The largest telco in Ireland, Eir said it has received approvals fro the Goverment to invest an additional €200m to upgrade 890 rural communities to fibre broadband connectivity, FTTH.
The incremental investment will see 300,000 premises connected to its FTTH network, bringing Eir’s total fibre footprint in Ireland to 1.9m premises by the end of 2018.
Since June 2012, eir has invested close to €450 million in our Next Generation Access network to provide high speed broadband throughout Ireland. This has been a vital part of our overall capital expenditure of €1.5bn during the same period.
Eir will upgrade its infrastructure in 890 communities throughout the country, erecting new pole and fibre cable infrastructure along 23,000 kilometres of Irish roads, representing more than half the circumference of the world. The programme will be completed by the end of 2018, two years ahead of our initial deadline of 2020.
Significant progress has been made already, and Eir said it has passed the first 40,000 premises, a key milestone in our commitment to deliver services to over 300,000 additional premises.
As a result of this initiative, the percentage of premises with access to high speed broadband will rise from 70% to 80% by the end of 2018, said the Operator.
Richard Moat, CEO, eir
eir is investing in rural Ireland in one of the largest infrastructure projects in Ireland today. By the end of next year, over 300,000 additional homes, farms and businesses that currently only have access to basic broadband, or indeed no broadband at all, will have access to the fastest broadband speeds in Ireland, on par with the best broadband speeds available right throughout Europe.
