National Broadband Ireland (NBI), the company responsible for delivering the government’s National Broadband Plan (NBP), has said that broadband connections are available for more than 200,000 households, farms and businesses across the country.
In its quarterly update due to be published this week, NBI will say that three in five premises covered by the NBP are now under or completed construction
60,000 premises have now connected to the high-speed fibre infrastructure.
NBI said that the average take-up rate is well ahead of projections, reaching above 40% in areas where the NBI network has been live for longer than twelve months.
Over 77% of premises (437,887) have now completed the survey and design stages of the programme.
“High-speed fibre broadband connections with minimum speeds of 500 megabits per second are available to more than 200,000 homes, farms and businesses,” Peter Hendrick, NBI chief executive, said.
“NBI will ultimately serve 564,000 premises, so we have now reached over a third of the rollout and are ahead of our target of 185,000 premises passed and ready to connect by January 2024.
“The design and build of a high-speed wholesale broadband network is a major, complex infrastructure project which takes place in a phased process,” he added.
“We have now completed the vast majority of the engineering and design groundwork that is fundamental to the delivery of the project, with three in every five premises either under or completed construction,” Hendrick said.
Broadband
Minister of State with responsibility for public procurement, eGovernment and circular economy, Ossian Smyth, welcomed the update.
“With the fibre network delivered by NBI, Irish people will be able to work, study and stream entertainment from the comfort of their own homes all over the country,” he said.
The NBP is the government’s initiative to deliver high-speed broadband services to all premises in Ireland.
This will be delivered through intervention by the State in those parts of the country where private companies have indicated they have no plans to invest.
The NBP includes 564,000 premises and over 1.1 million people, and includes any new homes built in “the intervention area” over the next 25 years.