Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 4 April 2017
624. Deputy Brendan Smith asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment his plans to reduce the number of homes and businesses to be covered by the national broadband plan in an agreement between his Department and a telecommunications provider; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16535/17]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe Government's National Broadband Plan (NBP) was published in August 2012. Progress continues to be made in delivering on this Government’s commitment to ensure every household and business in Ireland has access to high speed broadband, regardless of where they are located.
The National Broadband Plan (NBP) is being achieved through a combination of commercial investment by the telecommunications sector and a State intervention in those areas where commercial investment has not been fully demonstrated.
A key principle of the NBP is to support and stimulate commercial investment through policy and regulatory measures. Commercial investment since the publication of the NBP, including over the last 12 months has considerably exceeded expectations. To date, the commercial telecommunications sector has invested over €2.5bn in upgrading and modernising networks which support the provision of high speed broadband and mobile telecoms services.
There has been significant progress in relation to broadband rollout so that today, approximately 1.4m or 61% of premises in Ireland can get high speed broadband of a minimum of 30 Megabits per second. The NBP has been a catalyst in encouraging investment by the telecoms sector, which is continuing to expand this footprint.
I formally published an updated High Speed Broadband Map today which is available at www.broadband.gov.ie. The updated Map shows the following categories of areas for delivery of broadband:
- The BLUE areas represent those areas where commercial telecommunications providers are either currently delivering or have indicated plans to deliver high speed broadband services,
- The AMBER areas on the High Speed Broadband Map represent the areas that will require State Intervention and are the subject of the current procurement process.
The updated Map shows that there are approximately 1.8m premises in the BLUE areas, representing 77% of the total premises in Ireland. The remaining 23%, which comprises some 542,000 premises are in the AMBER areas and are expected to be served by the State Intervention.
It is intended that all premises will have access to services of at least 30 Megabits per second when the procurement process is completed and the network rolled out.
With the publication of the updated High Speed Broadband Map the State Intervention Area has now been finalised. A formal procurement process is in train to select a company or companies who will roll-out a new high speed broadband network within the State Intervention Area. The procurement process is being intensively managed, to ensure an outcome that delivers a future-proofed network that serves homes and businesses across Ireland, for at least 25 years.
The timeframe for the procurement continues to be dependent on a range of factors including the complexities that may be encountered by the procurement team and bidders, during the procurement process. During the Department's extensive stakeholder consultations in 2015, telecommunications service providers indicated a 3-5 year timeline to rollout a network of the scale envisaged under the NBP.
The Programme for Government also commits to measures to assist in the rollout of the network once a contract is awarded.
The Department will engage with winning bidder(s) on the best rollout strategy, in order to target areas of particularly poor service, business needs and/or high demand and a prioritisation programme.
