Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

MANs has State-aid clearance so a legal challenge would not hold up. This is open access infrastructure. There is no restriction whatsoever on any company. I encourage every company to use MANs because they are the latest high quality fibre optic networks in towns in the absence of which broadband services would not have been introduced. Deputy Coveney sat on the Oireachtas committee which considered this issue and knows that the concept of MANs came at a time when there was no developing competition or broadband development. In the absence of competition between providers they were a successful spur to starting a market here.

This is a rapidly-changing area. Some of the main fixed line networks have seen an 800% increase in data traffic in the past two years.

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