Mr. Kevin O'Brien:

If one takes the fixed broadband marketplace as it has evolved over the past four years, we have seen huge investment, if investment is judged as what needs to be spent to provide high-speed services where they were not there before. We have had such investment from Virgin Media in cable broadband in urban areas and we have had it from Eir, competing with Virgin Media in those areas. Eir's stated plan is now to roll out to 1.9 million homes. It is proposed that the last 300,000 of those homes would be to bring fibre to the home. We have a role in that because we have regulated Eir to let others compete, but we have also priced Eir so that it has an incentive to invest itself. There is a good news story in fixed broadband, but it does run out after approximately 70% of households. State intervention is required thereafter. We think that story stacks up. On pricing levels, in fixed broadband we saw a period of intense competition where Eir was pushing down both its wholesale and retail prices as it launched its high-speed service two to three years ago.

Then, in recent years we have seen prices float up a little.

We are in a process at the moment whereby, through regulation, we are looking at the core wholesale products that Eir provides. When it sells a telephony service on to another company like Vodafone or Sky or when it sells on a broadband service, we are proposing changes in the way that is priced. We are largely proposing to move to what we call cost orientation models. These models recognise the actual cost of the investment and allow a reasonable mark-up. At wholesale level, in a competitive marketplace this should result in the right retail outcome. That is a snapshot description of what we are about in the fixed area.