Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

The report on the next generation network will be completed in early January when it will be sent to a national advisory panel I will establish to obtain an outside opinion. As this is a complicated area, it is good to examine international experience and precedents. The report will be published after the panel's work is completed. This will be a short process which will last for weeks rather than months.

The Deputy asked the reason I will not provide details on expenditure. The Department is engaged in a competitive tendering process in which it is seeking tenders from corporations for a national broadband scheme in which they will provide services with State support. If I was to give a breakdown of the scheme, it would give an indication, from the Government side, as to the possible financial picture. It would be highly inappropriate in a competitive tendering process to flag what the Department would consider a budget allocation. For this reason, I will not break down the figure further.

The Deputy is correct that the debate must be about how, in a fast changing world in which broadband penetration is increasing dramatically and technology and bandwidth are increasing, we move to much higher bandwidth speeds. It is encouraging that the incumbent, Eircom, is rolling out, in a large number of exchanges, a new 12 megabit DSL connection facility. The mobile operators, which have experienced remarkable growth in the past two quarters, expect to double the bandwidth they have available on their mobile broadband services. We will need these increases in speed next year and in the years thereafter to ensure supply is always ahead of demand, rather than lagging behind, as has been the case, and new services, whether video streaming, data upload or home-working, can thrive with much faster broadband speeds. This will be achieved through policy initiatives such as State investment in MANs and support for other applications but primarily by fostering competition between the companies to determine which of them can provide the best service at the best price.

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