THE GOVERNMENT’S €223 million national broadband scheme will not deliver 100 per cent coverage and has serious technical limitations, according to a rural development organisation that has analysed the scheme.
Irish Rural Link (IRL), a lobby group for sustainable rural development, said it has a “real concern” that the scheme is based almost entirely on mobile broadband technology, which it claims has reliability and capacity problems.
“It’s a cost-effective solution, but it is not really broadband,” said Seán O’Leary, policy and communications officer with IRL.
In a report published yesterday, entitled The Good, The Bad and the Inadequate, the group claims the scheme will not provide the quality of connection needed by rural businesses to trade online.
The national broadband scheme was formally launched by Minister for Communications Éamon Ryan last month. Part-funded by the EU, it is designed to bring broadband to the 10 per cent of the population who are not served by a commercial operator.
Mobile network operator 3 Ireland won the tender and will provide the service to the 33 per cent of the country covered by the scheme by September 2010.
Rachel Channing, 3’s head of PR and communications, rejected the report’s criticisms saying that “the views expressed are out of date and ill-informed”. She said that mobile broadband speeds were developing faster than those for fixed-line solutions.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Communications said it was satisfied that mobile broadband was a suitable solution.
She said the scheme was just the first step in the Government’s broadband strategy published last year and many of the issues raised by IRL would be addressed by later measures.
The lobby group’s document shows that 12,000 homes and business premises, which are in areas not covered by the scheme, cannot get broadband.
The department says: “A balance had to be struck between reaching as many unserved people as possible and minimising the impact of the scheme on service providers already operating in rural areas.”
The lobby group also said that a contingency plan needed to be put in place to allow for delays relating to planning permission for 160 telecoms masts needed to deliver the scheme.