connect Ireland obtained international connectivity from MCI and used a distinctive logo designed by artist Paddy Graham.

The ISP maintained Toppsi’s focus on voluntary organisations and community-based activities. Connect Ireland offered electronic publishing services, distributed public service information on behalf of non-governmental agencies and won contracts in EU public health initiatives.

January

Infonet Services Corporation introduced secure internet access and applications for transnational customers through a new division named INFO.Net.

This initiative enabled PostGem, as Infonet’s Irish partner, to add internet service provision to its portfolio.

BT introduced a wholesale connectivity offering to Northern Ireland, enabling new ISPs to deliver dial-up internet access through its infrastructure. These resellers were not, however, permitted to offer a leased line option.

In the years that followed BT Northern Ireland sold internet services directly to end users.

January

Ireland On-Line (IOL) established an international internet connection with Pipex, ending its previous arrangement with IEunet. In conjunction with this change in its infrastructure the Galway-based ISP opened an office in Dublin for the first time. It now claimed to have 1,900 customer organisations.

In contrast with IEunet, which was cautious about compromising on quality of service and avoided overloading its access points, IOL was ramping up its user base as fast as it could – even at a time when a new fad for web browsing was eating up all the available bandwidth. The company, indeed, encouraged its customers to join the web by selling them pages within its own iol.ie domain.

IOL was also picking off pieces of the faltering Minitel business. In August 1994 the company partnered with three Minitel service providers – Business and Finance Business Information, CFI Online and Kompass Ireland – and started to deliver their information over the internet. This was a clear demonstration that the days of videotex were numbered.

A major breakthrough for IOL followed in May 1995. The company entered into an alliance with PostGem that not only allowed it to sell internet services to PostGem customers but also to share the facilities of its new partner’s data centre. IOL transported all of its servers from Furbo in Galway to the PostGem premises in Dublin in an overnight operation.

Read Barry Flanagan’s testimony

February

HEAnet discovered how the rising popularity of the World Wide Web was disrupting the financial model behind its internet service for universities.

A postgraduate student at Dublin City University uploaded pictures of American actress Teri Hatcher to the web, attracting an unprecedented volume of internet traffic and an unexpected spike in network charges.

This incident led HEAnet’s network management committee to implement new policies on user access and traffic control, alerting the wider internet community to the need for a more proactive style of service administration.

February

John Fitzpatrick, who had been chief executive of Minitel Communications, took charge of Telecom Eireann’s Eirtrade subsidiary. At the same time Telecom assumed 100% ownership of the videotex system and proceeded to merge the remnants of Minitel’s business into Eirtrade.

Seven months later Telecom Eireann became the outright owner of INET as well.

In April 1995 Eirtrade announced its intention to introduce an internet service for business customers and to sell international connections to other internet service providers. By the autumn, however, its parent company Telecom Eireann had taken over the plan to run a wholesale service.

When Eirtrade eventually introduced its internet service in 1996, the company adopted a hybrid approach. It advised customers to route all their confidential email through its X.400 system, but added an internet messaging option for communications that needed less security.

March

The networks and telecommunications research group at Trinity College Dublin installed a link into the Multicast Backbone (MBone), which was capable of broadcasting live audio and video streams over the internet.

MBone had begun three years earlier in the US. A very high speed internet connection was needed to receive the broadcasts. Trinity obtained one for test purposes through the SuperJanet academic network in the UK.

The network research group reported that MBone had enabled it to receive live broadcasts from a space shuttle mission and to view seminars at Cambridge University.

May

IFG Group, a publicly quoted financial services company, acquired a majority shareholding in Lawlink. The Incorporated Law Society now owned 30 per cent of the online service for the legal profession.

In October PostGem and Ireland On-Line commenced the development of a completely new, internet-based version of Lawlink. IFG also brought in a web development company, The Solutions Group, to work on this project.

The redesigned Lawlink was ready to run in May 1996. The new system was hosted by PostGem and supported secure email with X.400 addressing. It was much easier to use than its predecessor and supported direct online queries to a wider range of databases. In addition to the Companies Registration Office and the Land Registry, Lawlink now offered access to the Irish Trade Protection Association’s database of court judgements and to Company Formations International.

Barry Breslin opened Ireland’s first internet café at Lower Stephen Street in Dublin. His establishment, The Internet Exchange, was initially connected to PostGem over a 64 Kbps line.

