Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 18 December 2018
534. Deputy Sean Fleming asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment to outline the criteria for the areas to be covered by the national broadband plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [53355/18]
View answerThe NBP is a Government initiative which aims to ensure high speed broadband access (minimum 30 megabits per second) to all premises in Ireland, regardless of location. This is being achieved via a combination of commercial investment and a State led intervention.
The criteria for establishing if a premises should be included in the State intervention area, is whether or not commercial operators are providing, or have plans to provide, high speed broadband. Following an extensive mapping exercise during 2014 and 2015, my Department published the High Speed Broadband Map. This was again updated in April 2017 and is available at www.broadband.gov.ie. This map shows the areas targeted by commercial operators to provide high speed broadband services. Those premises that were not identified to be served by commercial operators were included in the State Intervention Area under the National Broadband Plan. 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 areas 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 my Department in April 2017.
The procurement process to appoint a bidder for the State intervention network is now at the final stage. My priority is to bring the procurement process to a fair and impartial conclusion as quickly as possible. My Department will now conclude its assessment of the final tender submission received from the bidder on 18 September 2018 and I will bring a recommendation to Government in the coming weeks on how to proceed.
Under a Commitment Agreement signed with my Department in April 2017, eir is in the process of passing 300,000 predominantly rural homes with high speed broadband. The data for Q3 2018 submitted by eir to my Department indicates the company has passed almost 210,000 premises nationwide as part of its ongoing deployment.
