Mr. Mark Griffin:

The European Commission. It updated its perspective on what the future infrastructure requirements should be and stated that by 2025, the infrastructure should be capable of providing a download speed of 100 Mbps, while for schools, businesses and transport hubs, it should be capable of a download speed of 1 GB/s, which is a significant change, even over the past two years.

With the NBP, we are trying to provide the foundation for Ireland to meet Europe's 2025 targets for the creation of a gigabit society. Widespread access to such connectivity, underpinned by a scalable, responsive and reliable digital infrastructure, is fundamental to maintaining and enhancing Ireland’s competitiveness at this critical juncture, and will allow all citizens to embrace digital transformation to innovate, be creative and thrive, resulting in sustainable economic growth and positive social dividends.

Since I last appeared before the committee on 6 December, my Department has continued with the assessment of the final tender, and the Minister updated the Oireachtas on that yesterday. That process is now reaching a conclusion and, as the Minister has indicated, he intends to bring a recommendation to the Government shortly. The technology solution proposed by the bidder is predominantly fibre to the premises, FTTP, which is the same technology being rolled out by commercial companies in urban areas.

While the procurement did not specify the technology to be used, all three bidders proposed similar FTTP solutions. As a result of the choice of fibre technology, the basic NBP wholesale entry product will be 150 Mbps download speed, with speeds of up to 1 GB available to businesses. The FTTP solution ensures additional capacity can be added over time to meet future needs at low incremental cost. The bid involves maximising reuse of existing pole and duct infrastructure across the country. A wireless solution will likely be used for a small percentage of premises which are the most remote and difficult to reach.

The State-owned MANs infrastructure continue to play an important role in the regional telecommunications market. The creation of the MANs as an exclusive fibre network facilitates service providers, large and small, in responding to the ongoing growth in demand for bandwidth capacity. Some 70 service operators are using the MANs infrastructure in connection with the provision of fixed and mobile broadband services to over 1 million citizens and business customers, which include domestic fixed and mobile customers, State entities, educational institutions, SMEs, industrial estates and multinationals. The MANs are an important element of the intervention area solution.

I am accompanied by officials who are experts on the technology issues, have been involved in the procurement process and understand the evolution of the project in recent years. I will be deferring to some of them during the course of the meeting. Rather than me acting as the voice for some of the expertise around the table, I believe the committee will get more value from these experts. Looking back on the meeting of 14 February, there were issues around technology such as would 4G or 5G suffice. We will share the workload to the extent we can.