Dempsey defends Irish broadband record

Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources Noel Dempsey has announced that broadband is to be made available to the last 15% to 20% of the population where it is currently uneconomic to do so.

Speaking at the Facilitating Broadband Leadership conference in Dublin today, Dempsey claimed that there has been a massive increase in demand for broadband.

“This will mean that we must now move quickly to a situation where every reasonable request for broadband will be met at a reasonable price,” said Dempsey.

“When I spoke at the Annual TIF conference shortly after assuming this office two years ago, the number of broadband subscribers stood at a mere 56,000 people. Since then broadband take-up has grown rapidly and over 100,000 new broadband connections were made in the first half of this year alone.

“I am delighted to announce today that we now have more than 410,000 broadband subscribers in Ireland, smashing the target I set with several months to spare.”

“This means that as we speak almost 30% of households in Ireland now have a broadband service. I believe however that we can achieve more and I am challenging the industry to go further. More than 17,000 people are subscribing to new broadband services each month.

“It is not enough to just make broadband available, we need to start demonstrating what broadband can do for those who may not have considered getting broadband before.

Dempsey also announced details of an extension of the Government’s PR campaign to stimulate interest in broadband.

“We have secured an additional €350,000 to extend our broadband awareness campaign right up to the new year to support the drive for more subscribers and we have secured an extra €1.35m to extend the Make IT Secure campaign to educate people about safe and secure internet usage.”