Mr. Peter Hendrick:

The mobile phone and broadband task force is really about supporting the building of that infrastructure faster, and that includes the NBP. There are mobile black spots where there is no mobile coverage, never mind broadband. It is critical that those black spots are covered with mobile signals. The NBP will be critical to that because part of the challenges is that one might put a tower in a place where there is no mobile broadband, but if you cannot get backhaul, particularly if you are using wireless backhaul, there is no line of sight. The fibre infrastructure will therefore be critical for that.

From an NBP perspective, this about building a future-proofed network. Some of the operators, and there are 56 of those, are quite large and are bug-fixed mobile operators. Some of them are wireless operators. They are predominantly local wireless operators. We are seeing in Cavan, I will take Eurona Arden as an example, is a wireless operator in the Cavan region. Not all of its customers are served from our first deployment in Cavan. However, it has migrated a number of hundred customers onto our network. This has meant that its base station, or coverage area, does not change. However, the utilisation within that coverage area has changed. It has fewer customers on the wireless network, which has meant that the customers who are remaining on it might be outside of our deployment area today, but it has an improved broadband service. However, it fully recognises that it will move all of its customers onto the fibre network when it comes. As we roll out our network, there will be an improvement of broadband particularly for some of those local wireless networks because we are taking capacity off it. It is very much committed to migrating its customers to the fibre network. It is probably offering more innovative services around smart farming, wireless within the home and wireless within the farm-----