Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent)
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16. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if he will expand on the measures announced in budget 2017 in relation to broadband, including an update on the technological solutions emerging through the tender process; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32058/16]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The Government's National Broadband Plan (NBP) aims to ensure that every citizen and business, regardless of location, has access to a high quality, high speed broadband service and will stimulate businesses and communities across villages and towns across Ireland.

  The Programme for Government commits to the delivery of the NBP as a matter of priority.  This is being achieved through a combination of commercial investments and a State led intervention in areas where commercial services have not been fully demonstrated.

The Department is now in a formal procurement process to select a company or companies who will roll-out a new high speed broadband network to the over 750,000 premises in Ireland, covering 100,000km of road network and 96% of the land area of Ireland.

The procurement process aims to identify an entity or entities to build, rollout, operate and deliver high speed broadband of at least 30 Megabits per second download and 6 Megabits per second upload speeds to all premises within the intervention area.  I recently announced that the three bidders in the procurement process have indicated that they are proposing a predominantly fibre-to-the-home solution for rural Ireland under the National Broadband Plan intervention. Householders and businesses may potentially get speeds not just of 30 Megabits per second but potentially 1,000 Megabits per second with businesses potentially availing of symmetrical upload and download speeds. This is a solution that will endure for 25 years and beyond and put Ireland to the forefront internationally in terms of connectivity. 

€15m has been provided in my Departments Estimates for next year for the for NBP and a further €8m to assist RTÉ in migrating from the 700MHz spectrum band.  Freeing up the 700MHz spectrum band will allow the band be used for advanced mobile services and my Department has already established a working group comprising the Department, RTÉ and ComReg, with a view to advancing this project as a matter of priority.

In addition to this allocation, last week I signed Regulations which will allow ComReg to proceed with an auction of spectrum within the 3.6GHz band.  This auction will provide an 86% increase in spectrum available for mobile and fixed wireless broadband services.

The €15m for the National Broadband Plan is to provide for early stage mobilisation payments that may be required by the winning bidder(s). The Government's Capital Investment Plan includes an initial provision of €275m for the NBP up to 2021.  This represents an initial stimulus for the first five years of the NBP intervention, with remaining payments being spread over the full 25 years of the contract.  The amounts required by bidders will only be known after bidders provide their initial estimates of cost and subsidy requirements.

The procurement process for NBP is ongoing and it is not appropriate to comment any further at this juncture.