Regions ‘set to benefit from broadband network’

THE head of the company installing a broadband network throughout the country said yesterday that the new system will create huge job opportunities outside Dublin and enhance the existing industrial framework.

Michael Tiernan’s newly formed company E-net is completing the €70 million task of networking 27 towns and cities outside the greater Dublin area with ducts and fibre connections for broadband communications.

The Limerick firm won the Government contract last summer to install and manage the new network which will drastically improve the speed of internet access.

Each location will be fitted out with Metropolitan Area Networks (MANS) when phase one is completed next February. Private telecommunication companies will then be able to rent space in the MANS system to sell their broadband packages to industry and private customers.

A further 41 towns will be linked up during phase two at a cost of €55m.

Local authorities put up 10% of the cost of installing the system with the remainder funded by the Government.

A company, Shannon Broadband, consisting of Limerick City Council, Limerick County Council, Clare County Council, Tipperary North County Council and Shannon Development raised the 10% stake to install the broadband MANS throughout the mid-west.

Two years ago, Michael Tiernan began to investigate hi-tech solutions for problems arising from his property development business.

“Over a number of years, there were quite a few times I was involved in negotiations with potential overseas investors, doing my best to get them to locate here in Limerick and the mid-west. The talks would go very well, the package of incentives would add up, but invariably the target company would eventually opt for the greater Dublin area.

“And the reason they did so was simple. The company’s IT person would point out that they needed top class broadband connection. It was available in the Dublin region. It wasn’t available in the mid-west, and that was the crunch, deciding issue,” Mr Tiernan said.

A Government initiative to promote broadband in the regions turned him into Mr Broadband when he and a number of others set up E-net.

At present E-net employs 20 people at its command centre in the Limerick Enterprise Development Park at the old Krups facility. Eventually it is hoped this will rise to 50.

Letterkenny in Co Donegal, one of the first towns with its MANS system in place, has already seen huge benefits. “A local company employing 400 people is heavily reliant on robust, reliable telecommunications. But in the past year had suffered several data problems. But now with broadband the company will be able to secure its infrastructure and compete for further critical contracts in the future,” Mr Tiernan said.

He said the closure of Tellabs in Shannon in September 2002, with the loss of 450 jobs, could have been avoided if the company had broadband.

“Tellabs was a classic case locally in Shannon. The cost of getting a connection from the Dublin broadband was so prohibitive that it prevented them from expanding their business within the Tellabs group.

“Instead of becoming their European headquarters for telecommunications, it became a lower value manufacturing plant.

“The inability to upgrade the Shannon plant to a high value facility indirectly speeded up the demise of the Shannon plant.”