Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 27 January 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport
National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland
Mr. Peter Hendrick:
Yes, absolutely. With fibre networks, it is a new infrastructure. We are replacing poles and repairing duct. The fibre cable has a carbon Kevlar coating on it. If any damage is done, for example, by trees coming down in storms, it should not be as prone to failure as cooper-based networks. The number of outages or downtimes requiring repair should be smaller. We would not expect a huge workforce to be required to maintain the network. Obviously, NBI will have an operations team supporting the maintenance and connections of homes or the migration from one retail operator to another. In addition to building this fibre network to connect homes, connectivity in general terms is going to increase if we have unlimited capacity across the country in broadband. Hopefully, that will be followed by mobile connectivity as well. The number of devices that we are connecting to the Internet is growing. In future, it will not just be devices that we have in our hand or on the wall at home; every active device will have some form of connectivity.
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