Introduction We in IrelandOffline have been following the recent announcements about broadband delivery in Ireland with great interest and we have even attended some of the press events. Seemingly we will all have fibre to the home by 2020, well so says the government and they have even drawn up a plan to make this happen, this is called the National broadband Plan (NBP). We believe this to be a very good and aspirational plan, despite the long timescale. Current announcements In tandem with the announcement of the NBP we also have a number of companies jockeying to be overall...

The National Broadband Plan Irelandoffline would like to give the DCENR team who built the http://broadband.gov.ie/ mapping site that was launched yesterday some kudos for a job well done. By the standards of the output produced by DCENR over the years this is an astonishingly complete and accurate piece of work. We were extremely worried when a frankly incoherent list was quickly announced by Minister Rabbitte just before the local elections but as it turns out we need not have been. Some opportunities have been missed. The ability to send a geolocated query direct from the map, perhaps with a...

There were thirty two submissions to the DCENR’s public consultation on to the National Broadband Plan – the ‘Call-for-Input’. Of those, six believed that what they had to say was so commercially sensitive, dangerous or controversial that the general public should not be allowed to see it – any of it. Perhaps the security of the state is at risk. Three of them are monopolies owned by the public. They are: An Post Aurora Telecom (subsidiary of Ervia) Coillte We shall now be seeking the submissions from the Department under the Freedom of Information Act 2014.