Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 18 November 2020

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

National Broadband Plan Roll-out: Discussion

Mr. Peter Hendrick:

I am happy the choice we made in 2018 on the technology to plug into the fibre, the underlying infrastructure, results in technology that supports speeds of 10 Gbps to the home. What I would call the core network equipment that we have in the co-location facilities supports 10 Gbps per home but the customer premises equipment we are installing in every home will cover up to 2.5 Gbps. The vision we had to build into the programme related to the infrastructure supporting the long-term demand. In 2018 and 2019, we were considering launching with 150 Mbps in this regard. Before we started construction, we had to move that to 500 Mbps because we are benchmarked against urban areas. Today, we are supporting 500 Mbps to each of the homes connected to the network. That was originally envisaged as being a year-ten requirement. Therefore, the network will support 10 Gbps. If the demand in urban areas increases beyond 10 Gbps — it seems like an outrageous number today — the passive infrastructure, which includes the cables and the infrastructure we built, will support it. We have considered the vision for this beyond 25 years. We can meet the vision with the passive infrastructure. At times throughout the 25 or 35 years, we will have to upgrade the active equipment, but it is an easier upgrade. When we are doing it at the co-location facilities, we can swap out cards and can send an engineer to site just to replace a box on the consumer's premises.

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