There are 79,668 premises in the Intervention Area in County Cork under the National Broadband Plan that will receive access to high speed broadband. Government investment in Cork in the NBP will be €314 million. As of 27 May, 22,765 (28.57%) premises in the Intervention Area in County Cork have been surveyed by National Broadband Ireland (NBI). Surveying is the first step towards delivering the new fibre network and informs design solutions for provision of the fibre network: build works have started in rural parts of Cork. The first homes have been connected in Carrigaline, Co Cork where almost 4,000 premises are available for connection. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of good reliable broadband to ensure that citizens across Ireland can avail of remote working, education and other essential online facilities. The Programme for Government commits to seek the acceleration of the roll out of the National Broadband Plan. My Department continues to engage with NBI to explore the feasibility of accelerating aspects of this rollout to establish to possibility of moving premises which are currently scheduled in years 6 and 7 of the plan to an earlier date.
A dedicated team in NBI is investigating the acceleration of the rollout from its current contracted schedule of seven years. As part of this investigation NBI is engaging with current build partners (eir and enet) to reschedule build activities and to review potential additional build partners as an option to speed up the build process. Exploring the potential to accelerate the network rollout is being undertaken in parallel with the measures required to mitigate delays arising as a result of Covid-19.
Further details are available on specific areas within Cork through the NBI website which provides a facility for any premises within the intervention area to register their interest in being provided with deployment updates through its website www.nbi.ie.
