National Broadband Plan update
“Significant” progress has been made in the rollout of the National Broadband Plan (NBP), with the intervention area covered by the plan now including 544,000 premises despite Covid-19’s slowdown of work.
The pandemic has simultaneously been the NBP’s greatest obstacle and the greatest reminder of its importance in 2020 with remote working emphasising the need for high-speed internet access throughout the country. The intervention area now covers 96 per cent of the State’s land mass, with 544,000 premises, including premises built after the award of the NBP contract to National Broadband Ireland.
The Plan will bring a minimum download speed of 500 megabytes per second to 23 per cent of the State’s population, including 69 per cent of farms. The physical infrastructure involved in the building out of such widespread connectivity will include 140,000km of fibre cable, 1.5 million poles and 15,000km of underground duct networks.
In an update on the rollout of the Plan issued in December 2020, the Government pledges that “all counties will see premises passed [with fibre] in the first two years and over 90 per cent of premises in the State will have access to high-speed broadband within the next four years”. Fibre to the home rollout has begun, with National Broadband Ireland subcontractors having carried out survey work on fibre routes to assess if existing infrastructure is usable, the extent of tree trimming required to avoid interference with the fibre cables that are placed overhead, and underground ducting.
Having aimed to survey 120,000 premises in total across 2020, the rollout has exceeded that target and surveyed 136,000 premises as of 23 November 2020. Further fibre to the home rollout work has been performed in counties Cork, Cavan, Galway and Limerick, with network deployment work taking place across various towns and townlands.
Year one of the NBP contract ends at the end of January 2021, with the Government saying in early December 2020 that 8,000 premises were targeted to be passed with fibre and ready for connection to high-speed broadband by then; a pilot scheme in Carrigaline in Cork was due to be carried out between December 2020 and January 2021, with the first family to be connected under the NBP receiving their connection in January. It remains to be seen how the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated work stoppages will affect the rollout of the programme, as estimations of the connection work to be completed before the end of January 2021 had been done before the introduction of level five lockdown measures that halted all but the most essential of work in late December 2020.
The Government’s early December update states that “substantial progress has been made to date”, but that the pandemic has “had an impact on the delivery of the fibre network” and that the “full extent of this impact continues to be assessed”. The update includes the point that NBI has increased its number of survey and design contractors and “engagement has taken place” with Openeir to see if it is possible to increase the volume of work carried out on its network.
As communities wait for the fibre network to come to their houses, broadband connection points will be set up in community hubs such as libraries, schools and sports facilities. As of “mid-November”, 201 locations have had equipment installed to facilitate public access WiFi. A new Remote Working Strategy is also said to be under development by the Government, with NBP said to be a key enabler.
