EU: Broadband Funding

clohamon

European Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Creţu met Minister Brendan Howlin TD in Brussels today to sign EU Structural fund investments worth €820.2 million for Irish regions.

http://ec.europa.eu/ireland/press_office/news_of_the_day/improved-broadband-among-priorities-for-820m-euro-eu-funding-programme-for-ireland_en.htm

Over the next seven years the programme is expected to

• Create more company engagement in research in both regions;
• Increase the number of SME clients of Enterprise Ireland spending over €100,000 per annum on research and development in the BMW region;
• Expand high speed next generation broadband to unserved areas in both regions; (Southern & Eastern region (SE) and the Border Midlands and Western region (BMW)
• Create more jobs in the micro-enterprise sector in both region;
• Promote better thermal performance of housing in both regions;
• Encourage more public transport use in designated urban centres in the S&E

region.

Hopefully, this time it'll actually be used for broadband.

Separately, the Department's January update records they have been meeting the Commission and the European Investment Bank.

• On 12th January, members from the Department’s team attended a roundtable meeting in Brussels hosted by EU Telecommunications Commissioner, Günther Oettinger. The aim of the meeting was to explore funding options for deploying high-speed broadband networks in the EU.
• On the 29th January the NBP senior management team met a high level delegation from the European Investment Bank to discuss potential funding options for the intervention strategy.

rob808

clohamon wrote: »

http://ec.europa.eu/ireland/press_office/news_of_the_day/improved-broadband-among-priorities-for-820m-euro-eu-funding-programme-for-ireland_en.htm



Hopefully, this time it'll actually be used for broadband.

Separately, the Department's January update records they have been meeting the Commission and the European Investment Bank.

So could they do FTTH for rural areas with that money or would they need more.

clohamon

rob808 wrote: »

So could they do FTTH for rural areas with that money or would they need more.

They need to settle whether the state is going to end up owning the infrastructure, how long they're going to take to build it, what price they can charge for the service, whether its full FTTH or FTTB, etc.