Ireland's telecommunications market has been liberalised since 1999 and thus the delivery of broadband services is a matter, in the first instance, for private sector commercial operators which are licensed and regulated by the independent regulator, the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg).
The Government has undertaken a number of initiatives to bring broadband to those parts of the country where operators have been unable to offer services on a commercial basis. In the case of one such intervention, namely the National Broadband Scheme (NBS), services are available since October 2010 from the NBS service provider, 3, to persons with a fixed residence or fixed business in each of the 1,028 Electoral Divisions (ED) designated to be covered under the Scheme.
A contractual upgrade of the NBS product specifications will take place from October of this year, without an increase in the monthly fee. Following the upgrade of the mobile broadband product, the minimum download speed will increase from 1.6Mbps to 2.3Mbps while the minimum upload speeds will increase from 1.2Mbps to 1.4Mbps, with a maximum contention ratio of 18:1. The combined data allowance will move from 25GB to 40GB.
The Rural Broadband Scheme (RBS) was launched last year in recognition of the fact that despite the widespread availability of broadband throughout Ireland, there still remained individual premises that were unable to receive broadband provision, due to technical difficulties such as line of sight issues. This Scheme, which is being rolled out this year, is aimed at making a basic broadband service available to those individual unserved premises in rural non-NBS areas who wish to avail of such services.
The combination of private investment and State interventions means that Ireland will meet the EU Commission's "Digital Agenda for Europe" target of having a basic broadband service available to all areas by 2013.
The Government accepts that the widespread availability of high speed broadband is a key requirement in delivering future economic and social development. With basic broadband services now widely available across Ireland, the challenge is to accelerate the roll out of high speed services. The Next Generation Broadband Taskforce (NGBT), which I convened last summer, has an important role to play in this regard. It comprises the CEOs of all of the major telecommunications companies operating in the Irish market, as well as CEOs of some other companies that provide broadband services. The purpose of the Taskforce is to discuss and report on policy issues and proposals in relation to the provision of high speed broadband across Ireland. I expect that the Taskforce will help to identify how best to deliver wider customer access to high-speed broadband generally and thereby assist in delivering on the commitment in the Programme for Government.
The Taskforce is currently finalising its deliberations which I expect will conclude in the coming weeks. The next steps, following completion of the NGBT report, will be to bring the report to Government before consulting with the wider public for their views. Building on the work of the Taskforce, it is my intention to publish a National Broadband Plan for Ireland later this year which will set out a range of policy commitments and actions aimed at accelerating the rollout of high speed broadband across Ireland.