Fears raised as Government's National Broadband Plan might not meet business needs

The Government has been warned that its prized National Broadband Plan will provide speeds too slow for business, is unlikely to be completed in time, and will be outdated within a few years.

The Department of Jobs, Enterprise, and Innovation is among the critics of the €275m ‘intervention strategy’ which is meant to provide highspeed broadband to 750,000 households and businesses in locations where it has not been profitable for commercial service providers to extend their network.

In a submission on the plan, the department warned Communications Minister Alex White that the minimum download speed of 30Mbps and minimum upload speed of 6Mbps that service providers will have to guarantee if they want to bid for the contract is too low. It said companies want download speeds at least three times higher and a quadrupling of upload speeds.