The concept of a retail establishment with computer terminals for customer use predated the internet. A network of coffee shops in California’s Bay Area had started to offer pay-as-you-go access to bulletin boards and email in 1991. A more recent role model was the Cyberia café in London, which opened in September 1994. This provided visitors with full internet access via an ISP based in the same building.

The services at Barry Breslin’s café included personal email accounts at a price of £5 a month and a selection of internet training courses. The Internet Exchange also offered videoconferencing, colour scanning and colour printing, word processing, computer games and a web authoring service.

July

HEAnet convened a meeting of internet service providers to discuss the potential benefits of a neutral interconnection point for their traffic. Representatives from ten internet companies attended. This event marked the launch of a new representative group their industry – the Irish Operators Forum.

Local interconnection made economic and operational sense. When the customers of one Irish ISP sent email to the customers of another, their messages took complicated international routes to reach their destinations. It was clear that everyone would benefit if this traffic was switched within Ireland.

In August the new forum issued a request for proposals for a managed switch. This, it proposed, would be known as the Dublin Internet Neutral Exchange or DINX. The operators called in consultants from Euristix to advise on the selection process.

Three months later the evaluators reported to the Irish Operators Forum, concluding that that PostGem had submitted the best proposal and should be awarded the management contract. The suggestion that one of the forum’s own members should run the DINX drew strong objections from other internet service providers.

PostGem went ahead and opened an exchange. But only two of the other ISPs, Ireland On-Line and Internet Services Ireland, availed of the DINX.

September

Internet Services Ireland (ISI) launched its HomeNet dial-up internet service with points of presence in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway. David Mee was managing director of this new venture, which used PostGem’s cross-country network to achieve a broad geographic reach from its inception.

The majority owner of ISI was Horizon Computer Group, one of Ireland’s largest distributors of computer hardware and the national partner of Sun Microsystems. It signed up more than 200 retail outlets, including the ESB’s electrical appliance stores and the Xtra Vision video rental chain, to sell the HomeNet communications package.

ISI also announced its intention to run a leased line internet service called WorkNet. The formal launch followed in February 1996. ISI sold WorkNet in conjunction with InterWeb – a hosting service for web sites.

Internet Services Ireland’s style of customer segmentation and collaboration with retailers made it stand out from other ISPs. Internet services, it seemed, were not impervious to corporate management strategies and marketing techniques.

Read David Mee’s testimony

September

Team 400 established a closed user group email service that enabled ten Dublin-based insurance brokers to communicate with life assurance companies. This trial was commissioned by Assurelink Ltd, a consortium of eight insurance firms, and marked the latest attempt to create a single channel for intermediaries to interact with multiple insurers. Canada Life, Irish Life, Eagle Star, New Ireland Assurance, Standard Life, Friends Provident, Norwich Union and Irish Progressive were the shareholders in Assurelink.

By the middle of 1996 Assurelink had connected 40 brokers, including some in Cork and Waterford. The company then engaged consultants from Vision Group to devise the technical architecture for a standardised, nationwide online system for the eight participating insurers.

Assurelink highlighted the complexity of this project. Its industry-specific platform would need to access diverse policy processing systems in the life assurance companies, while ensuring that each of them would receive an identical service and would not gain any competitive advantage.

A request for proposals followed in late 1996 and Assurelink awarded a systems integration contract to ICL Ireland in April 1997. Its infrastructure would connect brokers over the internet to a central Assurelink hub that authenticated their identities. Each insurer would install a Sun Netra server running an Oracle database and Netscape Enterprise Server. The brokers could then use standard web browsers to access insurance company information and details of specific policies.

October

Dublin Tourism opened a ‘virtual tourist office’ on Microsoft’s MSN online service, enabling subscribers to make enquiries, book accommodation and download information about the city. Tour-IT, the company behind the project, hoped to replicate this resource in other regions and countries and to establish a presence on additional network services, such as CompuServe and Europe Online.

Tour-IT, a recent start-up founded by Norman Leighton, was based at the University College Dublin Innovation Centre. It designed the online tourism platform in collaboration with Kerna Communications, another UCD campus company, and with design agency Cosmon Multimedia.

November

IEunet changed its name to EUnet Ireland – a move that reflected the close level of integration between the firm and its longstanding international partner.

This staff photograph was taken shortly after the name change. Managing director Cormac Callanan and business mentor Nevin Dowling are standing in the centre of the front row.

