Mr. Liam O'Brien:

I will try to stick to my five minutes as well. I am delighted to be here to address the committee on behalf of ALTO. Under this section, I will briefly touch upon a number of elements around connection charges in the market, the mobile spectrum and also some European Commission implementation progress reports that were recently published.

Wholesale connection charges in the Irish market are more than twice the equivalent charged in the UK and a multiple of the fees charged in other markets. Wholesale operators in the market are paying a connection charge of €272 for the full Eir fibre to the home, FTTH, product. That compares to €113 in the UK and €67 in Spain, with a minimum multi-wholesale rental of €23, putting Ireland's as one of the highest wholesale broadband prices in Europe. A European Commission connectivity report published a number of weeks ago ranks Ireland very consistently second in Europe in terms of price for access to broadband, not at a wholesale level but at a retail level to customers. It is not only bad for-----