Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 48: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the progress made to date in the provision of state of the art technology throughout the communications sector with particular reference to the need to dramatically improve the availability of high speed broadband and modern mobile telephony at least in line with that currently available in other adjoining and competing jurisdictions; the cost of investment to date by the State through various enhancement schemes; the degree to which high quality service is now available in all areas throughout the country; the location of any blackspots; the reason for same; the action taken or likely to be taken to address this issue; when he expects the entire information technology sector here to become on par with the top three throughout Europe and in line with the modern requirements of medical, educational and industrial sectors; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23051/10]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)
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Significant progress has been made over recent years in both broadband roll out and quality and mobile telephony services. For example, Ireland has over 1.443 million broadband subscribers and our broadband per-capita penetration rate is 32.4%. Internationally, Ireland ranks 11th of the EU 27 for per-capita broadband penetration (composite fixed and mobile), 4th for mobile only penetration, and 14th for fixed broadband penetration. Of the homes with broadband connections, 68.4% of them, and 72.8% of SMEs are using broadband speeds of between 2mbps – 10mbps.

Only 19% of the non residential subscriptions and only 25% of the residential subscriptions are in the 1–2 Mbps range. Higher speeds, in some cases up to 50Mbps, are also available to residential and SME customers in urban areas. Speeds of up to 24Mbps are becoming more generally available from DSL providers and 30Mbps products are available from the main cable operator.

ComReg's Quarter 4 report also shows a mobile penetration rate of 119%, with 5.3 million subscriptions.

The provision of telecommunications services, including broadband and mobile services, is a matter in the first instance for electronic communications service providers who operate in a fully liberalised market. In cases of market failure the Government will intervene, where appropriate and possible. Government policy is set out in "Next Generation Broadband – Gateway to a Knowledge Ireland", which I published in June 2009. The policy paper sets out the Government's position that investment in broadband infrastructure is primarily a matter for the private sector, facilitated, where appropriate and possible by Government.

The Government has undertaken a number of initiatives to bring broadband to those parts of the country where operators have been unable to offer services on a commercial basis. In the case of the National Broadband Scheme (NBS), 3 is progressing its network roll-out and NBS broadband services are now available in more than 65% of the 1,028 designated Electoral Divisions (ED) to be covered under the Scheme. Under the NBS contract, all EDs in the NBS Coverage Area are required to have broadband connectivity by end September 2010.

It is accepted that even after the full roll-out of the NBS there will still be isolated incidents of premises outside areas covered by the NBS scheme that will not be capable of receiving broadband services. This is primarily due to technical and other reasons (e.g.: a telephone line may not be suitable or is too far from an enabled exchange, or; the premises do not have "line of sight" to a base station). The European Commission has set aside a portion of the European Economic Recovery Plan (EERP) funding for rural broadband initiatives and given State Aid approval to a rural broadband scheme. In this context, my Department is currently progressing the detailed design and implementation of such a scheme which will be available to unserved rural premises outside of the NBS areas.