Mr. Tjeerd Huitema:

All of the technologies that we are discussing are complementary in a way. Earlier, Mr. Carvalho mentioned Norway. Norway is a far larger country than Ireland and has many remote and rural areas where people live very far out. Putting fibre-optic cable in the ground in Norway would not always pay off, so its Government chose a solid mix between fibre and satellite, but it also took a major step forward in choosing fixed wireless as a structural means of providing Internet to homes, businesses and what not that were far away from city areas. As far as we have seen, that roll-out has been successful, with 30,000 antennae, 30,000 routers and so on connecting homes and businesses within one and a half years, more or less during the Covid period. Fixed wireless can solve Ireland's challenges in connecting the 500,000 houses and businesses in question. It has a quick roll-out. It would not mean that Ireland would have to stop investing in fibre, but it is a very good alternative. Starlink is coming on line and mobile operators - the Ericssons and Huaweis of the world - will speed up their endeavours to develop technologies with faster speeds and lower latencies than 5G offers, thereby boosting this technology.

I do not know whether fibre can do all that. Where I am, I have copper in the ground and I do not believe that I will be able to wait for fibre to come to this area. It will be too expensive and does not pay off. The deployment of fixed wireless would take no time and could be done easily. It could make a good contribution to helping the good companies in Ireland to avoid missing out because they are not connected.