Considerable progress has been made in recent years in both the coverage and speeds of national broadband infrastructure, with a multiplicity of commercial operators, providing services over a diverse range of technology platforms. The Next Generation Broadband Taskforce, which I chaired, concluded that large commercial customers generally have access to the high speeds they require. The Taskforce also noted that approximately one-third of all homes have access to speeds of 100Mbps. Significant further Private Sector investment is also underway, which will mean that 50% of the population will have access to speeds of 70Mbps – 100Mbps by 2015.
The Government has also undertaken a number of initiatives to bring broadband to those parts of the country where commercial operators have been unable to offer services, including the provision of 100Mbps connectivity to second level schools, MANS, the National Broadband Scheme (NBS) and the Rural Broadband Scheme (RBS). The Government, through the National Broadband Plan, which I published on 30 August last year, has recognised that the key imperative now is to ensure high speed broadband availability to all. This is a challenge which faces all Member States and comparisons between Member States can be difficult as measurement metrics differ, and Member States often experience different barriers to deployment. The National Broadband Plan commits to ensuring that high speed services of at least 30Mbps are available to all of our citizens and businesses, well in advance of the EU’s target date of 2020.
Ireland is now moving to a new phase of public and private sector investment in broadband which will see significantly improved speeds delivered across the country. As a consequence of the recent multi-band spectrum auction conducted by ComReg, new high speed 4G telecoms services will be rolled out by mobile operators and will significantly increase the speeds available across wireless platforms. In addition, the commercial sector is already investing in high speed fixed line services, particularly in urban and semi-urban areas. The National Broadband Plan commits the Government to investing in areas where high speed services are not commercially viable and will not be provided by the market. This will ensure that citizens or businesses, wherever they are located, have a broadband connection which meets their needs to interact effectively with society and business in a global digital environment.
