Eir ‘committed to national broadband plan’

The boss of Eir says the telecoms firm remains committed to playing its part in introducing the national broadband plan, despite fears it has stalled.

Chief executive Richard Moat said Eir was still engaged with the national broadband plan as the firm announced its full-year results to the end of June.

Eir says it had underlying revenue of €1.32bn, up 1% year on year in the 12 months to the end of June. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation was €520m, up 4% year on year, Eir said.

It said operating costs reduced by €26m or 5% year on year to €490m.

It said its total group broadband customer base was 896,000 customers to June, up 42,000 compared to the same period last year.

Some 6,000 were added in the fourth quarter to the end of June. Mr Moat said that while Eir was restricted in what it could reveal by a non-disclosure agreement on the national broadband plan, he confirmed Eir “is still at the table”.

Ireland’s long-mooted broadband plan has been beset by delays and a contract has still not been awarded to one of the three bidders of Eir, Siro and Enet.

The plan is government policy which aims to deliver high-speed broadband to every citizen and business in Ireland. It aims to achieve 100% coverage in three to five years of the start of large-scale introduction.

The plan will now apply to 540,000 homes or 21% of the population, many of which are considered to be in difficult-to-reach areas for broadband companies.

A decision on a contract has been delayed because of complications related to State subsidies and other factors. Experts now say it could cost up to €1bn instead of the €275m initially set aside by the Government, and that it means the project may not get off the ground.

Regarding Eir Sport, Mr Moat said he was confident that there would never again be a repeat of a technical issue that marred coverage of the Irish rugby team’s historic win over the All Blacks in Chicago last November.

Due to a high number of subscribers attempting to connect to Eir Sport on the day of the match, thousands of users were locked out as the system failed, missing the occasion.

Mr Moat said the systems are ready to cope with any extra demand if Eir Sport gained exclusive coverage to any high-profile sporting event that may cause a spike in viewers.

Eir Sport now has 220,000 subscribers across all platforms, the company said.

Its Eir Vision television package now has 71,000 customers, up 17,000. He said that Eir was open to potential tie-ups with platforms such as Netflix to enhance its television content offering, and that it was less exposed than major satellite broadcasters to the changing television habits of consumers.

Chief financial officer of Eir, Huib Costermans said that the firm had made “enormous progress” with its mobile phone offering, with coverage now at 96% across the Republic.

He said Eir did not need to offer very low-cost deals to customer to compete with other mobile operators. The Meteor network officially rebranded fully as Eir this month.

“We can compete with the Vodafones or the Threes, and we are well placed. We are not a price fighter, “ he said.

Eir now has 1.06 mobile customers, of which almost half are on billpay contracts.