Muskerry Gaeltacht petition over broadband speed

Residents of Cork’s Muskerry Gaeltacht are to petition Eircom, in protest at the quality of the company’s broadband service in the area.

Mon, 08 Jun, 2015 - 01:00

Pet O’Connell

An online petition — which so far includes more than 270 signatures — calls on Eircom to improve the broadband speed.

Organisers say the service is currently having an “extremely negative impact on all Eircom customers in the community as well as on local trade and business”.

The broadband speed, according to the petition, is “poor to non-existent” and “makes it absolutely impossible to engage in any meaningful or effective way online”.

The petition was started by Baile Mhúirne women Clíodhna Ní Cheallacháin and Michelle Ní Mhurchú, who were frustrated not only at the poor broadband speeds but with the responses received from the company.

“Despite many attempts to flag this with Eircom, the responses have been unhelpful, for example requesting that individuals pay more money for a better service or blaming faults in the dwellings themselves,” they say.

“We, as a community, believe Eircom are in a position to replace the faulty lines and address the defective broadband service. Irrespective of what provider community members are using, it is the Eircom line which is supplying the broadband.”

The pair decided there was strength in numbers, and started to gather online support to “correspond in a united and a democratic way with Eircom on behalf of our local community”. If the issue is not resolved, they have threatened to change broadband service providers.

“This is our final attempt to engage with Eircom and if it is not addressed, having explored this avenue, we see that we have no choice but to withdraw completely from the service,” they stated.

Ms Ní Cheallacháin said she believed there had been a recent deterioration in Eircom’s broadband service in Múscraí.

An Eircom spokesperson said: “Residents of the Gaeltacht fall under the Government’s National Broadband Plan. Eircom has outlined that if it wins this tender, we will deploy fibre to the home as our technical solution, delivering speeds of up to 1Gb/s or 1000Mb/s.”