The National Competitiveness Council (NCC ) has recommended in a report published recently that a metropolitan area network should be built in Castlebar.
Mayo’s county town is one of five national spatial strategy centres in which the NCC has called for the building of such a network.
The call has been welcomed by e|net, the company which holds the concession to manage, maintain, and operate the State’s MAN broadband programme.
Conal Henry, chief executive of e|net, said that the recommendations of the NCC represented a further endorsement of the correctness of the Government undertaking the MAN broadband programme, which commenced in 1992 and, in particular, its deployment as an open access fibre platform that enables the various telecom companies to offer their services to business and domestic residents.
Citing another reference in the NCC report, that civil works account for 80 per cent of the cost of rolling out fibre for advanced broadband services, he said that the existence of the MANs as an open-access, wholesale, platform had accelerated the provision of wider bandwidth broadband to business in Ireland, and also had forced down broadband prices as the different telcos competed for business using the MANs platform.
“Over the past five years, the MANs have become central to the country’s telecommunications network with 32 of Ireland’s leading telco providers using them to provide their suites of services, including household names like O2, BT, UPC, and Vodafone. Most of the telcos have integrated the MANs into their own networks, and depend greatly on them to deliver their high quality services,” Mr Henry said.
The MANs are also playing an important role in facilitating the roll-out of the Government’s National Broadband Scheme.
Mr Henry also welcomed the NCC’s assertion that “developing world class, advanced broadband networks and services is essential to enable Ireland to support the smart economy”, and that “advanced broadband in key regional centres is required to enable many of our main exporting sectors [eg, ICT, medical technologies, financial services, tourism, international education services] to retain the current levels of trading and to enable them to exploit future growth opportunities”.
The e|net chief echoed the council’s call for changes to planning regulations “to mandate fibre ducting in all new public, commercial, and residential premises”.
“Given the success of the MANs to date, if these further policy innovations advocated by the NCC were fully and speedily adopted, Ireland could rapidly move to the forefront of the global table in the provision of top quality, fibre-based, broadband,” Mr Henry said.
