Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 16 June 2016
1. Deputy Timmy Dooley asked the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if all premises covered by the national broadband plan will be connected by 2020; if he is satisfied with the download speeds it envisages; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16375/16]
Amharc ar fhreagraWill all premises covered by the national broadband plan be connected by 2020, as was originally envisaged, and is the Minister satisfied, since coming to the Department, with the proposed download speeds that are identified? Does he have any view on the upload speeds, which are also an aspect of appropriate Internet connection? Can he give assurances to the many people throughout rural Ireland who are exceptionally dependent on the delivery of this service that it will be delivered on time and to a standard that will meet the future needs of those people?
The Government's national broadband plan aims to ensure that every citizen and business, regardless of location, has access to a high-quality, high-speed broadband service. This will be achieved through a combination of commercial investments and a State-led intervention in areas where commercial services will not be provided.
The broadband intervention strategy for Ireland, available on my Department's website, sets out a detailed service specification, including the requirement that the State-funded network must be capable of delivering high-quality, high-speed broadband with a download speed of at least 30 Mbps and an upload speed of 6 Mbps to all citizens; be capable of catering for higher performance in the future so as to keep pace with consumer demand; and ensure the availability of high-quality wholesale services to allow retail competition to develop. The emphasis, therefore, is on putting in place a high-quality infrastructure network capable of being scaled up to meet current and future demand, with 30 Mbps as a minimum rather than a ceiling for consumers.
In addition, the intervention strategy requires measures to meet the specific needs of businesses as well as ensuring scalability in terms of future anticipated growth in demand for bandwidth. Bidders will therefore be invited to put forward minimum speeds for businesses, which can be built into the service standards of the winning bidder's or bidders' contract. The winning bidder's or bidders' network will be subject to periodic reviews on a three-to-five-year basis to ensure that it is keeping pace with demand.
Over 750,000 premises are the focus of the procurement process, which formally commenced in December 2015 with the publication of the pre-qualification questionnaire and the project information memorandum. Five responses were received from prospective bidders at this stage of the competitive procurement process by the deadline of 31 March 2016.
The second stage in the procurement process will be a formal invitation to participate in dialogue, the ITPD, to shortlisted bidders, following the assessment of the responses to the pre-qualification questionnaire stage.
I will allow the Minister to contribute again.
I thank the Minister for the outline, but the principal part of the question concerned whether the roll-out will, in his estimation, be completed by 2020? Does he not accept that putting forward standards as low as a base of 30 Mbps for downloads and 6 Mbps for uploads is utterly futile when what people expect in this day and age are speeds associated with a fibre-optic link? In the United States the Federal Communications Commission has declared that speeds below 25 Mbps cannot even be referred to as broadband, and we are setting a base at 30 Mbps, just within that parameter. It is way below where it needs to be.
Who will own the network, which will be funded by the State? Will it be owned by the winning bidder or will it remain an asset of the State?
The minimum requirement will be 30 Mbps. At the moment, at EU level, there is a guideline of 30 megabits per second. It is not binding, it does not state that it is a minimum or maximum and there is no way of enforcing it. During the consultation process - as the Deputy knows, there have been a number of rounds of consultation about this - some of the prospective bidders said that 30 Mbps was too high. At present the UK is considering a universal service obligation of 10 Mbps in rural areas. What we are saying, therefore, is that this would be the very minimum and would be reviewed on an ongoing basis, based on needs and demands. Based on the technologies that are used, the actual speeds may be higher than that when it comes about.
Regarding the Deputy's specific question about the timeline, what we are being told by the experts who are advising us is that it will take between three and five years to roll out this network. We expect that we will have 60% of the network rolled out within the first two years, but to roll it out to every single building and premises in Ireland will take time. If we are bringing high-speed broadband up the side of a mountain, that will not happen overnight, but we will see once the contracts are signed. The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Heather Humphreys, will be very engaged very early on in this process. Questions will be taken later regarding this, but we expect that whoever the contractor is will hit the ground running and will start rolling out broadband, and a substantial number of the houses in question will get access to that quite quickly.
For the sake of clarity who will own the network? Do I have another minute?
I thank the Minister for his response, and while I accept it is an onerous task to roll out the service, there needs to be an incentive for the winning bidder to try to complete it in a timeframe shorter than that. It is all about money at the end of the day. I am still not happy about this, regardless of what the British are doing in their rural areas and regardless of the discussion that is taking place at the level of the European Commission. It should be open to us to set our own minimum standard at a much higher level and then build in the redundancy. Saying that they can offer a higher service for future expansion is not strong enough because, depending on the objective criteria that one sets for consideration of the final bids, I fail to understand how it will be possible to come down on the side of somebody who is offering a higher or better option if the minimum standard is just 30 Mbps.
I again ask the Minister to identify who he expects will own the network at the end of the process.
To deal with the issue of the speeds, under the procurement rules at EU level, we must be technology-neutral in this. We must get State aid approval at the end of this process and we must be conscious of that. If we were to set the speed that we want, for argument's sake, at one gigabit per second, then there would be only one solution to that. We must therefore try to set a benchmark that is achievable across a range of technologies. What we have tried to do with this, and what is built into it, is that it will be future-proofed for the next 25 years, and it is up to the contractors themselves then to decide which technology to use. We would very much like if they could come in and roll this out more quickly, and if they can, we will consider that, because our objective is to roll this out as quickly as possible.
Regarding the Deputy's question about the ownership model, that is an issue that we are considering at the moment, whether we go for a commercial stimulus or a full concession model. There is a debate one way or the other in that regard, and if the Deputy has suggestions or ideas and thoughts on that I would like to hear them because we must make a decision in the next phase as to what type of a model we take. There are pros and cons on this aspect. As the Deputy knows, five models were considered initially.
We have narrowed it down to two models. One would involve gap funding, where the concessionaire would own it at the end of it. The other would involve it reverting to the State at the end of the process.
