Sorca Clarke
Question:169. Deputy Sorca Clarke asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications the status of the rollout of the National Broadband Plan by county in tabular form. [46379/22]
View answerThursday, 22 September 2022
Questions (169)
Written answers
I am advised by National Broadband Ireland (NBI) that, as of 16 September 2022, over 91,500 premises can order or pre-order a high-speed broadband connection across 25 counties, with over 80,000 premises passed across 23 counties and available for immediate connection. Construction is underway across 26 counties demonstrating that the project is reaching scale. To date, the level of connections is increasing on a daily basis and is in line with, or exceeding, projections.
The network rollout for the NBP is divided into 227 Deployment Areas (DAs) across the country. These are typically an area of approximately 25km in radius and in total they cover 96% of Ireland’s landmass. The architecture of the network design is specifically based on the design of the NBI network coming from the Eir exchanges or the metropolitan area networks (MANs). It is based on an engineering design that allows NBI to reach every premises as quickly as possible working within the confines of how fibre networks are built. Villages/Townlands/Counties can be covered by a number of DAs which means there are differing timescales for the rollout across county areas.
NBI has added significant additional capacity and resources to their build team over recent months to recover from the impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on their deployment schedule. This will continue in the months ahead.
Further details are available on specific areas 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. Individuals who register with this facility will receive regular updates on progress by NBI on delivering the network and specific updates related to their own premises as works commence. NBI has a dedicated email address, reps@nbi.ie, which can be used by Oireachtas members for specific queries.