Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 22 March 2016
555. Deputy Tony McLoughlin asked the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the status of the Government's national broadband plan in relation to the roll-out of infrastructure in County Sligo, County Leitrim and in the surrounding areas; when households will receive access to faster broadband in these areas which currently have no access; if he will speed up the overall project; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4839/16]
View answerThe Government’s 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 commercial telecommunications sector has invested over €2 billion in network upgrades and enhanced services in the last four years, and is continuing to invest. These very significant investments represent a step change in the quality of broadband services available.
On the 22 December 2015, I formally launched the procurement process for the State Intervention to provide high quality, high speed broadband to all premises in Ireland that may not be served through commercial investment. The formal procurement commenced with the publication of the Project Information Memorandum and the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire. In addition, my Department also published:
- the National Intervention Strategy – updated in December 2015, which takes account of responses to the public consultation which took place in July 2015 and subsequent expert analysis; and
- the High Speed Broadband Map 2020 which follows ongoing engagement with industry and public consultation.
The 2020 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 are either currently delivering or have plans to deliver high speed broadband services. The areas marked AMBER represent the target areas for the proposed State intervention. Members of the public can see whether their individual premise is in the BLUE or AMBER area by inserting their Eircode, and/or address, or scrolling through the map. The map provides information on a county by county basis with a breakdown of coverage across the townlands in every county including Counties Leitrim and Sligo.
The map shows the extent of the High Speed Broadband deployments by commercial operators, indicating that 70% of addresses in Ireland fall to be covered by commercial operators while the remaining 30% represents the target for the proposed State intervention.
The Intervention strategy sets out a detailed service specification including a requirement that the State-funded network must be capable of delivering high-quality, high speed broadband of at least 30 Mbps download and 6 Mbps upload. It must also be capable of catering for higher performance in the future so as to keep pace with consumer demand.
The intention is to build out the network in the AMBER area as quickly as possible and engagement with industry stakeholders has indicated that this could be achieved within 3-5 years of the contract award.
In this context, the NBP proposes that through the combination of commercial investment and State intervention, 85% of addresses in Ireland will have access to high speed services by 2018, with all addresses passed by 2020.
