Dempsey Unveils New National Broadband Scheme

“Today’s launch is great news for broadband hungry consumers in rural areas. This Government believes that everyone, irrespective of where they are, should have access to high quality, competitively priced broadband services. This tender will help to make that happen. The knowledge worker cannot be confined by geographic location and should be free to live and work outside of the cities and towns. Our future should require networks to follow the knowledge worker rather than the other way around,” Minister Dempsey said speaking at today’s launch.

“We have been making tremendous strides in the rollout of broadband recently. A recent report from the ECTA (European Competitive Telecoms Association) shows that the rate of growth in broadband in Ireland was running at 105% per annum. We are experiencing the second fastest growing broadband market in the EU and are on average growing 3 times faster than the EU-25. In total there were more than 517,000 broadband subscribers by the end of 2006. While the provision of Broadband services is a matter for the private sector there are, however, areas where it is not profitable for the private sector to provide a service. It is these areas that this scheme will address with the State covering part of the costs involved in providing broadband in the areas concerned,” he continued.

A single national tender will be used for the National Broadband Scheme. This is due to Ireland’s spatial population distribution. A detailed mapping exercise has indicated that the potential number of households in the unserved areas favours a national tender over a number of smaller regional tenders. Additionally, the degree of dispersion in the un-served areas favours a national approach.

The final product that consumers will receive from the NBS will be an always on service of at least 1Mbit/s down and 128kbits/s up. The minimum download capacity per connection will be 10 gigabits per month and the service must support Virtual Private Networks (VPN) for businesses and VoIP applications and devices for home business purposes. Latency must be sufficient in order to allow standard applications such as VoIP and online gaming to be run without significant degradation of service from an end user perspective.

“These minimum requirements will guarantee that consumers get a fast, reliable broadband connection and in many areas I hope that the minimum requirements can be significantly exceeded. Importantly the price that people will pay for service under the National Broadband Scheme will be no greater than the average price paid by consumers using similar technologies in areas that currently have access to Broadband,” said Minister Dempsey.

The National Broadband Scheme is technology neutral but Service Providers must ensure that the option they choose complies with the speed, capacity and latency requirements. The winning Service Provider or Service Providers will be engaged for a period of 5 years and will be required to provide an operational service as soon as possible. A claw back clause will also be put in place to ensure any unanticipated profits from the service are shared between the exchequer and the Service Provider(s).

Given the neutrality of the scheme, it is expected that the winning Service Provider, or perhaps a consortium of Service Providers, will use a combination of several technologies to meet the scheme’s requirements.

“This Government has made extremely significant investments in the communications sector through international connectivity, backhaul infrastructure, and in the Metropolitan Area Networks. These are investments that will allow us to maintain the competitiveness of our economy and continue to attract foreign direct investment, a key ingredient for the continued success of this economy,” concluded Minister Dempsey.

ENDS

Map of Wireless & DSL Broadband Coverage

Speech by Minister Dempsey at today's Launch