Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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367. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the arrangements in place for the provision of broadband through the national broadband scheme for an area (details supplied) in County Wicklow; the persons who provided the scheme in that area; the up and down times for the said area; when inspections were carried out for this particular area and by whom were they carried out for the past 12 months; if data are available on up time and down time for the hours and days in between inspections; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39237/13]

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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The broadband service contracted under National Broadband Scheme (NBS) is a basic, affordable, scalable product in keeping with EU State Aid clearance for the Scheme in September 2007. Under the terms of the contract which my Department has in place with Hutchison 3G Ireland Ltd (trading as “3”), the NBS mobile wireless service currently offers minimum download and upload speeds of 2.3Mbps and 1.4Mbps respectively, subject to a maximum contention ratio of 18:1. The NBS satellite service, which is utilised in a small number of cases for technical reasons associated with the location of the premises, offers minimum download and upload speeds of 3.6Mbps and 384 kbps respectively, subject to a maximum contention ratio of 48:1. My Department has well-established monitoring arrangements in place to ensure that the NBS delivers the minimum specified service or better to all users. Throughout the contract period, network utilisation and performance data is submitted by “3” to my Department on a monthly basis. The NBS contract guarantees service levels and imposes a service credit regime on “3”, with significant financial consequences in the event that minimum specification service levels are not met. The NBS contract also provides that where NBS customers do not receive the minimum guaranteed service, as set out in the terms and conditions of their contract, they are entitled to service rebates.

As part of "3"’s network operations oversight, traffic and utilisation performance data, including site availability across the entire NBS network, is reviewed by "3" on a continuous basis. Remedial action can be taken remotely or 3’s field engineering staff will resolve performance issues at individual sites, depending on the nature of the incident.

Annual site maintenance inspections are carried out by "3" on each of its sites. With reference to the site which serves the area referred to by the Deputy, "3" have advised that it underwent an annual inspection on 20 November last and no issues were found on that occasion. Its annual inspection this year is scheduled to take place before the end of this month.

I understand from "3" that this particular site has experienced a number of outages since the beginning of the year which is regrettable. A combination of planned and unplanned outages caused by technical and weather-related issues led to a number of separate service availability difficulties on the site. Details of the dates of the outages and their duration is set out below.

My Department liaises very closely with “3” to ensure that any issues relating to service performance, which are brought to its attention, are addressed as quickly as possible. While my Department has previously dealt with a small number of individual complaints from NBS customers in County Wicklow there is no evidence to suggest widespread poor quality performance in the area.

In addition to the coverage monitoring referred to above, my Department periodically conducts its own field tests of the service.