Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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573. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the progress Eir has made on meeting commercial milestones specifically in relation to commitments to the blue areas of the national broadband plan map. [3123/17]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The National Broadband Plan (NBP) aims to deliver high speed broadband services to every city, town, village and individual premises in 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 investment by the telecommunications sector and a State Intervention in those areas where commercial investment has not been fully demonstrated. A key principle of the NBP is to support and stimulate commercial investment in Broadband through policy and regulatory measures. Commercial investment since the publication of the NBP has considerably exceeded expectations. To date, the commercial telecommunications sector has invested over €2.5bn in upgrading and modernising networks which support the provision of high speed broadband and mobile telecoms services.

Currently, approximately 1.4m premises in the Blue area in Ireland can get high speed broadband from commercial service providers including eir and investment by the telecoms sector is continuing to expand this footprint.  The breakdown of planned coverage of premises per townland is available on the High Speed Broadband Map at www.broadband.gov.ie.

The rollout of High Speed Broadband services in the Blue area by commercial operators including eir is being kept under ongoing review by my Department to ensure that all premises can get access to services, either through commercial investment or the State intervention. In this regard my Department continues to liaise closely with industry and relevant other Departments and Agencies to assist in the commercial deployment of telecommunications networks. The Department will also shortly update the High Speed Broadband map and finalise the intervention area for bidders, taking into account any industry investments that have not materialized and potential other new investments.

A formal procurement process is now in train to select a company or companies who will roll-out a new high speed broadband network within the State Intervention Area. The procurement process is being intensively managed, to ensure an outcome that delivers a future-proofed network that serves homes and businesses across Ireland, for at least 25 years. Intensive dialogue with bidders is continuing and the three bidders have indicated that they are proposing a predominantly fibre-to-the-home solution.  This provides for a future proofed solution for the 25 years of the contract and beyond.  A fibre-to-the-home solution means that householders and businesses may get speeds not just of 30 Megabits per second but much higher, potentially up to 1000 Megabits per second.

As part of the competitive process, the Department will engage with winning bidder(s) on the best rollout strategy, in order to target areas of particularly poor service, business needs and/or high demand. This will need to be balanced with the most efficient network rollout plan. A prioritisation programme will be put in place in this regard, in consultation with the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. A detailed rollout plan for the network will be published once contract(s) are in place.

The Programme for Government also commits to measures to assist in the rollout of the network once a contract is awarded. In this regard, Minister Humphreys is leading on the establishment of two regional action groups, working with Local Authorities, Local Enterprise Offices and other relevant agencies to help accelerate the broadband network build in rural Ireland, once a contract(s) has been awarded.

In a further positive initiative, last July, I established a Mobile Phone and Broadband Taskforce with my colleague Minister Humphreys to address immediate issues in relation to the quality of mobile phone and broadband coverage. The Taskforce report is available at the following link:

I recently signed Regulations allowing ComReg to proceed with an early 2017 auction of the 3.6GHz radio spectrum band, to provide an 86% increase in total spectrum available for mobile and fixed wireless services. I have also secured €8m for RTE which will allow it to free up the 700MHz spectrum band, to provide enhanced mobile services.  

These investments should assist in significantly improving the coverage and quality of broadband and mobile voice and data services throughout the country.