Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Government’s national broadband plan aims to ensure every citizen and business, regardless of location, has access to a high-quality, high-speed broadband service. This will be achieved through a combination of commercial investments and State-led intervention in areas where commercial services will not be provided.

Last November, I published a national high-speed coverage map for 2016. This map is available at .The map shows Ireland with two colours, blue and amber, and was developed based on the most up-to-date information available at the time of publication. The areas marked blue represent those areas where commercial providers are either delivering or have plans to deliver high-speed broadband services by the end of 2016. The areas marked amber represent the target areas for the proposed State intervention. I encourage consumers to consult the websites of the various commercial operators to ascertain details of current and planned future deployment plans.

Thirty-eight responses were received following the publication of the national broadband plan proposed intervention strategy last July. Non-confidential versions of these submissions have been published since last week and can be accessed at www.broadband.gov.ie.

The Department continues to review the technical and financial detail relating to potential new commercial investment proposals with a view to updating the intervention area map. I expect to publish an updated version of the map, finalise the strategy and move to formal procurement phase before the end of the year. The prospective bidder or bidders are experts in network roll-out and each will offer different network architectures and technologies to deliver the network. It is proposed to engage with the winning bidders on the optimum roll-out strategy and on the sequencing of the network deployment to maximise efficiencies during network build, having regard to business and consumer needs and to areas of particularly poor service and areas of strong demand. All these factors will need to be balanced against the most efficient network roll-out and will be agreed during the procurement process. The Government is determined to ensure the network is built as quickly as possible and engagement with industry stakeholders has indicated this could be achieved within three to five years of the contract award.

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