The National Broadband Plan (NBP) represents a very significant capital investment project for the State and aims to deliver high speed services to every city, town, village and individual premises in Ireland. The Programme for Government commits to the delivery of the NBP as a matter of priority.
The Government's updated Intervention Strategy, available on my Department's website at http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/communications/en-ie/Pages/Publication/Ireland's-Broadband-Intervention-Strategy-update.aspx, 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 30Mbps download and 6Mbps upload and which must be future proofed. The development of the intervention strategy followed extensive public consultation and analysis in 2014 and 2015. Additional marks will be awarded for future-proofing of solutions.
The Department is now in a formal procurement process to select a company or companies who will roll-out a new high speed broadband network to the over 750,000 premises in Ireland, covering 100,000km of road network and 96% of the land area of Ireland. Intensive dialogue with bidders is continuing and the three bidders have indicated that they are proposing a predominantly fibre-to-the-home solution. Householders and businesses may potentially get speeds not just of 30 Megabits per second but potentially 1,000 Megabits with businesses potentially availing of symmetrical upload and download speeds.
As part of the competitive process, the Department will engage with winning bidder(s) on the best rollout strategy, in order to target areas of particularly poor service, business needs and/or high demand. This will need to be balanced with the most efficient network rollout plan. A prioritisation programme will be put in place in this regard, in consultation with the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. A detailed rollout plan for the network will be published once contract(s) are in place.
I can assure the Deputy that the procurement process is being intensively managed, to ensure an outcome that delivers a future-proofed network that serves homes and businesses across Ireland, for at least 25 years.
