Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 16 July 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment

National Broadband Plan: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Marcus Matthews:

The difference is that broadband radio technology tends to involve small and micro sites. Mr. Neote has set up an example of a broadband radio unit here today and it can be seen how small it is. Regarding what regional ISPs do, the technology involved does not tend to be massive tower masts on hilltops. The technology used tends to be on a high point in a local rural area. That could be a farmer's shed on top of a hill. It could be as simple as that. I reiterate that broadband radio technology is a different type of technology and not the same as cellular technology which requires those high sites which are trying to cover a larger distance.

The redundancy built into broadband radio technology and specifically the model we are talking about is multifold. We are talking about dealing with small distances from the sites to the premises and that is the first aspect of redundancy. There are also, as Mr. List-Petersen said, multiple different angles available because of the distances from the units themselves. It is different, therefore, in respect of the number of sites required. We did the calculations, and again, we were just looking at covering the entire landmass of Ireland, so it was a simple and very rudimentary calculation, and we came up with 795 sites based on that model.

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