Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 21 May 2019
517. Deputy Louise O'Reilly asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the reason broadband cannot be rolled out to all houses in an area (details supplied) in view of the fact a number of houses in the area have been successfully connected. [21464/19]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe purpose of the National Broadband Plan is to ensure that over 1.1 million of our citizens in rural Ireland have the same opportunity to participate in the digital society as citizens living in urban areas. The availability of ubiquitous high speed broadband will bring significant benefits in areas of e-Health, e-Education, smart farming, regional development and tourism.
In April 2017, my Department published an updated version of the National Broadband Plan (NBP) High Speed Broadband Map. This is available at www.broadband.gov.ie.
The 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. The Map is colour coded and searchable by address/Eircode:
- The AMBER area represents the parts of the country where commercial operators have no plans to build high speed broadband networks. Premises in the AMBER area will be provided with high Speed Broadband through a State Intervention.
- The BLUE area represents those areas where commercial providers are either currently delivering or have plans to deliver high speed broadband services.
- The LIGHT BLUE area represents eir's commercial rural deployment plans to rollout high speed broadband to 300,000 premises as part of a Commitment Agreement signed with my Department in April 2017.
The table below details the percentage of premises to be covered by the State Intervention and through commercial investment in the areas identified by the Deputy. eir's deployment within the townlands of Magillstown and Balheary is now complete.
|
Townland |
Premises within the NBP Intervention Area |
Premises within Commercial Operator’s Area |
Premises within eir planned rural deployment |
Total |
|
Magillstown |
59% (13) |
41% (9) |
0% (0) |
100% (22) |
|
Balheary |
45% (17) |
55% (21) |
0% (0) |
100% (38) |
Premises where commercial providers are not currently delivering or have indicated no plans to deliver high speed broadband services will be addressed through the National Broadband Plan State led Intervention.
This intervention is the subject of the procurement process to engage a company to build, operate and maintain the NBP State intervention network. Following rigorous evaluation by my Department, I recently brought a recommendation to Government to confer Preferred Bidder status on Granahan McCourt, the remaining bidder in the NBP procurement process and Government has agreed to this at its meeting on 7 May.
The Government Decision of 7 May 2019 means that it is intended to award the State Intervention contract to the Bidder. This award is subject to contract close including finalisation of financial and legal documents. Deployment of the NBP State Intervention network will commence shortly after that.
The Bidder has indicated that the NBP State intervention will take an estimated 7 years from the beginning of deployment
In the first year of this roll out, the Bidder will deploy approximately 300 Broadband Connection Points (BCPs) across all counties. It is anticipated that between 7 and 23 BCPs will be deployed in each county. BCPs will provide a community based high speed broadband service, enhancing online participation and allowing for the establishment of digital work hubs in these locations. A deployment plan will be made available by the bidder once the contract is signed. The Bidder is aiming to pass 133,000 premises by end of the second year of the overall deployment, with 70-100,000 passed each year thereafter until roll out is completed.
