Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses. The conversations we have on the broadband roll-out is usually when constituents contact us because they just do not have a sufficient level of access. That is usually where we come from in respect of the matter. My understanding of the national broadband plan, which I will put on the record, in the context of the Covid pandemic delay, is that it is believed the plan will be sorted in the first six months of next year. That is the most recent information I got from NBI, but it needs to have its plan for acceleration by the end of this year. In reality, we are talking about people who are planned for in years six and seven but for whom capacity could be put into years four and five so they can be dealt with there and then. That will obviously require a lot of due diligence to be done and an awful lot of capacity to be in place, not only for NBI but to deal with the likes of Eir and ESB as regards infrastructure. That is absolutely necessary.

Another matter we will need to deal with is the roll-out of 4G and 5G by mobile phone operators. In dealing with that particular issue, we may consider mobile phone operators individually or by means of the likes of Telecommunications Industry Ireland, which will provide greater capacity in the context of the solutions offered by Novatel, Poynting Europe and so on.

As already stated, the big issue is putting a plan in place for an interim solution. One of the problems with regard NBI in the context of the national broadband plan is that it does not like to outline a plan beyond 18 or 24 months in case there are problems into the future. The fact is, however, that we need to state clearly to people how far away we are and that there are alternatives in place. A mobile and broadband task force is meant to be in operation. I do not know if the witnesses have had dealings with it. The point is that this task force should be dealing with the Government in respect of all of these issues.

Many of the questions I was going to ask have been already been deal with. I will mention a number of other issues, however. On LEO satellites, and Starlink specifically, it is similar to what Deputy Cathal Crowe said about whether we are going to have difficulties with coverage. All of these solutions work on the basis that one person rings up looking for a solution, whether it is satellite or fixed wireless, and that is fine. If entire areas are suddenly encouraged to say that they are not going to be part of the national broadband plan for four or five years and a huge number of the people who live in these areas look at a particular solution, there are going to be problems with capacity. At what point will Starlink be up and running and fit to provide for a town or village for which national broadband provision may be a number of years down the line? I ask Mr. Campbell what exactly are we talking about? We are probably talking about the Eutelsat and Viasat having the ability to deliver in that regard. Are there are any mitigations at all in the context of latency, which is an issue for anyone who is gaming or using Zoom at present?

My initial dealing with Novatel related to a particular issue it had but it later offered a solution that worked for certain people. These were people who were able to run businesses, etc., in areas where there was not any sort of decent mobile phone connectivity, 3G or 4G. In fairness, Mr. Carvalho dealt with the issue in the context of the loudspeaker analogy. Can we deal with those questions? I apologise if I rambled somewhat.