More than 200,000 premises can now connect to high-speed broadband

More than 200,000 premises across Ireland can now connect to high-speed fibre broadband, as the roll-out of the Government’s National Broadband Plan (NBP) is ahead of target.

National Broadband Ireland (NBI), the company responsible for delivering the NBP, will announce in its quarterly update this week that more than a third of the premises targeted by the NBP now have access to high-speed fibre infrastructure.

The NBP aims to deliver high-speed broadband to all premises in Ireland, including through State intervention for more rural parts of the country where private companies have indicated they have no plans to invest.

The State Intervention Area for the NBP includes 564,000 premises and over 1.1 million people, and includes any new homes built in the Intervention Area over the next 25 years.

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This week’s update from NBI shows that more than 77 per cent of premises (437,887) have now completed the survey and design stages of the programme.

The number of premises able to connect to the network will surpass 200,000 this week, ahead of NBI’s target of 185,000 by January 2024.

More than 60,000 premises are already connected to the NBI network, “significantly above” previous forecasts that 50,000 connections would be made by January 2024.

NBI said the average take-up rate is currently 30 per cent, and greater than 40 per cent in areas where the network has been live for longer than 12 months.

“We have now completed the vast majority of the engineering and design groundwork that is fundamental to the delivery of the project, with three in every five premises either under or completed construction,” said Peter Hendrick, NBI chief executive.

NBI chairman David McCourt, added that Ireland’s NBP “proudly sits among the top global mega projects for being on budget, on schedule, and still delivering against its original objectives”.

Ossian Smyth, Minister of State with responsibility for Public Procurement, eGovernment and Circular Economy, said that with the fibre network delivered by NBI, “Irish people will be able to work, study and stream entertainment from the comfort of their own homes all over the country”.