Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 15 September 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

Business of Joint Committee
Update on National Broadband Plan: National Broadband Ireland

Mr. Peter Hendrick:

I will give the example of a wireless network. There is only a certain amount of spectrum available to provide services to a number of customers. Obviously, if one develops or designs the network to service 1,000 customers, for example, there is a shared amount of bandwidth available to the 1,000 customers. One particular operator in Cavan has found that by customers migrating onto the fibre network, the number of premises that are connecting to the network has reduced. With the increase in bandwidth from people working from home, there were challenges in meeting the demand. What has happened now is that as the operator takes customers off and they are on fibre, it has freed up additional bandwidth. Ultimately, therefore, one gets a better balance of customer experience across the fibre and the wireless network. These are homes that fall outside the area we are servicing. They might be connected from a base station within our area, but they ultimately fall outside the area in which we have built the network at that given time.

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