The National Broadband Plan (NBP) 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. This is being achieved through private investment by commercial telecommunications companies and through a State intervention in areas where commercial investment has not been fully demonstrated.
A key principle of the NBP is to support and stimulate commercial investment through policy and regulatory measures. Commercial investment since the publication of the NBP has considerably exceeded expectations. To date, the commercial telecommunications sector has invested over €2.5bn in upgrading and modernising networks which support the provision of high speed broadband and mobile telecoms services. It is important to note that the significant investment required to make high speed telecommunication services publicly available, occurs within a fully liberalised market. It is a matter for the competing network providers to decide those areas which can be served on a commercial basis, in the first instance.
In November 2016 my Department initiated a review of an eir proposal to rollout fibre to over 300,000 premises in rural areas on a commercial basis. These premises were in areas that had formed part of the procurement process for the NBP State Intervention area. This analysis is now complete and on 4 April, I signed a Commitment Agreement with eir in relation to its plans to provide high speed broadband to an additional 300,000 premises in rural areas on a commercial basis. Eir has committed to doing this work over a 90 week period, with an average of 500 premises passed per day. The rollout plan has been agreed with my Department and will be monitored closely by my Department to ensure that eir meets its obligations under the Agreement. A copy of the Commitment Agreement is available on my website www.dccae.gov.ie.
It is important to note the eir network is a wholesale network. This means that existing retail internet service providers can contract with eir to access the network and use it to meet the future needs of their customers.