(Photograph source: Michael Nowlan. Photographer unknown.)

December

Indigo became the latest entrant to the internet business, declaring its intention to build a mass market for online services in Ireland. Michael Branagan, a former director with Woodchester Investments, was its managing director.

A recently registered company named Dome Industries financed the establishment of this ISP. It started operations with a fully-functioning communications centre in Dublin whose resources included a 1.5 Mbps international connection from AT&T, local dial access over eleven circuits supplied by Telecom Eireann, Cisco routers, US Robotics modems and multiple Sun Sparcservers for web hosting.

Indigo’s launch event was the most spectacular yet in the Irish internet business. It embarked on a high-profile promotional campaign that was aimed at individual users rather than business customers and clearly designed to build up its market share.

Indigo presented itself as a full service provider. It signed up customers directly in preference to using resellers and it hired its own web site designers instead of partnering with outsiders.

What really drew the attention of customers and the ire of competitors, however, was Indigo’s strategy of waiving monthly access fees up until the end of 1996.

Read Michael Branagan’s testimony

December

HEAnet reported that 24 customer organisations were connected to its national higher education network and that the Royal Irish Academy was about to become its twenty-fifth customer.

In addition to seven universities that had created the service, it now supported eleven regional technical colleges, the Dublin Institute of Technology, Forbairt, The National College of Industrial Relations, The Central Applications Office and Teagasc.

In February 1996 the Department of Finance selected HEAnet to provide internet connectivity throughout the civil service, reversing its previous policy of discouraging internet use in government offices. The department leased a 128 Kbps line to HEAnet’s network operations centre in UCD.

In the wake of its expansion the government-owned internet service provider had begun a process to restructure itself as a limited liability company.

December

The World Merchandise Exchange (Womex) set up its main operations centre in St Stephens Green in Dublin. The company was formed in Connecticut and had offices in Hong Kong, Taipei and Tel Aviv, but it planned to build and manage a global extranet from its Irish base – an electronic commerce channel based on high-speed connections from MCI and Concert and server technology from Hewlett-Packard.

This new hub would cater for large retail chains and the suppliers of their merchandise. According to Womex, it would cover 23 broad product categories, ranging from handbags to toys and from crystal to cooking pots.

Womex created a master database for the traders. It charged manufacturers and their agents to display their products and to present their business terms. Buyers would not pay fees for the service. Womex also offered in-frame hyperlinks to external web sites and to other online sources of trade-related information.

In July 1996 Womex held an official launch for its extranet at a trade show in California.

January

Internet service provider Medianet launched a dial-up service called Club Internet. The company differentiated itself from other ISPs by offering free web content hosting to customers and by emphasising the commercial potential of the internet.

In the following months Medianet designed web sites for financial institutions Ulster Bank, Friends Provident and Celtic International. It also collaborated with Galileo Ireland, the travel reservations network company, to market internet access and web presence services to the travel trade.

Medianet was owned by the Aubrey Fogarty Associates advertising agency and by local radio station operator Capital Radio Productions. Their internet business model focused on delivering an audience to advertisers. Tom Kelly, who had previously worked at a venture capital fund management company, was Medianet’s managing director.

International network operator Sprint supplied most of the technical infrastructure behind Medianet. The company located its web servers and communications hardware inside Sprint’s switching facility in Dublin.

February

Internet Eireann ceased operations after losing a Circuit Court lawsuit for unpaid bills. SM Communications, the Dublin-based ISP’s original supplier of international bandwidth, initiated the case in 1995 after it moved to a 64 Kbps connection into Sprint.

The company had found it difficult to compete against the better-financed rivals that surfaced during 1995. In its latter months it tried to stand out from other service providers by offering ‘lifetime membership’ of the internet to new customers.

After Internet Eireann shut down Indigo and Ireland On-Line both tried to win over its customers by offering them free accounts.

Read Steve O’Hara Smith’s testimony

March

The government established a 20-member task force for the information society, charged with the preparation of a national strategic plan by early 1997. Vivienne Jupp, a partner in Andersen Consulting, chaired the task force.

Forbairt, meanwhile, had published a report on ‘Ireland: the digital age and the internet’ and invited suggestions on national strategy. Gerry McGovern, the author of this discussion document, had established internet consultancy firm Nua in 1995.

