Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 10 October 2023
37. Deputy Duncan Smith asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications when broadband infrastructure in new builds in Ireland will be completed, and in particular the Estate of Kenure Gate, Rush; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43944/23]
View answerIn December 2022, my Department published Ireland's Digital Connectivity Strategy which supports the ambition outlined in the National Digital Strategy and sets out a number of ambitious targets, including that:
• all Irish households and businesses will be covered by a Gigabit network no later than 2028
• all populated areas will be covered by 5G no later than 2030, and
• digital connectivity will be delivered to all schools and broadband connection points by 2023
These targets will be achieved through a combination of commercial investments and through the State investment in National Broadband Ireland (NBI).
Commercial operators’ fibre rollouts are progressing at pace. Eir is in the process of building a FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) network to 1.9 million premises. SIRO recently reaching a milestone of enabling 520,000 premises for full fibre, and is on track to reach 700,000 premises by 2026. Virgin Media recently announced plans to bring 2Gbps services to 345,000 premises, through an upgrade and expansion of their own network, and to bring gigabit broadband upgrades to 1 million premises.
Through the State’s investment in high-speed broadband, NBI (National Broadband Ireland) has now reached ‘peak’ build (in the Intervention Area – a key part of the National Broadband Plan). As of the end of September, NBI had ‘passed’ 182,000 premises with fibre. They expect 200,000 premises to be passed by the end of 2023. Over 55,000 premises have already taken up a fibre broadband service, through one of the many retail service providers that are working with NBI.
The estate referred to in the Question appears to be a new housing estate built circa 2018/19. It is in the AMBER area. NBI advise that a connection to high speed broadband will be available to order by mid-2024. Regarding the wider area of connections to new build estates, this will be determined by where the estate is situated as it may be in the AMBER (State Intervention) or BLUE (Commercial operators) area and also when the estate is due to be completed.
Recent ComReg data shows that Quarter 2, 2023 saw a 7.4% increase in fibre broadband subscriptions compared to the first 3 months of the year, and a 33.7% increase when compared to Quarter 2 of 2022. This demonstrates that take-up of fibre connectivity for homes and businesses is increasing massively as it is deployed to areas where it had previously been unavailable. The same ComReg data also indicates that c.40% of homes and business throughout the State now have access to gigabit services through either fibre (576,856) or cable (359,669) infrastructure.
