It’s now nearly 4 months since Minister Naughten agreed his deal with Eircom – the so-called ‘300K Network’. We’ve given our views on it already, however the reaction of the remaining bidders has been strangely muted. Sure, ALTO (the alternative operators group) have been critical and said so to ComReg, but apart from some unattributable grumbling, SIRO and enet, have avoided commenting on the record. To be clear, this idiotic deal will potentially unravel six long years of planning and leave the NBP solely to Eircom, whose miserly record of investment in rural Ireland since 1999 is a matter of public...

Irish Mobile Phone Coverage has SHRUNK YET AGAIN in 2016. IrelandOffline regularly warned in the period between 2010 and 2012 that there was a serious risk that mobile phone coverage would shrink catastrophically in Ireland once the mobile phone licences were sold off in December 2012. This is exactly what happened, especially in 2013 and 2014. Commenting on this Eamonn Wallace (Chair of IrelandOffline) said “Furthermore the state took many hundreds of millions for these licences and cannot make the operators ‘unshrink’ the coverage as they would be sued. So what does Denis Naughten do, he invites the Irish Countrywomen’s...

The NBP Intervention Area Map IrelandOffline have learnt that eir have announced that it will have the “entire Dingle peninsula” fibred-up in  2017. Congratulations seem to be due to broadcaster and musician Philip King on having pulled this one off. Most small communities are at their wits’ end to find a way to induce telecommunications into their area and great credit is due to those like Philip who develop local resources and a long term vision for their communities.  https://t.co/qTWrLvzEYP There is however a wider issue. Areas coming within the scope of providers’ plans may potentially be removed from the...