Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

Before the Deputy goes on, let me refer to the old days of the USO, with which we are quite familiar. Our contract is exactly akin to a USO that one would impose. A policy direction will be set, calling for 100% coverage at 30 Mbps, 50 Mbps or 100 Mbps. The consensus is that 30 Mbps is too low. At the moment, 150 Mbps is the market minimum where SIRO and Eircom are concerned. ComReg will be tasked with the same job we have done for three years. It will have to go to the market and seek out a provider that is willing to do it. Then it will have to decide how that will be funded. If it is funded to the tune of €1 billion, €2 billion or whatever, a decision will have to be made on who will pay for that. There is no provision for this under any USO legislation in Ireland. Should the State pay that to the universal service provider or should it be spread between all the operators? Eircom is looking for a small amount of money relative to our numbers and it has gone to the Commercial Court under the old USO regime. The old USO regime was an automatic designation because of its legacy incumbency on the copper network. The connection charge for anyone that wants a copper connection has been the same for about 15 years. It is €117. We are charging €100, so it is not too different. The consumer paid nothing unless the cost went over €7,000 in what was called a regulated access threshold. We have a similar threshold in our contract but it is set at €5,000. The USO model to date and any likely USO model in the future are very similar to the model we have today. Would going into the USO world lead to a different outcome? The State could not designate Eircom automatically. Vodafone, SIRO and wireless operators would all have to be given the opportunity to seek funding. A procurement process would take place. We would face the infrastructure problem I just mentioned. Everybody would have to have equal access to the infrastructure to be a designated operator and get funding from either the State or from ComReg to do the job. The State would face a circular problem of how to make this work given all the competing operators that would want a piece of the pie. It is difficult.