Building a limitless Ireland

TJ Malone, head of the build programme for the National Broadband Plan and Chief Executive Officer of National Broadband Ireland Deployment, discusses progress on the State’s “biggest investment in rural Ireland ever”.

Connectivity has quickly become a vital part of our lives. For work, education, entertainment, and even socialising, we all have a growing demand for reliable, high speed broadband services. In most urban areas, this is taken for granted, but for over 1.1 million people living in more rural parts of Ireland – myself included – it can be an everyday struggle.

We’re not alone. Indeed, across Europe the European Commission is on a mission to ensure every household has gigabit connectivity by 2030. It’s a bold and transformational move, but one that will propel every nation in the right direction to take on everything the future holds.

Ireland’s National Broadband Plan is the Government’s ambitious policy to meet this European-wide goal, and it sets us on a path to be the leading country in the provision of high-speed broadband to 100 per cent of the population, providing equal access and equal opportunity to every home, farm, school, and business.

In November 2019, our team at NBI proudly signed contracts with the Government to deliver this highly anticipated plan. Recognised as one of the biggest and most ambitious telecoms infrastructure projects of its kind globally, it has been heralded as “the biggest investment in rural Ireland ever”.

Fast-forward to today and the Covid-19 pandemic has underlined the criticality of reliable, high-speed connectivity, which has become essential for so many aspects of our lives. Such is the demand for bandwidth, that internet usage has grown by over 40 per cent compared with pre-pandemic levels.

A project like no other

Taking on the challenge, our team at NBI is deploying fibre on approximately 1.5 million poles; many of them new, over 15,000km of underground ducts, using up to 142,000km of new fibre cable, and will run along almost 100,000km of the road network.

Conveying the size, scale, and complexity of an infrastructure project of this nature can be challenging to articulate. It can only be likened to rural electrification, but with arguably far more complexities.

Stretching across 96 per cent of the country’s land mass, we’re laying enough fibre to go around the world nearly four times. This is about radically changing the broadband landscape across the country to ensure every single person has access to high-speed broadband, no matter where they live or work.

“Taking on the challenge, our team at NBI is deploying fibre on approximately 1.5 million poles; many of them new, over 15,000km of underground ducts, using up to 142,000km of new fibre cable, and will run along almost 100,000km of the road network.”

In two years, our team has grown to have over 1,200 people working on the rollout of the National Broadband Plan, either directly with NBI or through our network of specialist contractors. We have the best team in the world working to deliver this complex project, with experience of financing, building, and operating some of the biggest infrastructure assets in the world.

Rolling out the National Broadband Plan, we’re not alone. Collaboration is one of the most important aspects of the project, with a vast amount of specialist subcontractors providing support across every county in the country, and vitally, local authorities providing critical support with licences that are required, such as for the erection of new telegraph poles and road opening licences.

A huge amount of credit must be given to these local authorities and the national agencies, particularly the Local Government Management Agency (LGMA), the County and City Management Association (CCMA), and the Road Management Office (RMO), for their roles in supporting NBI and the introduction of a new national framework that was introduced in May last year to provide centrally agreed mechanisms for the application of licences that will support the effective rollout of the National Broadband Plan. With over 1.5 million poles in our build programme, the size of the task for local authorities cannot be understated and the agility to create a new national framework is testament to all parties collaborating and innovating in the national interest.

Rollout progress

The solution is well underway. Work on the National Broadband Plan continues apace with our teams working in every county across Ireland. Over 293,000 premises have now been surveyed nationwide, which involves NBI crews physically walking the routes where fibre will be laid. Over 252,000 of these premises are already designed or progressing through detailed design work. Collectively, these are critical components which pave the way for fast and effective construction work.

As of today, construction work is underway for over 150,000 premises across the country and over 55,000 premises are now able to order services via retail service providers (RSPs), with minimum speeds of 500 megabits per second on offer. With around 50 RSPs ready to sell services on the NBI network, this is going to be game-changer, bringing significant benefits directly to consumers and businesses where competition between RSPs will ensure quality bundled packages offer choice around voice, broadband, TV, and mobile at competitive prices.

Visit www.nbi.ie for more information, including to find out if you’re in the intervention area and to receive Eircode specific updates on the rollout progress.