Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 31 May 2018
21. Deputy Timmy Dooley asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the implementation status of the national broadband plan; and the date by which the contract for the State intervention area will be awarded. [23959/18]
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. By 2020, 9 out of 10 premises will have access to a high speed broadband connection. This is being achieved via a combination of commercial investment and a State led intervention. 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 NBP.
The 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 as part of a Commitment Agreement signed with me in April 2017.
There are over 68,400 premises in County Clare, circa 45,200 of which fall within a BLUE area of the Map and will be covered by commercial operators. Of these 45,200, over 8,700 form part of eir's planned rural deployment to deliver rural high speed broadband. The remaining 23,200 premises in County Clare fall within the AMBER area and will be part of the State led Intervention under the NBP.
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.
