Eir take up on State broadband promise

An extension of high speed broadband has been promised for a further 7,000 Cavan homes in the coming year, the Minister for Communications has announced.
Under the plan, agreed between the Government and Eir, 300,000 premises across Ireland will receive high-speed broadband by the end of 2018.
Minister Denis Naughten made the announcement having secured the Cabinet’s agreement and published the Broadband Intervention Map for National Broadband Plan.
Currently 19,000 homes and businesses have access to high speed broadband in Cavan. It is anticipated that the latest announcement will see this grow to 26,000 premises by the end of next year which includes 7,900 premises in 22 communities that will have access to fibre to the home offering speeds of 1,000Mb/s. These speeds are already available in some homes and businesses in Cavan Town, Blacklion and Virginia.
The 300,000 premises were previously part of the State Intervention Area, but will now have broadband provided by Eir. The Minister has also updated the map to add 84,500 premises to the State Intervention Area. This is as a result of commercial investment which has not materialised.
Minister Naughten said: “The agreement that I have signed with Eir means one house every minute of every working day will get fibre to the door high speed broadband over the next 90 weeks. 300,000 more rural premises will have access to high speed quality broadband – that’s an extra 500 houses every day.”
Richard Moat, Eir CEO, said that the company is investing in one of the largest infrastructure projects in Ireland today: “By the end of next year additional homes, farms and businesses that currently only have access to basic broadband, or indeed no broadband at all, will have access to the fastest broadband speeds in Ireland, on par with the best broadband speeds available right throughout Europe.”
Fianna Fail councillor John Feeley is less than impressed with the Minister's announcment. He said that the deal between Eir and the Government “is of little benefit to most people in Rural Ireland”. He went on to say that it is likely that the National Broadband Scheme will not to be in place until 2021.
“Last July the National Broadband Scheme was again launched by Minister Naughten extending it to cover a further 170,000 households. Now the Minister has agreed to leave 300,000 households to the mercy of Eir whilst at the same time adding 85,000 households to the National Broadband Scheme. Eir have had years to provide services in these areas but have failed abysmally.”
Cllr Feeley concluded by saying: “The National Broadband Scheme is now seriously in jeopardy. I fear that, like the last time a Fine Gael led Government allocated a communications licence which ended in the Moriarty Tribunal, the people of Ireland will end up paying the bill for a major error on the part of Government.”
The 300,000 homes to be connected by Eir will be based on fibre-to-the-home.