The end result of these deliberations was the establishment of an Information Society Commission under the Department of the Taoiseach. Government ministers approved this action in March 1997.

March

Four internet service providers – EUnet, Indigo, MCI and Telecom Eireann – issued a joint statement of intent to establish a neutral exchange for internet traffic within Ireland. These ISPs were unwilling to use the DINX inter-service switch at PostGem.

This group subsequently formed the Internet Neutral Exchange (INEX) association as a not-for-profit company. In September it elected its first set of officers, chaired by David Mee from EUnet Ireland.

INEX then issued a request for proposals for a neutral interconnection facility. It sought a neutral facility and management service for routers and network termination units that would be owned by multiple ISPs. Seven companies bid for the contract and the Cara Group won it.

March

Indigo offered free internet access to 3,800 Irish schools through a partnership with the National Information Technology in Education Centre (NITEC), which already connected over 400 schools to its host computer. Microsoft also joined this scheme, informing the schools that they could obtain its Windows 95 operating system, Internet Explorer browser and Microsoft Web page authoring tools at no cost.

The initiative also aimed to study the potential of the internet as an educational medium. It included training for school staff, support for web page publishing and the distribution of teaching resources from NITEC.

March

Isocor introduced the N-Plex portfolio of internet and intranet backbone server software, developed at the company’s base in Dublin. The communications software vendor positioned it for use by corporations, government agencies and service providers. Some of the components of N-Plex had previously featured in the company’s X.400 products.

The new suite combined an internet mail system and message store with a high-performance web server and management functions. Optional modules offered directory services, seamless message exchange with X.400 systems and accounting capabilities.

After five years in operation Isocor had just completed an initial public offering and listed its shares on the Nasdaq exchange. The company now employed more than 130 people in Ireland.

April

Cork-based ISP Eirenet ceased trading due to financial difficulties.

The increasingly aggressive tactics of the newer breed of ISPs posed major problems for their predecessors, especially for small operations like Eirenet. In particular, the company believed that its business was seriously damaged when Indigo offered free internet access to new users until the end of 1996.

April

Web designer George Hellis and Barry Breslin from the Internet Exchange cyber café launched internet service provider Internet Ireland. Global One, the successor to Sprint, provided international connectivity and facilities management to the new venture.

According to George Hellis, who took on the role of managing director, Internet Ireland intended to stand out from other ISPs by focusing on access speeds. Whenever bandwidth saturation exceeded 80% for more than 12 hours in a day, the company would increase its bandwidth immediately.

It was not long, however, before Hellis and systems engineer Colman O’Reilly left Internet Ireland. In October a series of preliminary hearings on a dispute between the two founders took place in the High Court. Barry Breslin secured the company’s name and all documentation relating to its business plan.

May

Sligo-based Screenphones became the first Irish service provider to demonstrate internet access via cable television.

The software and communications firm, whose founders included former Star programme architect Mel Healy, was a seasoned participant in EU research and development projects. This work had enabled it to build an experimental broadband infrastructure for the Finisklin Industrial Estate in Sligo and a nearby group of houses in Rathedmond.

Screenphones was keen to evaluate internet connectivity at cable TV speeds and had sourced special modems for this purpose. It proceeded to run local trials of high-speed multimedia services on its broadband testbed.

The company was also a regional reseller for Ireland On-Line and had established the first internet access point in the northwest in September 1995. This made online connections available at local dial-up rates, freeing users from the long distance phone charges that they had previously paid to reach internet nodes in Dublin or Galway.

May

The consortium behind Internet Services Ireland (ISI) acquired EUnet Ireland. The two ISPs joined forces under the EUnet Ireland name. David Mee was the company’s managing director.

Since the start of 1996 ISI had focused on adding large organisations to its customer base, offering leased line internet access and its InterWeb web hosting service. Following the takeover EUnet claimed to hold more than 60% of the internet business for corporate users.

Read Barry Rhodes’s testimony

August

Indigo’s ambitious plans unravelled in the summer of 1996 after rumours spread about Dome Industries and the Moyna family that ran it. Dome had created the internet service provider and provided funding for its infrastructure. The rumours centred on the sources of this finance.

Michael Branagan, who had led Indigo since its launch in December, resigned in July. Several colleagues followed him out of the company. Just weeks later Branagan was named managing director of Internet Ireland, filling the vacancy left by George Hellis.

