ESB – Vodafone Joint venture

IrelandOffline very much welcome the formal announcement this morning of a joint venture between the ESB and Vodafone(JV) to roll out broadband to a number of towns in Ireland. Any expansion of high quality broadband to areas outside of the major urban centres is to be welcomed.

We do however caution though that this rollout is not the panacea to the lack of broadband in rural Ireland. This may be tackled at a later date.

What do we know?
The JV :
Will target towns where there are more than 4000 buildings
Some Fibre to the building will be included where practical
This will give us the top 50 towns in the country (census data)
The JV will NOT be targeting areas where UPC are “strong” this may lead to overlaps in some urban areas
The target audience will be approximately 500,000 people.
Speeds and architecture will vary

Letterkenny, Ballina and Tralee will be among the first of the 50 towns to be targeted in the first phase of the roll-out.
The areas to be serviced are outlined on our map here : ESB rollout map