Mr. Ciarán Ó hÓbáin:

I can come back to the committee on the percentage by operator in terms of their licences. The licences that ComReg provide have minimum thresholds in terms of what they have to deliver. Commercial providers can go beyond that. There is only one commercial provider that would claim to be over and above 90% in terms of population coverage, which is different to geographic coverage. The work on the black spots, and a separate piece of work which was done to help in decision making going forward to determine where coverage should be prioritised, was about more than where people live. It was also about where people gather and where they need mobile coverage. This work has been completed and it will feed into the work of ComReg going forward.

Separately, the Department is working to develop a 5G strategy in the context of a connectivity strategy. Earlier, we had a conversation around 4G-5G versus fibre and broadband. I am not an engineer, but in terms of my brief, I engage with industry, the communications regulator, the telecommunications companies and the people advising on the broadband plan. The point was made earlier, and referenced recently by the head of Vodafone Ireland during its recent 5G trial, about 5G being complementary to high speed broadband. This is about connectivity not only within one's house or place of work but outside one's door. The engineers will probably be upset with how I am explaining this but as I see it 5G and fibre are very fast but in terms of any expected roll-out of 5G the capacity and the amount of data are not comparable. 5G can expand out but this would require investment at a level that no commercial player would consider sensible - with more electronics en masse. The Secretary General mentioned earlier that in the recently published ComReg estimates it would cost €1.8 billion to achieve 99% plus population coverage with 5G. This would provide a level of service such that a person could watch Netflix, but not if all of his or her neighbours chose to watch Netflix at the same time. That is the difference between 5G and fibre. With fibre, one has a dedicated signal. The two can work together.