Mr. Sean Bolger:

We want to be very clear that we have not come in and said we will solve the whole problem and connect 1.6 million people and they will get 10 Gbps broadband tomorrow. 5G is a journey. It will continuously evolve. I have been in the business for 30 years and seen 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G. People will talk about 6G next. The bottom line is that the wireless technology, which is backed by global industry, has now got to a starting point of very high capacity. This makes it an alternative to other high capacity fixed networks. It is not going to go backwards. If one chooses to use that technology for mobile, that is great. If one chooses to use that technology for a mix of mobile and fixed, that is also great. However, it will not work as an alternative to a fixed broadband solution. We are providing a fixed broadband solution. People probably do not know a great deal about this because Ireland was the first country in Europe and one of the first in the world to release the 3.6 GHz spectrum, which now happens to be the pioneer spectrum for 5G. We have worked with industry, regulators, governments and operators who come to Ireland to look at what we are doing. It is very new and we are very proud of that and of being an Irish company. As the committee heard earlier, Eir is also trialling fixed wireless as a solution. Vodafone is using it in other countries and Three is using it in the UK. It is the biggest driver of business investment. So many masts will have to be built for the 5G network but the handsets to get there will not be available in large numbers, whereas today there is a deficit in infrastructure for fixed broadband. That is what is making the commercial investments possible. The reason we were successful in raising funding and bringing this project is that the infrastructure funds and banks around the world now see this as a real alternative. These are the same people who invested in fibre. It is not better; it does exactly what fibre will do in a different way. It is just new. We have been clear that this will raise questions but we are putting a large investment into this.