Written answers

Tuesday, 14 July 2015

Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources

National Broadband Plan Implementation

Photo of Noel CoonanNoel Coonan (Tipperary North, Fine Gael)
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896. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources his Department's position and response to a representation (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28521/15]

Photo of Alex WhiteAlex White (Dublin South, Labour)
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The National Broadband Plan aims to ensure that 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 a State led intervention in areas where commercial services will not be provided. The proposed State intervention under the National Broadband Plan (NBP) represents a potentially very significant capital investment project for the State and the Government is firmly committed to delivering this investment, as evidenced in the National Broadband Plan itself and in the Programme for Government, the Action Plan for Jobs and the Statement of Government Priorities.

The commercial telecommunications sector is currently investing approximately €2.5 billion in network upgrades and enhanced services. These very significant investments represent a step-change in the quality of broadband services available.

Last November I published a national high speed coverage map for 2016. This map is available at . The areas marked BLUE represent those areas that will have access to commercial high speed broadband services.

The AMBER areas show the target areas for the State intervention. The premises within the AMBER areas will be included in the State's intervention, subject to any further commercial plans by operators.

The map allows all members of the public, be they business or residential, to see whether their premises/home will have access to commercial high speed broadband services or whether they will be included in the Government's proposed intervention.

It is anticipated that speeds of at least 30Mbps will be also delivered through the Government's intervention and the network will be designed to cater for future increased demand from consumers and business.

More generally, I can confirm that next generation broadband services have been rolled out to over 123,000 premises to date in the Mid West and Kerry region comprising Limerick, Clare, Tipperary and Kerry with a further 56,000 premises expected to be served by commercial operators. The remaining 160,000 premises in the Mid West and Kerry Region are the target for the proposed State intervention under the National Broadband Plan.

I intend to publish the draft Intervention Strategy for public consultation later this week. Following the consultation process over the summer, I hope to move to formal procurement phase towards the end of this year in order to select a preferred bidder or bidders.

I expect the physical build of the network to begin in late 2016, and it will take 3-5 years to fully complete – depending on the details of the bid or bids selected.

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