Additional towns to benefit from eircom fibre rollout plan

Eircom has today announced the locations for Phase 1 of its fibre rollout plan which is set to offer customers broadband speeds of "40 Mbps and beyond".

The announcement follows last month’s commitment by eircom to spend €100m on Phase 1 of a plan that aim to reach one million premises over the next four years.

They include communities in six counties across all four provinces, as well as major cities including Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick.

Work is expected to commence this autumn and will continue through the summer of 2012.

The communities include: Mervue (Galway); Douglas (Cork); Dooradoyle (Limerick); Tallaght, Ballyboden, Palmerstown, Swords, Donabate, Co Dublin; Clonee, Co Meath and Letterkenny, Co Donegal.

Once Phase 1 is completed, fibre will pass more than 100,000 homes and businesses within the selected areas.

The upgraded infrastructure will largely use fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) technology, but some direct fibre to the home (FTTH) will be used in certain areas.

The locations announced today are in addition to the four pilot areas previously announced. These include Wexford Town along with Sandyford Village, Priory Park and Dundrum in Co Dublin.

“This is the next step in the rollout of high speed broadband services,” said Paul Donovan, CEO eircom Group.

“We have selected locations which have a geographical reach beyond Dublin and across the country. We believe there is a strong appetite for new fibre based products and services that will be competitively priced. Work will commence later this year and we hope to have the network upgrade completed by the end of Summer 2012.”