Broadband rollout success

The implementation of the National Broadband Plan shows that key infrastructure can be developed on time and within budget, even allowing for the fact that the development has been quite an expensive operation. Money well spent? Yes, must be the answer, even if there are a few caveats. At this stage, over half a million premises can access the broadband infrastructure. The main infrastructure rollout is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year bringing high-speed fibre broadband to rural areas even in the most remote parts of the country. 

Access

Right now, the take-up of the broadband service is running at 36 per cent of premises that can access the service. It is a slow burn adoption, with figures showing that in areas where the service has been in place for some time, adoption rates rise to 60 per cent. That means that over 183,000 farms, homes and businesses in rural areas are utilising high-speed fibre broadband. Presumably, as contracts with other providers expire, many people are switching over to a broadband provider delivering a service utilising National Broadband Ireland (NBI) fibre cables. In addition, there are thousands of premises that will make their first broadband connection in the coming years, reassured from word-of-mouth as well as objective analysis that the service is worthwhile.

Gamechanger

As one who uses the NBI-sourced service, it really has been a gamechanger. It is competitively priced against other broadband options. It is dependable and efficient, and fast. The NBI service is more weather vulnerable than satellite or mast-sourced alternatives but, outside of storms knocking trees across the fibre lines, there can be little criticism of the service. As adoption of broadband increases, the social and business benefits can only increase. For farmers, especially, the ability to engage online across a range of services is essential. From Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine forms to animal registration, access to dependable and fast broadband is now an essential requirement for operating a farm business. As the world, and our homes and farms, become ever more automated, the necessity for broadband connection can only increase incrementally in the coming years. Continuing promotion of the service by NBI should deliver higher adoption rates with the aim, eventually, to have a broadband service installed in every rural premises, just as electrical connections became ubiquitous in every home and business in the years following the initiation of the Irish Rural Electrification Scheme 80 years ago. That scheme took a considerably longer time to complete, with 80 per cent of homes electrified almost 20 years later.

A new era of alternatives

We are now in a new era where, increasingly, homes and businesses are adopting alternative electricity sources, most notably solar panel electricity production. Even with generous grant aid, it can be an expensive choice, but it does offer some independence, at least, from the existing, increasingly expensive, electrical-wire-to-the-premises alternative. Apart from minority instances, a degree of dependency on an external electricity source will continue to be a fact of life, but anything that brings an affordable degree of independence to such a critical resource is commendable. Meanwhile, the ‘NIMBY’ brigade continues to protest and stymy renewable electricity generation. The greatest opposition is against land-based wind-turbine development, though the sea-based alternatives cost more to install and service, resulting in higher electricity costs. Remarkably, the NBI development was not subject to the same degree of opposition, presumably because much of the pole infrastructure was already in place. But surely, poles on every road and laneway across the country are even more intrusive and visible than a few wind turbines in mostly remote regions, which provide a clean, renewable electricity resource compared to finite, expensive and environmentally impactful fossil fuels.