Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 21 April 2021
273. Deputy Joe McHugh asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications the number of household connections as part of the Eir T 300 programme; the number of household connections as part of the roll-out by a company (details supplied) by county; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19908/21]
View answerEir and Siro’s rural deployment of high speed broadband are commercial undertakings and are not part of the planned State Intervention. Their operations are not funded by the State and are not planned, designed or directed by my Department in any capacity. The decision as to the areas and premises served is made by eir and Siro. They operate in a fully liberalised market regulated by ComReg as the independent regulator. My Department has no statutory authority to intervene in that process. Notwithstanding this, eir signed a Commitment Agreement with my Department in April 2017 to rollout to circa 300,000 rural premises with fibre to the home. I am advised that Eir has passed over 340,000 premises as part of this project. SIRO is currently completing the first phase of its fibre deployment and I understand that it has now passed 374,000 premises with gigabit services.
Of the 2.4 million premises across Ireland, 77% of premises now have access to high-speed broadband of more than 30 Mbps. National Broadband Ireland will address the remaining premises through the National Broadband Plan State intervention. A number of commercial operators have announced further investment plans in high-speed broadband. Eir has said it will roll out fibre to a further 1.4 million premises, bringing their fibre deployment to some 1.8 million premises. Virgin Media is offering 250Mbps as a standard offering with 500Mbps and 1Gbps available to many of their customers across more than 1 million premises that they cover. Many other network operators and telecom service providers across the State also continue to invest in their networks.
The latest available ComReg Key Data Report on broadband for Q4, 2020 shows that fixed broadband subscriptions increased to 1.51 million which is an increase of 0.6% for that quarter and an increase of 3.7% compared to Q4, 2019. Of these, over 248k were fibre to the premises (FTTP) subscriptions representing 16.4% of the total fixed broadband in Q4, 2020 which is up from 11.1% in Q4 2019. In Q4, 2020 approximately 81.6% of broadband subscribers had purchased broadband with speeds equal to or greater than 30Mbps. Of all fixed broadband subscriptions 42.5% of subscribers purchased broadband speeds equal to or greater than 100Mbps. According to Eurostat, in 2019 Ireland’s household penetration rate (including fixed and mobile broadband) at 90% is slightly higher than the EU average of 89%.
