Mr. Jeremy Godfrey:

Any strategy starts with knowing where one is today.

In view of this I will give a brief overview of the marketplace. The electronic communications sector is an important sector in its own right in terms of its turnover and employment, but its real impact on Ireland economically is in the support it gives to other industries in making Ireland an attractive destination for foreign direct investment, and also the support it gives to a sector such as health care, education and general social life.

In the past several years, there has been a big increase in competition in the marketplace and in consumer choice. In the fixed broadband market, there are now four players, each of whom has more than 10% market share, and the largest player is down to about 32% market share. The supply, therefore, is much more evenly spread than has been the case. In the mobile market it is a little more concentrated, with just three players with more than 10% market share, although there is a fourth player, Tesco, with 7%. The largest player in mobile has a market share of something like 37%. That competition has led to a great deal of choice for consumers. There is a variety of bundles they can buy, including voice services, mobile, TV services and so forth.

In general, prices have been coming down in the past five years, as measured by the communications component of the consumer price index, CPI. Prices rose slightly in 2015 and fell back again in 2016. So far this year, we have seen a few operators increase prices slightly. However, not all operators have done that and customers are able to switch and take up lower price bundles. We await to see the impact that will have on prices overall.

There has also been a good deal of investment. Even in the years since the financial crisis, investment has run at over €3 billion. That has mostly gone into high speed networks for broadband and 4G high speed mobile networks. The result of that is that the number of people with high speed packages since 2012 has increased from approximately 20% to approximately 65%. The percentage of users using 4G has gone from 27% to 42% in a year but, and it is a significant "but", the benefits of that have occurred for around the 70% of the population that lives in urban and more highly populated areas. The experience of users in less populated rural areas is that those services are much less widespread. I will come back to that issue when we talk about the strategy.

These changes have been very useful in meeting consumers' evolving needs. We are seeing a much greater use of smart phones, tablets and laptops. The mobile data use has increased by 500% in the past five years. Mobile phones have become the primary communications device people use, which was not the case several years ago.

In terms of the trends we see developing in the next four or five years, the first one we will highlight is the variability in consumer experience. In urban areas in Ireland, the availability of communications services is as good as anywhere in Europe, but we have a much bigger rural population than most other places in Europe and the impact of the poorer services in the rural areas is much more significant. That problem is getting worse because of the importance of communications services. To give an example, five or six years ago it did not matter too much to people if they could not get mobile coverage in their homes because when they were in their homes they would largely use their fixed line. Now that people's main communications device is their mobile phone, it matters much more that they can make phone calls on their mobile phone while they are in their homes. In recent years, we have started to see many more complaints about poor indoor coverage in rural areas, as well as complaints about outdoor coverage. As our strategy goes forward, addressing that issue is a very important plank for us.

The next three trends we see are all about making sure that the services available in Ireland remain at the forefront of what is available globally. It takes a good deal of work on the part of the Regulator to create the conditions where people will invest and innovate, and where the need to compete creates that imperative. We believe that is important for three reasons. First, electronic communications in their own right are less important than the things they enable. As we are seeing greater use of social media and online video, we need to have an eye on how we enable start-ups, innovation and development of those related markets, even though we do not regulate them ourselves.

Second, we need to have an eye on what has been called the internet of things. In the future, communications will not just be between people. It is quite likely they will be between one device and another device. Already, we are seeing the beginning of that with devices for smart homes. We read a lot about autonomous vehicles. These new services are not of great importance today, but they will be of great importance in four or five years time, and we want to make sure that in five years time a member in a Dáil committee is not asking us why we did not make sure that people in Ireland had access to those new services.

The third aspect is around the technologies that support them. We can see much greater investment in fibre-optic technology to support services and also new sorts of mobile technology, particularly around 5G.

The fourth important aspect it is worth pointing out is that the European legal framework in which we operate is being fundamentally reviewed. The proposal for a new communications code that is being discussed in the Council of Ministers and in the European Parliament is in some ways just a useful updating of the existing framework. However, there are some proposals which cause some concern, particularly around reducing the ability of regulators to promote consumer choice and protect the interests of consumers, and also some centralisation proposals, particularly around spectrum, which is to bring the decisions away from member states into Brussels. That proposal has attracted a great deal of concern, both from member states and regulatory authorities throughout Europe.

On the vision we adopted in our strategy, having looked at those trends, I will highlight three main concepts, namely, affordable, high quality and widespread access to communications services. That is picking up on the need for the services to continue to be at the forefront of what people need for them to be affordable, but also for them to be available not just in urban areas but also in rural and less populated areas.

ComReg's role in this, as an economic regulator, is to make sure that the market operates in the interests of end users in society. That is not just about being an efficient market, it is about a market that operates in the public interest. We do that by promoting investment and consumer choice, and protecting consumers.

I will conclude with a slide on five elements of what we call strategic intent. We looked at the main tools available to ComReg and what we would like to achieve through the use of those tools. From a strategic intent we develop goals and then the projects, which Mr. O'Brien will discuss shortly.

On the competition side, having a variety of players providing services to end users is something we wish to promote. Also, it is a complicated market where the participants buy and sell services from one another. We want to see as much competition as is possible in the provision of some of the underlying networks and those wholesale services.

The second element is consumer protection. Many of the bundles are quite complicated, and it is difficult for consumers to have good information on all of the attributes of the service to allow them choose their services in a fully informed way. We are looking to make sure they are provided with the right information, that they are able to switch service providers when they need to do so, and that they are treated fairly by providers.

Investment is very important to make sure the new technologies are invested in. Regulation can ensure that the market delivers good, state-of-the-art services.

It can also push back the boundaries of where that delivery is economically feasible. One thing we acknowledge also is that there are some parts of Ireland where, because of the costs of delivering service, a State intervention may be necessary in order to make the investment happen. Where that is the case, our role is much more as an adviser to the policy Department, as it is its policy initiatives to design the interventions.

Enforcement and compliance are very important. There is no point in our setting rules if they are not complied with. Our aim here is to make sure that operators proactively comply.

Mr. Fahy referred to the staff who support us. It is very important that we as an organisation are set up to deliver the strategy. That involves the people we have, the powers we need, the way we gather data about the marketplace and the techniques we use to analyse them and the way we engage with stakeholders such as the committee.