The provision of telecommunications services, including broadband, is a matter in the first instance for the private sector companies operating in a fully liberalised market under the regulation of ComReg the Commission for Communications Regulation. In its report on Ireland's broadband future, published in December 2003, the Information Society Commission concluded that the market has failed to respond to the demand for broadband connectivity and there is a proven need for Government intervention to accelerate the provision of infrastructure and the driving of demand.
Last December I announced my Department's broadband action plan which will see broadband connectivity rolled out to more than 90 towns with a population of 1,500 or more, using community broadband exchanges and strategic fibre. Expenditure of €35 million each year from now until 2007 has been committed to the broadband action plan. In addition to this initiative, the group broadband scheme which I launched last March will allow smaller communities to pool their requirements and obtain broadband connectivity from a range of service providers with €25 million in funding assistance from Government.
The regional connectivity agreements that my Department negotiated with Esat BT and the ESB at prices as low as one eighth of what they had been mean that all areas of the country can benefit from low-cost backhaul. These prices are on a par with the best available on the international market.
The broadband for schools programme will bring high-speed connectivity to all 4,100 primary, second level and special needs schools in the country by the start of the 2005 school year. My Department is working closely with the Department of Education and Science and the industry to deliver this €18 million programme which is being 80% funded by the industry. I am aware of the recent initiatives to provide laptop computers to high school students in the state of Maine and will follow developments with interest.
As a result of the £77 million investment by the Government in 1999 with Global Crossing, Ireland now heads the OECD league in international connectivity to more than 50 cities in Europe, America and the Far East. The significant reduction in voice and data communications costs to and from Ireland and the allied construction of world-class data centres, has been instrumental in attracting a number of major companies such as Google and eBay in the information and communications technology sector to locate their European operations in Ireland.
