National Broadband Ireland (NBI) has said that after a significant delay in broadband rollout primarily due to Covid-19, it is now focusing on a recovery and acceleration “from 2023 onwards”.
Peter Hendrick, CEO of NBI told an Oireachtas committee this week that his team “is as frustrated as anyone with the fact that the pandemic has disrupted our original plans”, with NBI running six months behind.
A target had been set to connect 115,000 premises to high-speed broadband by the end of this year, however, this figure is expected to be 60,000.
Hendrick said that during the ‘second wave’ of Covid-19 from December 2020 to March 2021, one of the major contractors “faced having 40% of its total workforce unable to work at a given time due to Covid-19 cases or personnel being close contacts of confirmed cases”.
“The extreme number of Covid-19 cases at the start of 2021 made it impossible to predict certain elements of the rollout progress during that period and added significant risk to the programme,” he said.
“This was not just a factor felt by NBI; the pressure was also felt by every one of our subcontractors and other partners. During this second wave, the impact was arguably felt more severely than the first wave due to where we were at in our mobilisation plan.
“The impact of this disruption meant that by April 2021, we had to re-baseline the plan for 2021, targeting 60,000 premises for year-end.”
The CEO said, however, that in some areas of the rollout such as surveying, “we have already recovered and are ahead of the plan”.
“To underpin all of this, we have contracted with Open Eir to increase the volume of pole replacement and duct repair commencing from October 1, 2021.
“We have also been working closely with our many tree-trimming contractors to significantly increase the volume of their work, as completion of these two areas of work is required before we can begin to install the NBI network.”
Hendrick said that bringing forward the overall completion of the project is a goal that NBI believes to be “achievable”.
“This principally involves bringing forward the completion timescales for premises currently scheduled to be passed in years 2025 and 2026.”
T.J. Malone, CEO of NBI Deployment, told the committee that NBI is “engaging with suppliers to make sure there is no shortage of materials in the market and we are talking with our contractors on a continuous basis”.