Irish firm signs €20m deal to provide broadband services across Europe

AN IRISH company has signed a €20 million 15-year contract with one of the world’s largest satellite operators to help provide a high-speed broadband service across Europe.

National Space Centre Ltd, which is based at Elfordstown, near Midleton, Co Cork, began beaming the Tooway service at midnight last night.

It offers homes and businesses an always-on broadband service at speeds of up to 10Mb downstream and four Mb upstream. But because it is beamed from a satellite it will be available to millions of remote European homes which are unable to receive phone-line based ADSL broadband.

National Space Centre chief executive, Rory Fitzpatrick, said it is the first truly pan-European broadband transmission network.

“It has created eight jobs in Cork already and we plan to create up to 65 over the next few years as we win new contracts and develop and upgrade our services,” he said.

Communications giant Eutelsat, which is based in Paris, has capacity commercialised on 27 satellites. They broadcast more than 3,800 television channels to over 200 million cable and satellite homes in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

It commissioned the construction of the hi-tech KA-SAT satellite, which was launched into orbit in December 2010.

It then signed deals with ground-based satellite dish operators, or teleports, in Madrid, Turin, Athens, Berlin, Helsinki, Larnaka, Udine and Scanzano in Italy, Rambouillet in France, and with the National Space Centre’s teleport in Cork, to receive and redistribute the broadband.

The deal represents an investment of up to €7 million in the Irish teleport.

National Space Centre’s chief technical officer, Bruce Hannah, said: “We are proud to be part of this exciting innovation, which positions Ireland as one of Europe’s top hi-tech economies.”

Europe’s ‘broadband map’ shows that at least 13m households are still beyond the range of ADSL broadband, and 17m households access the internet at speeds below 2Mb.

Tooway will be sold in Ireland by Onwave and Digiweb and will provide download speeds of up to 10 Mb for households and 50 Mb for business.

Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte, who launched the service in Dublin, said it offers “very real new options for Irish consumers”.

Customers face a one-off installation payment of between €500 and €600 for a small 77cm dish and modem, and monthly charges from €34.99.

Meanwhile, Onwave, formerly Satellite Broadband Ireland, has also partnered with Eutelsat to launch its new triple-play bundled service featuring 150-channel digital TV, home phone and up to 10Mb broadband.

It said it will market its broadband-only service to the 210,843 homes and business internet users in Ireland who connect at speeds under 2Mb.