ESB set to roll out broadband across 500,000 homes

The ESB is to enter the broadband market, with the network being used to roll out high-speed internet to 500,000 homes across rural Ireland.

Communications minister Pat Rabbitte, who introduced the measure as part of a new bill, said it would ease the difficulty people living in rural areas have accessing high-speed broadband.

The move also allows the ESB enter the telecommunications sector.

The ESB said its “Fibre to the Building” scheme will offer 500,000 homes in rural Ireland speeds of in excess of 150Mb per second. It will involve a €400m super-fast fibre network being transmitted across existing ESB poles and directly into homes and businesses.

Irish Rural Link chief executive Seamus Boland said the group “cautiously” welcomed the plan, describing it as “imaginative”.

“I think it’s quite imaginative. It’s using the ESB networks to transmit high-quality broadband. Obviously, the big challenge will be to ensure that the ESB along with the various networks can actually do a deal that will deliver rural broadband because we have always fallen short up to now,” he said.

Mr Boland said there had been a number of false dawns in rural broadband in the past and that the main stumbling blocks to bringing the plan to fruition was cost.

“The reason why the commercials have failed to deliver what you call quality high-speed broadband and, in some cases broadband at all, is because it isn’t commercially possible in certain isolated areas. This plan will need to overcome that difficulty, and we are certainly hoping that by using the ESB networks, which is a very public network, that it will get over that issue, and that whoever is delivering it will deal with the non-commercial aspect of it as well as the commercial,” he said.

Sinn Féin’s Michael Colreavy welcomed the move but criticised the time it has taken to get adequate broadband to rural areas.

“Broadband has become an almost essential utility for every household. There are many daily functions that are now almost impossible to carry out without a proper broadband connection. There are many areas in Ireland, most of them rural, which still do not receive an adequate broadband connection. The lack of broadband or poor service levels is becoming a constraint in accessing services,” he said.

Fianna Fáil’s Michael Moynihan welcomed the move and expressed hope that rural Ireland could finally get a service routinely available in urban areas.

“Hopefully, the entry into the market of ESB into this area will bring about progress for those communities who face difficulties. Given their widespread electricity network which reaches into every community in the country, it will be possible to improve and expand broadband services in areas which currently cannot rely on those services currently provided,” he said.

Fastest ever broadband

The “fastest ever” broadband speeds have been reached during a test in London that would allow 44 uncompressed HD films to be sent in one second.

Speeds of 1.4 terabits per second were reached, French networking firm Alcatel-Lucent and BT, said. The tests — over a 255-mile link between the BT Tower in London and Ipswich — prove greater amounts of data can be sent through the existing broadband structure than previously achieved, allowing internet service providers to increase their capacity without the need for expensive upgrades.

This results in a 42.5% rise in data transmission efficiency compared to the current standard of broadband networks.

Growing popularity of data-heavy online services such as film-streaming site Netflix has seen demand for higher bandwidth grow by around 35% every year, Alcatel-Lucent said.