Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

Local loop unbundling is in place. Eircom is advancing plans, which I welcome, to upgrade its network so it can provide higher speeds. Similarly, the cable company UPC announced it intends to spend €300 million upgrading its network, which will help to provide a competitive environment. We have a regulator with real powers and we are starting to see prices come down. Overall, telecommunications prices have come down by 15% since 1997 whereas the CPI has gone up by 45%. That will and should continue because competition should be able to drive prices down. As we use more digital services, as more people go on-line and with integration between communications technologies and the various services provided through them, it is appropriate that competitive pressures should assist in bringing speeds up and prices down.

It is crucial that we be able to get to the real debate, which is what our bandwidth speeds and pricing should be. We need to get beyond the problem of certain parts of the country not having broadband availability. For that reason I am keen to progress, with urgency, the national broadband scheme which provides a mechanism whereby the State can work with industry to ensure service is provided in particular areas where the market is unable to deliver it. We are in the middle of a competitive process, and that is one of the sensitivities in terms of what we can discuss in the debate. We must be careful when we have a competitive auctioning system. Four candidate companies pre-qualified and three companies — Eircom, BT and Hutchinson 3G — are engaged in a competitive tendering process. Basic standards are set out which the company must provide, for example, 1Mbps broadband connection with 48:1 contention ratio.

However, this is not a fixed competitive tendering process. We are looking to companies to ramp up what they can do and be ambitious about what they can provide in future upgrades. That process is due to be completed with a contract signed at the end of June, and the company rolling it out after that. If any areas are not covered, we will return to the issue. Our process is to set out a map of the country, accepting that it can change and that areas may or may not have service depending on whether operators do what they said would do. If an area is not covered by 1 July, it will be included in the scheme. We must have ubiquitous coverage so no part of the country is left behind. Then we will move on to the future challenges.

Future challenges are also opportunities. There is an opportunity to develop new services, such as voice over Internet, telephone services via broadband, video on demand, gaming and a range of public services. We must move towards a new generation network telecommunications system that can provide those services and to do it in a way where supply of bandwidth is ahead of demand. It is difficult to be exact about what speed will be required. The international experience is that it is far from clear which market demand applications will come and in what time that will make the commercial case for broadband speeds. Our broad aim should be to ensure that we at least do not have a restriction on the roll-out of the application. That will require us to have much faster speeds across the country on a wide range basis and in all areas of our society, not just in the areas where people can commercially afford it.

I have no problem with the various measures set out for providing proper ducting. Our policy formulation sets out exactly what are those measures. I disagree with Deputy Coveney who said the motion might be too long; if anything we could go further. However, we cannot set out a complete strategy here within the confines of a Private Member's motion.

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