In August Indigo announced that the Moynas had sold their entire interest in the company to ‘family interests of Mr Shay Moran’. The statement added that ‘The Moyna family’s main interest was in securing the future success of Indigo. They believe this sale to be a positive move which will also secure the future of their 60 employees. This finally lays to rest the destructive and unfounded rumours that until now have dogged the company and the Moyna family.’

Shay Moran had previously been the managing director of Itec Security Products, which was acquired by Aritech in 1990. He took on the chief executive’s role at Indigo. Tom Fingleton, who had worked for Samsung Semiconductor, became its managing director. The former owners had reportedly selected him as Michael Branagan’s successor.

December

Esat Telecom, a communications company established in September 1991, announced EasyNet, its first internet service. Esat offered internet access initially to organisations that already used its long distance and international voice and fax services. These routed customers’ calls over leased lines into Sprint International’s global network. Esat charged lower fees than Telecom Eireann for these connections.

Esat went on to become one of Ireland’s major ISPs, but it grew through acquisitions rather than by building up EasyNet.

December

PostGem and its parent company An Post completed the acquisition of Ireland On-Line. IOL, which now claimed over 20,000 subscribers, had been sharing infrastructure and resources with PostGem since mid-1995.

The iol.ie domain had a long afterlife. Some former customers were still using it in their email addresses 20 years later.

Another PostGem partnership involved Microsoft’s MSN online service. In the same month as the Ireland On-Line announcement PostGem established points of presence in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway for Microsoft.

December

Telecom Eireann, which had recently established regional points of presence that enabled it to generate more revenue from internet service providers, began to operate as an ISP in its own right.

The company launched the Telecom Internet business unit under Noel Herrity, a former head of business service marketing for Telecom. Aidan Finnegan succeeded him in 1997.

The first offering from this organisation was Telecom Internet Personal, a dial-up access service for residential customers. In 1997 the company launched an incentive bundle for new internet users that included free line installation.

Eirtrade became the principal reseller for Telecom Internet’s business services, which it marketed in conjunction with web design, security and email integration.

Read Denis Curran’s testimony

December

Bord Fáilte and the Northern Irish Tourist Board accepted a proposal from financial services group Fexco to buy a majority stake in their Gulliver information and reservation service for visitors to Ireland. Based on advice from consultants, the two state agencies had concluded several months earlier that it would be best for Gulliver to be run as a standalone commercial operation.

The deal with Fexco involved the formation of a new entity, Gulliver Infores Services, in which the tourism authorities would own 26% of the shares.

December

Web consulting and site design firm Nua teamed with Telecom Internet in an initiative to create a web presence for every settlement in Ireland. They described their Local Ireland project as a national framework for supporting community-oriented web content. Its underlying philosophy was to enable each locality to present its culture and talents to a global audience.

It started with a Local Longford event in Granard. Partnerships in Cavan, Longford and Kerry uploaded information about their counties to Local Ireland in the months that followed.

In January 1997 Nua launched its Nua Internet Surveys publication – an Irish-produced digest of international research and commentaries on internet use around the world.

January

The Irish Internet Association (IIA) was born at a meeting that had been convened to establish a more narrowly focused ‘Irish Internet Developers Association’.

A follow-up meeting defined the main roles of the organisation – raising awareness of the internet as a business medium and fostering standards, best practice and the exchange of information and ideas.

The IIA was initially chaired by magazine publisher Frank Quinn. Pat Cody from trade directory publisher Kompass was deputy chairman. Conall Lavery, who ran software distribution company Entropy, headed a subcommittee for technical and security issues.

Gerry McGovern from Nua chaired a research working group whose first project was a survey of internet usage trends in Ireland. This produced a profile of the online community as predominantly well educated, well off and urban.

Read Conall Lavery’s testimony

April

Telecom Internet, EUnet Ireland, Club Internet, Indigo and Ireland On-Line established the Internet Service Providers’ Association of Ireland to channel the ISPs’ views and concerns to government bodies and to represent them at international level.

Cormac Callanan, one of the co-founders of the pioneering ISP IEunet, chaired this group.

April

A meeting hosted by the International Telecommunication Union produced a memorandum of understanding to reform the governance of generic top level internet domains.

The agreement ended a monopoly held by Network Solutions on registration services for the .com, .org and .net domains. It also made provision for the establishment of new name registrars.

