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. In July of this year, I published a detailed draft intervention strategy for public consultation. That strategy proposes that the State-funded network must be capable of delivering high-quality, high-speed broadband with a minimum download speed of at least 30 Mbps and a minimum upload speed of at least 6 Mbps. It must be capable of catering for higher performance in the future to keep pace with consumer demand. This will be a specific requirement of the tender. It will be a matter for bidders to select the technology they consider will best deliver the service.

As I have repeatedly said, we must observe a strict policy of technology neutrality in any procurement process. Therefore, I am not in a position to promise connectivity through any particular technology platform. As I have said, we will set out a detailed service specification, including a requirement to scale up services over the lifetime of the contract. We will allow bidders to show how they propose to meet these contractual requirements. Given the quality of the services we wish to see delivered and based on the current absence of significant fibre networks in many parts of Ireland, it is likely that fibre will play a major role in any proposed solution. However, the technology platforms that provide the final connectivity to premises will be matters for commercial operators to decide on. The Government is determined to ensure the network is built as quickly as possible. Engagement with industry stakeholders has indicated that this could be achieved within three to five years of the award of the contract. In this context, the national broadband plan proposes that through a combination of commercial investment and State intervention, 85% of addresses in Ireland will have access to high-speed services by 2018 with all addresses passed by 2020.

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