Written answers

Wednesday, 4 December 2013

Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources

Broadband Services Provision

Photo of Simon HarrisSimon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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89. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if he will clarify the terms of the national broadband scheme as offered to consumers; in particular the issues regarding an unlimited data cap; the agreed price of data once the initial threshold is passed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52063/13]

Photo of Pat RabbittePat 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. Under the terms of the contract which my Department has in place with “3”, the NBS service provider, 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.The monthly data allowance for the NBS mobile broadband service was increased from 25GB to 40GB in October 2012 at no additional cost to the NBS customer. This data allowance of 40GB compares favourably with data allowances offered on other basic mobile broadband packages. Should a customer wish to use more that their 40GB allowance, there is a charge of €0.0508/mb on all additional data. The NBS satellite service offers a data allowance of 11GB in any 4 week period and NBS satellite customers can purchase additional data at €5.00/GB. With the NBS satellite service, only 50% of a customer’s usage between the hours of 23:00 hours and 07:00 hours is counted towards their data allowance.

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