The Irish are paving the way with their newest venture yet. They call it the National Broadband Scheme. This scheme aims to cover the entire Ireland. What does that mean for the Irish folk? It means that the government has set a new aim. The aim is to unite the whole of Ireland with high speed internet.
The government has divided the land and has analyzed it. Their analysis has shown that there are some areas which are deprived of high speed internet. Worse still, there seems to be no immediate hope of access to high speed internet in these areas. The government has highlighted these areas and has called them intervention areas.
The government aims at providing these areas with high speed internet. The speed they say will be nothing less than 30 mbps download speed. The upload speed is said to be around 6 mbps.
The expectations are high. It said that by late 2016, almost 85 percent of Ireland will have access to high speed internet. The target date is set for 2020. This would mean that the government of Ireland has succeeded in changing the current 40 percent coverage to a whopping cent percent coverage.
Investment
To make this plan a reality, the requirement of investments arose. The Irish government has chosen to use a mix of state aid and private funding. The government however ran into a hurdle. The private investors said that they could not invest in all parts of Ireland. That was the reason why they had to revise their plan. It helped ensure that all the intervention areas would get covered.
As of now, the Irish government has approved around 275 million Euros worth of state aid. There are around ten potential bidders that are in line for the project. These bidders will make their bids and the Irish government will pick the best bidder from the lot.
While the procurement process began in December 2015, the final formal dialogue is set to take place in March and in April this year. The final contracts will be out only in the fourth quarter of the year. This is in line with the government’s vision of connecting 85 percent of the population via the internet.
The Updated Plan
The current updated plan divides the country into two parts – the north and the south. This helps because it divides the population based on the geographical challenges (broadband coverage map for Ireland) that will be faced when providing the high speed internet. This is why there is scope for only one or two bidders to win the contract.
The ownership of the model has still to be decided. Will the government own the model or will the companies? This will be decided in the months to come. Entire process can be followed here.
So far the project is progressing as per schedule. Once the bidders are selected, the progress will be faster and more significant. The Irish government has set expectations very high. Connecting the entire country via high speed internet is not an easy task. The plan that has been set up appears to be sound. That’s why there has been an increase in levels of excitement. Everyone has their fingers crossed. If everything works out well, Ireland could have the best internet system in Europe by 2020.
