The National Broadband Plan (NBP) is a Government sponsored initiative to bring a minimum of 30 megabit broadband speeds to all premises in Ireland that are not presently served by a commercial operator.
open eir have committed to delivering fibre broadband to 1.9 million homes and businesses across Ireland, today over 1 million of these homes and businesses can now access a full fibre network with speeds up to 2Gbps.
However, while we are doing much more than any other operator, approximately 16% of homes and businesses –– will still require access to high speed broadband. The reason is straightforward – our density of rural population is one of the lowest in Europe, which means the cost to roll out rural fibre broadband is high. Consequently – as in all countries – it is a huge challenge to provide high speed broadband to every home in the country without financial support from the Government.
Approximately 84% of the country will be able to access our network, the remaining 16% of homes and businesses 450K fall under the Government’s National Broadband Plan (NBP).
Open eir chose not to submit a tender to Government for the remaining 16%, instead we focused our energy on deploying Fibre to the Home technology to 1.9 million homes and businesses, already 900K homes and businesses can order a full fibre connection from any one of our retail service providers.
The Government awarded the tender to a company called NBI, and it will be the responsibility of NBI to serve the remaining 450k+ homes and businesses, open eir are more than happy to support and are supporting the NBI deployment where we can. You can find out more about the National Broadband Plan and if your home or business falls into our commercial deployment or the NBP here.