Network Solutions had become the world’s first domain registrar in 1991, working under contract to the National Science Foundation in the United States. The company assigned domain names free of charge until 1995 when it received permission to introduce an annual fee of $50 for second level names. This reform accelerated the commercialisation of internet administration.

An 86-member Internet Council of Registrars, drawn from 23 countries, was formed six months after the memorandum of understanding. This body assumed responsibility for allocating names in seven new top level domains.

April

The Internet Neutral Exchange (INEX), commenced operations at Cara Group’s premises in Fenian Street, Dublin. INEX paid an annual fee of £3,780 to Cara which, at this time, was owned by French computer vendor Bull. Cara had extensive experience in computer systems management for banking, travel trade and medical organisations.

The switch initially consisted of a Racal Milgo communications cabinet containing a 3Com Etherlink III 10Mb hub with twelve ports. Each ISP installed and configured its own routers and associated equipment in this space.

At the outset the facility handled internet traffic for EUnet Ireland, HEAnet, Indigo and Telecom Internet. The INEX Association emphasised, however, that membership would also be open to other ISPs.

PostGem joined the exchange later that summer, abandoning its DINX project. This paved the way for INEX to develop and grow as a single national exchange that was run by its members and operated on a not-for-profit basis.

Read Barry Rhodes’s testimony

May

Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE), the European coordinating body for the internet held its RIPE 27 meeting at Dublin City University. This gathering was bigger than any previous event in the series,

One of the outcomes of RIPE 27 was the formation of a working group on top level domains. Niall O’Reilly from the IEDR chaired this group and the European Commission was among the participants. Its work culminated in 1999 with the creation of CENTR, an association of European country code top level domain registries.

Read Niall O’Reilly’s testimony

June

A new, independent Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation took over the regulatory functions of the communications minister. Before the transfer date 45 companies had been licensed to provide telecommunications services other than mobile telephony.

The incoming director, Etain Doyle, had a civil service background and no previous involvement with the communications industry.

October

Stentor Communications, a provider of virtual private network services, registered as an ISP and began to offer internet access to its customers. The Dublin-based company catered for call centres and large enterprises, mostly in the finance sector. It therefore had no interest in competing for dial-up internet accounts.

MCI was Stentor’s main supplier of international bandwidth, having connected it to a T1 transatlantic circuit.

November

Telecom Eireann became the new owner of Indigo, completing a transaction that had been flagged some months earlier. Esat Telecom Group had also tried to buy the ISP, but was outbid by its rival.

Telecom retained Indigo’s separate identity. It ran the internet service provider and its Telecom Internet unit as independent operations until 2001.

November

A limited liability company, HEAnet Ltd, was incorporated to run the national academic and research network, completing its long transition from a voluntary undertaking to a registered company.

HEAnet had already expanded its operations to a scale where it required more bandwidth than any of the other internet service providers.

John Boland, who had previously represented Dublin City University on the HEAnet network management committee, took up the post of chief executive.

Read John Boland’s testimony

November

Esat Telecom Group bought EUnet Ireland. Esat portrayed the deal as one that would enable it to offer a full telecommunications solution, including internet services, to corporate customers. It gave the ISP a new direct link to MCI’s network in the US. EUnet was also able to utilise Esat’s fibre optic cables in Dublin, Galway, Shannon, Limerick, Cork and Waterford.

The new owner renamed its internet subsidiary as Esat Net four months after the takeover.

In 1999 Esat added the PostGem / Ireland On-Line operation to its portfolio through another acquisition agreement.

December

Telecom Eireann began its first asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) trials, installing high-speed internet connections to the homes of its 40 employees.

One of the participants, John Atkinson, provided the following recollections.

‘It was a three month trial, and it took some time to get used to not having the service afterwards. The setup was a line from the socket beside the telephone table in our hall (no cordless phones in our house!) run into the sitting room to a DSL router and then into a white box about the size 12 inches by 6 inches by 2 inches. We also had a wireless keyboard. This ran to one of the AV channels on the TV. When you started up the service, it took quite a while to load. You then met a screen that had tiles. One of the choices was VOD (Video on Demand). This was like a very early version of Netflix. The movies available, whilst limited, were fairly current. The service rarely buffered, but often it would not launch. Separately there was an internet browser, but this was rather clunky, much like a browser on a games console. However it did load pages very quickly, as opposed to 56k modems at the time.’

In later years ADSL became the most widespread internet access technology in Ireland.