The National Broadband Plan aims to ensure that every citizen and business, regardless of location, has access to a high quality, high speed broadband service. This will be achieved through a combination of commercial investments and a State led intervention in areas where commercial services will not be provided. Last November I published a national high speed coverage map for 2016. The map identifies every townland on a county-by-county basis and can be accessed at
www.broadband.gov.ie. The map shows Ireland with two colours, BLUE and AMBER. The areas marked BLUE represent those areas that will have access to commercial high speed broadband services by end 2016. The AMBER area shows the target areas for the State intervention; all premises within the AMBER areas will be included in the State's intervention.
Eircom recently announced an investment that may cover a further 300,000 addresses with fibre-to-the-premises high speed broadband including a number of areas in Donegal. My Department will be rigorously examining the assurances from eircom in relation to these new plans, which is a requirement for all operators, and will review how this impacts the proposed intervention area.
New private planned next generation access investments, such as announced by eircom recently, may be added to the national high-speed coverage map, once it is established that these plans are definitive and meet the relevant criteria to deliver high speed broadband service to end users. Until the necessary analysis is completed, it would not be appropriate to comment any further.
It is envisaged that the map will be updated on an ongoing basis from now until the award of a contract or contracts relating to the State intervention.
