The Government recognises that access to high quality, high speed broadband is important for businesses and households throughout Ireland including the South East Region.
The National Broadband Plan (NBP) 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.
The proposed State intervention under the NBP represents a potentially very significant capital investment project for the State and the Government is firmly committed to delivering this investment, as evidenced in the National Broadband Plan itself and in the Programme for Government, the Action Plan for Jobs and the Statement of Government Priorities.
The commercial telecommunications sector is currently investing approximately €2.5 billion in network upgrades and enhanced services. These very significant investments represent a step-change in the quality of broadband services available.
Last November I published a national high speed coverage map for 2016. This map is available at www.broadband.gov.ie. The map shows Ireland with two colours, BLUE and AMBER. The areas marked BLUE represent those areas where commercial providers plan to deliver high speed broadband services. The AMBER areas on the map show the target areas for the State intervention.
Under EU State Aid rules, public investment in a commercial market has to be targeted at areas where there is evidence of market failure. Therefore, the Government's proposed investment under the NBP will apply to those parts of the South East Region comprising Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford that are within the AMBER areas of our map. Those premises in the South East that fall within the Blue areas will be provided with services through commercial investment.
More generally I can confirm that broadband services have been upgraded by commercial operators, to over 100,000 premises to date in the South East region comprising Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford with a further 67,000 premises expected to be upgraded. Approximately 131,000 premises in the regional are the target for the proposed State intervention under the National Broadband Plan.
The Department has recently received updated information from operators in respect of further commercial roll-out of high speed services. The Department is now reviewing all of the data provided by operators for 2016 - 2020 with a view to validating and updating commercial coverage plans and revising the map as appropriate.
In the meantime Intensive design and planning work is underway in my Department to produce a detailed intervention strategy for the AMBER area. Following a public consultation process on the draft Intervention Strategy this summer, I hope to move to formal procurement phase towards the end of this year in order to select a preferred bidder or bidders.
I expect the physical build of the network to begin in late 2016, and it will take 3-5 years to fully complete – depending on the details of the bid or bids selected.
