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Broadband Service Provision

Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 27 November 2019

Wednesday, 27 November 2019

Questions (224, 225)

Thomas P. Broughan

Question:

224. Deputy Thomas P. Broughan asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the number and percentage of households and commercial premises that have access to fibre optic broadband in areas (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49274/19]

View answer

Thomas P. Broughan

Question:

225. Deputy Thomas P. Broughan asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the proportion of the remaining household and commercial premises that have fibre optic broadband to the premises itself, excluding districts to be enabled by the national broadband plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49275/19]

View answer

Written answers

I propose to take Questions Nos. 224 and 225 together.

Premises where commercial providers are not currently delivering or have indicated no plans to deliver high speed broadband services will be addressed through the National Broadband Plan (NBP) State led Intervention.

There is a total of 1,838,932 premises outside the NBP Intervention Area that already have access to high speed broadband.

I attach a table that sets out the number and percentage of premises to be covered through the State Intervention (Amber area) and through commercial investment (Blue area) in the counties identified by the Deputy. The table contains my Department's most up to date statistics, which are for Q3 2019.

Information on the specific towns referred to by the Deputy are available on the High Speed Broadband Map on my Department’s website, www.broadband.gov.ie.

The Blue area is where commercial providers are either currently delivering or have plans to deliver high speed broadband services. The NBP defines high speed broadband as delivering a minimum speed of 30Mbps download and 6Mbps upload in a reliable, high quality and consistent manner. Premises in the Blue area may access a high speed broadband service via various platforms including fibre, many exceeding the definition of high speed broadband.

As the Deputy will be aware, the telecoms market is fully liberalised and regulated by the Commission for Communications Regulation, ComReg. The regulator publishes a quarterly report which highlights trends in the telecommunications industry. This includes the number of subscriptions in Ireland to high speed broadband services by speed (e.g. download speeds of 30 megabits per second) and by platform (fibre, cable, VDSL etc.). The latest report can be found at https://www.comreg.ie/publication/quarterly-key-data-report-q2-2019.

Very high speeds are increasingly available across all fixed broadband platforms. Per the ComReg report approximately 79.6% of broadband subscriptions were >=30Mbps (with 33.1% >=100Mbps). This equates to approximately 81.5% (with 35.4% >=100Mbps) of residential subscriptions and 64.0% (with 14.6% >=100Mbps) of business subscriptions.

County

Premises withinthe NBP InterventionArea

Premises within Commercial Operator’s Area

Premises withineir planned ruraldeployment

Amber %

Blue %

Light Blue %

Total

Dublin

12,145

597,112

203

2

98

0

609,460

Louth

8,245

53,085

226

13

86

1

61,556

Meath

18,989

67,609

396

22

78

0

86,994

Kildare

13,329

79,837

260

14

85

1

93,426

Wicklow

14,871

50,415

144

23

77

0

65,430

Cork

78,695

190,231

2,279

29

70

1

271,205

Limerick

21,024

76,019

844

21

78

1

97,887

Waterford

14,876

47,028

86

26

74

0

61,990

Galway

38,338

95,951

1,444

28

71

1

135,733

Sligo

14,809

25,143

187

37

63

0

40,139

Kilkenny

18,092

29,973

90

38

62

0

48,155

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