Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 20 February 2018
472. Deputy Robert Troy asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment his plans to provide fibre optic broadband facilities in the Ballinalack and Rathowen areas of County Westmeath. [8317/18]
View answerThe Government's National Broadband Plan (NBP) aims to ensure high speed broadband access (minimum 30 megabits per second) to all premises in Ireland, regardless of location. The NBP has been a catalyst in encouraging investment by the telecoms sector. Today, almost 7 out of 10 of the 2.3 million premises in Ireland have access to high speed broadband. Since this Government came into office almost 400,000 additional premises have access to high speed broadband. This will increase to nearly 8 out of 10 premises by the end of this year and by 2020, 9 out of 10 premises will have access to a high speed broadband connection. In April 2017 I published an updated High Speed Broadband Map which is available at www.broadband.gov.ie. This map shows the areas targeted by commercial operators to provide high speed broadband services and the areas that will be included in the State Intervention Area under the National Broadband Plan (NBP).
In April 2017, I also signed a Commitment Agreement with eir in relation to its plans to provide High speed broadband to 300,000 premises in rural areas on a commercial basis. eir has committed to completing the rollout by the end of this year. Information on eir's planned rural deployment is available at http://fibrerollout.ie/eircode-lookup/ A copy of the Commitment Agreement is available on my Department’s website www.dccae.gov.ie
Quarterly updates on eir's rural deployment are published on this website. Although deployment figures for Q4 2017 have not yet been verified by my Department’s teams, I understand eir has passed a total of 121,000 premises to date.
The High Speed Broadband Map is colour coded and searchable by address/eircode:
- The AMBER areas represent the target areas for the proposed State led Intervention under the NBP and are the subject of an ongoing procurement process.
- The BLUE represent those areas where commercial providers are either currently delivering or have plans to deliver high speed broadband services.
- The LIGHT BLUE areas represent eir's commercial rural deployment plans to rollout high speed broadband to 300,000 premises by the end of this year as part of a Commitment Agreement signed with me in April 2017.
The number of premises that fall into each of these categories in the areas referred to by the Deputy is outlined in the below table. Individuals can enter their eircode into the map to find out into which category their premises falls into.
|
Area |
Total |
Premises in AMBER |
Premises in BLUE |
Premises in LIGHT BLUE |
|
Ballinalack |
76 |
|
|
100% (76) |
|
Rathowen |
103 |
7% (7) |
91% (94) |
2% (2) |
My Department is in a formal procurement process to select a company who will roll-out a new high speed broadband network in the State intervention area. That procurement process is now in its final stages. “Detailed Solutions” have been evaluated by the NBP specialist team. This is the last stage of the procurement process before moving to the final tender stage, which will be followed by the appointment of a preferred bidder and contract signature. When the procurement process reaches a satisfactory conclusion for Government, a contract will be awarded and the network rollout will commence.
Prior to the roll out of the NBP State led intervention network, practical initiatives will continue to be addressed through the work of the Mobile Phone and Broadband Taskforce to address obstacles and improve connectivity in respect of existing and future mobile phone and broadband services.
Under this Taskforce, engagement between telecommunications operators and local authorities through the Broadband Officers is continuing to strengthen. These Broadband Officers are acting as single points of contact in local authorities for their communities. The appointment of these officers is already reaping rewards in terms of ensuring a much greater degree of consistency in engagements with operators and clearing obstacles to developing infrastructure. There is a link to a list of these local Broadband Officers on my Department's website.
