700,000 addresses in rural Ireland will require the state to provide high speed broadband
By Will Goodbody, Science & Technology Correspondent
Rural dwellers and business people could be forgiven for greeting today’s news of yet another plan to roll out state subsidised high-speed but affordable broadband to the non-commercially covered areas with a snort of disillusionment. After all, this by some counts is the fifth such version of a plan which has time and time again failed to deliver a satisfactory result or indeed in some cases any service for thousands of people.
The new plan is only in the early stages. But the idea is this. The Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources spent the last year talking to broadband operators about where they plan to build high speed broadband networks between now and the end of 2016. Out of that they have built an interactive map, which county by county, parish by parish, street by street and house by house shows where commercial high speed broadband will be available. And more importantly, where it won’t, because it is not commercially viable. In total, there are 700,000 premises out of a total of 2.3m which need help.
After a consultation period between now and February, the department will then begin formulating a strategy on how it will deliver broadband of at least 30Mbps to these black spots. That plan should be ready by the summer, along with an application to the EU seeking approval that the proposals comply with state aid rules. The procurement process will then get underway, and sometime in 2016 or early 2017 the first homes and businesses will be connected. The last should be online by around 2020. Or at least that’s the plan.
It’s massively ambitious. Every single address in the country will be connected. That means every cottage up every mountain or down every boreen from Malin to Mizen. Every small business premises in rural Connemara. Every island guesthouse. Every farmhouse in Inishowen.
The department estimates that the equivalent road distance to b covered will be 100,000km. More than 90% of the geographical area of the country is in the Orange or slow lane. With 26 people per km2 in rural Ireland, the population densities are sparse. 100,000 of the premises are businesses, 600,000 are houses. They include one-off houses, houses in ribbon developments, houses on the outskirts of towns. Of the 50,000 townlands in Ireland, 47,697 will require intervention.
And that’s just the start of the challenges. Questions need to be answered about all sorts of issues. How much will the state have to stump up? Earlier this year, the former Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte was talking about bringing high speed broadband to 1,000 towns and villages at a cost of €500m. The current Minister, Alex White, won’t say what he thinks the new version of the plan will cost, for fear it might give the game away to the commercial operators who will tender to build it. More likely of course, at this stage, is that he doesn’t know himself.
He is sure, however, that funding will be forthcoming from government to make it happen. It might involve seeking investment or borrowings from an outside agency like the European Investment Bank, the European Regional Development Fund or internally from the state’s strategic investment fund.
But other equally significant questions also need answering. Who will own this network, if the state part funds it alongside commercial operators, who also build it? How will the procurement process work? What kind of technology will be used to deliver the connectivity? Fibre to the building, fibre to the cabinet? Even in areas where it will be hugely expensive to do so? Or in those cases will wireless be ok?
What speeds will be acceptable? The government says a minimum of 30Mbps, because it seems to be necessary to secure approval from the EU under state aid rules. But will 30Mbps be enough in 2020, when we are already hearing about the provision of 1Gbps in urban areas? The network will have to be future-proofed for changes in technology and demands. But what does that mean?
Will network roll out in rural areas be environmentally acceptable? Will the state intervening in the market to such a great extent disrupt its normal functioning? How will the networks be governed when they are up and running? What will consumers be charged for connecting to the network, and what role will regulators have in deciding that?
Many difficult questions which between now and next summer will have to be addressed. It is going to be massively challenging. And some would already claim, likely doomed to the same fate as the previous plans.
But the government says this plan is different. It has been thought through, we’re told. It has political backing right at the top level of government, we’re told. The department has gathered a strong team of people from inside and outside who actually know about this stuff to work on it, we’re told.
And in reality, it has to work. Hundreds of thousands of people in rural Ireland need connectivity to do their business and live their lives. That need will only increase. So if jobs aren’t to be lost, if rural communities aren’t to be annihilated, it must happen. And soon.
So let’s hope this time, the plan really is different. And that in two years time we aren’t scoffing at another missed deadline, another broken promise, or indeed another hardly credible iteration of the National Broadband Plan.
Comments welcome via Twitter to @willgoodbody