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IrelandOffline is a voluntary organisation campaigning for universal high-speed broadband for all

News

GBS

The Department issued a Programme for Government update about a month ago. Here’s the relevant bit, Tackle broadband gigabit blackspots that are not included in the National Broadband Plan Intervention Area currently and which will unlikely be served by commercial operators Information gathering and detailed analysis is ongoing with Operators to understand the full scale of the issue. Once the analysis is completed, DCCS will determine potential avenues to address and determine the optimal policy solution, including from a cost and legal perspective, to addressing such potential broadband gigabit blackspots. It is also important to note that a number of...

News

Kerry Blackspots

You’re gonna need more SIMs Deputy Michael Cahill has been asking questions in the Dáil about Kerry mobile coverage; quite a few. Since May 2025 he has asked at least 30. As he’s often quite specific about the roads and areas so we’ve put them on a map. The answers he gets are standard Departmental stuff; a disclaimer, a fragrant history of the last spectrum auction, and some helpful-unhelpful advice about escalation. Occasionally it’s a little combative. Last year on the 25th of January the Department contradicted deputy Cahill’s account of poor coverage in Dromod because ComReg’s model said otherwise,...

News

Loughglinn premises on its own.

The envy of the village ComReg’s latest batch of area broadband statistics has just been published, and among the “Small Areas” tier is Loughglinn, where there exists one house – in a village full of obsolete copper – that has managed to secure fibre-to-the-home under the NBP. Meanwhile the rest of the village remains in limbo and will have to make do.

News

Eircom’s FTTH rollout slows

Today’s quarterly presentation from Eircom contains more disappointment on FTTP progress. Only 24k premises were passed in Q2 2026 which is about half the rate it was achieving in 2023. As the weather was fairly benign it has to be assumed that this is the trend for the future. On the basis of last 12-month figure (129k) Eircom is unlikely to complete its 1.9M target before mid 2029. On the basis of last quarter’s results it could be well into 2030. We would question also whether a proportion of the quarter’s roll-out is new build or whether it refers exclusively to the...

Opinion

Universal Gigabit by 2028 is not believable

‘The policy is the policy until the policy changes’ The Government’s Digital Connectivity Strategy dates from 2022 and contains three targets. We can dispense with target number three, the BCPs and schools, which was met some time ago, and number two, the 5g target, is worth a post of its own. The question here is whether the Government credibly can cling to the claim of ubiquitous gigabit coverage by 2028. The strategy was supposed to “evolve“. In 2023 the Department committed to an update no later than 2025. That didn’t happen, but last December we were advised the strategy would...