National Broadband Ireland : implementation and progress

I really think we should look into some sort of starlink grant scheme to help those that have really awful internet that need it now, 2026 is far too long for some people especially those working from home.

Fixed wireless was decent but it’s far too congested in most areas now

What kind of capacity does starlink have would it similar to fixed wireless or would there be more bandwidth available

Same as. literally a few hundred metres from. The end of eir fibre. Will have to look into improving our mobile connection.

Cork seems to be getting completely shafted, almost the whole county is 2025-2026

I had a similar problem. The broadband officer in my county council sorted it for me in the end. It was a tricky process.

Looks like they've dumped all of this year's undershoot - about 60k - into years 6 & 7 (2025/2026). So that's 229k who are currently getting disappointing notifications rather than 170k as previously scheduled.

Of course the more premises notified of the Jan 2025 - Dec 2026 timeframe, the more heat on the government. (and the stronger NBI's negotiating position on acceleration).

Maybe the tomorrow's Committee meeting can first extract some firm information on how they intend catching-up, and then the effect of acceleration, if it's agreed.

You are correct. However I've seen boots on the ground doing the survey so I hope that means some part has being done to move towards that date.

But I know I can get tied into a year + contract and not get upset it suddenly appears available in March 2022 all of a sudden!

I had zero indication of date until this week.

For those without a subscription...

https://outline.com/hascua

The ICL guys install the DP's on the poles.

To watch the videos, go to https://www.oireachtas.ie/hourly/ then choose Committee 2 and 15th Sep 2021.

The videos are

cr2_20210915T115243.000480.mp4 (Approx 47 mins in for Peter Hendrick after introduction to session by chair)

cr2_20210915T115243.000481.mp4

cr2_20210915T115243.000482.mp4

Summary of what Hendrick said in the first vid is as follows (Haven't watch them all yet)

This bit is interesting, and I don't know if he was quizzed on it until I watch the rest of the videos.

Does this sound like wireless to anyone else, or is it just me? Maybe it means getting Eir or Siro to pick up those premises?

What does that even mean? Half the country is scheduled for 2025/2026

On one hand it sounds like "get Siro or OpenEir" to connect FTTH. On the other it sounds like get some form of wireless set up covered. I hope someone asked for clarification on that.

Again seems oddly coincidental that OpenEir have expanded their FTTC upgrade to cover a further 200k homes (even if some of those were already getting 30Mb+, it is also including those <30Mb.

Everyone complaining about the dates being years from now when we knew it was a 7 year plan makes 0 sense to me?

Also, the acceleration plan not helping anyone in the first opening years was known already, that's old news.

Can we please for the love of god stop the bullshit of worshipping building masts around the country or "just launch the satellites", both were considered, both were thrown out for a reason if you're still on that boat you're misinformed or trying to promote the lazy way out which was done before.

Also saw people trying to suggest that 7 years from now fibre wouldn't be good enough or something and like I'm sorry but if you said that when countries were doing electrification you'd sound pretty silly now in hindsight.

We've done the fast solution before, we've done the mobile coverage solution before, they don't work. If you're trying to argue Eir or Siro should suddenly take over, you want the government to then deal with the legal hell of cancelling a contract that probably has no reason to be torn up yet given how early we are in the process.

Also, it's not like NBI and their contractors are doing absolutely nothing but sitting around, I go between Limerick and Tipperary exchange areas quite often and for the last month or two, I've seen them working in multiple places every day. Electrification wasn't done in a year, neither will this, if you are down for 2025-2027 I'm sorry but you were always going to wait until the end of the rollout, someone has to.

2025 and 2026 are year 6 and 7 of the rollout plan, any acceleration of the rollout would see these premises passed earlier. It was mentioned near the end of the committee discussion that an accelerated rollout schedule might be available by the end of the year, see Committee discussion from 2:10:00 onwards.

Works continuing on the Athlone Road outside roscommon.