Can Ireland's telecoms leaders collaborate to construct the nation's fibre network of the future?
THERE is no getting away from it: Ireland's first broadband decade was far from being a smooth ride. Instead of speeding down the highways of the future, think of it more like driving a 1979 Ford Cortina with no suspension across a Donegal bog.
Only in the past few years has the speed of progress that's been needed occurred, bringing broadband penetration to over 1.2 million subscribers, moving Ireland from being a laggard and placing it slightly above average in the EU-15.
Continuing this progress and building fast fibre networks will be vital if the country is to bring the trade routes of tomorrow to towns in Ireland that will attract investment and where export-focused entrepreneurs can create local jobs.
The chairman of ComReg, John Doherty, agrees. "We are making progress on LLU. In markets like France where next-generation fibre services are available, LLU has been a precursor to building NGNs. The fact that BT and Vodafone are committed to rolling out more exchanges will mean there will be a footprint to make LLU more competitive."
Doherty also points out that if Ireland wants to see early deployment of services like Long Term Evolution (LTE) - that will mature 3G to a point where services like 50Mbps over mobile networks will be possible or Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification [DOCSIS] 3.0, which will see speeds of 120Mbps over cable - it will need to get its fibre NGN in order.
The country already has an abundance of State-owned fibre networks and ducting lying unused, waiting to be joined up to the Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) in 96 towns.
Doherty is spearheading a Stakeholders Group to get all network infrastructure owners in Ireland to work together to build this future network, but also to compete on the network. The Government is also working to create an Exemplar Network with Intune Networks to make use of the State-owned fibre assets and join up the 96 fibre MANs.
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