I propose to take Questions Nos. 804 to 806, inclusive, together.
The Government's National Broadband Plan (NBP) aims to ensure high speed broadband access (minimum 30 megabits per second) to all premises in Ireland, regardless of location. The NBP has been a catalyst in encouraging investment by the telecoms sector. Today, almost 7 out of 10 of the 2.3 million premises in Ireland have access to high speed broadband. This will increase to nearly 8 out of 10 premises by the end of this year and by 2020, 9 out of 10 premises will have access to a high speed broadband connection. This is being achieved via a combination of commercial investment and a State led intervention.
In April 2017 I published an updated High Speed Broadband Map which is available at www.broadband.gov.ie<http://www.broadband.gov.ie/ >. This map shows the areas targeted by commercial operators to provide high speed broadband services and the areas that will be included in the State Intervention Area under the National Broadband Plan (NBP).
The Map is colour coded and searchable by address/eircode:
- The AMBER areas represent the target areas for the proposed State led Intervention under the NBP and are the subject of an ongoing procurement process.
- The BLUE represent those areas where commercial providers are either currently delivering or have plans to deliver high speed broadband services.
- The LIGHT BLUE areas represent eir's commercial rural deployment plans to rollout high speed broadband to 300,000 premises by the end of this year as part of a Commitment Agreement signed with me in April.
When the Map was updated last year, 84,500 premises were moved from the BLUE to the AMBER area. This was done because commercial operator’s plans in those areas had not materialised. High speed broadband will be brought to them under the NBP State Intervention.
I am conscious that premises remain within BLUE areas which cannot access a high speed broadband connection for a variety of reasons. Should commercial operators’ plans for these premises not materialise it may become necessary for my Department to intervene; either by engaging with operators to seek a commercial resolution or, should this engagement be unsuccessful, to consider their inclusion as part of the State led intervention.
Officials from my Department are currently developing a process to identify the extent of these premises. When this process is finalised, the NBP team will be able to develop a strategy to address BLUE area connection issues in the manner outlined above. While this process is being finalised, the NBP communications team maintains a database of queries on broadband connection which have come from BLUE area premises that don’t have a high speed broadband connection.
As this database records only those who have contacted the NBP team it should not be taken to be indicative of the total number of premises in BLUE areas which lack a high speed broadband connection. Nor is the current database organised on a county by county basis. Currently there are just over 600 such queries.
Delivering connectivity under the NBP remains a Government priority. Ultimately the goal of the National Broadband Plan is that all premises will be able to access high speed broadband services as soon as possible.
