Eircom €100m plan to bring fibre access to 100k homes by 2012

28 Jul 2011

Eircom this morning announced the first phase of a plan that will see it serve 100,000 homes and businesses with up to 150Mbps fibre by summer 2012 and eventually 1m homes. It also revealed plans for an IPTV service, including catch-up TV by mid-2012.

In a plan to roll out fibre-based access technologies delivering superfast broadband to customers, Eircom says it intends to serve 100,000 premises by summer 2012 in Phase 1 of a planned multi-year rollout that envisages fibre-based services to 1m homes and businesses in Ireland.

This will involve an initial investment of more than €100m, upgrading the existing copper access network with fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) and fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technologies.

The company says these developments build on the company’s plans to restructure its debt and its recent Wholesale Reform announcement.

Specific speeds will vary, according to the technology used. FTTC will support speeds of up to 40Mbps and beyond, while FTTH supports speeds of up to 150Mbps.

Eircom’s IPTV plans

Eircom also said it intends to launch a range of entertainment services over fibre, including television via a customer’s broadband connection (IPTV), video on demand, catch up TV and social media via TV.

The new services will complement existing services like Eircom MusicHub.

“Our investment of over €100m underlines the company’s commitment to be the nation’s network provider of choice and to support economic growth in Ireland,” Eircom CEO Paul Donovan said.

“The introduction of television and entertainment services is extremely exciting and underlines how far the company has progressed during the past two years.

“We are determined to offer quality products and services that are relevant and offer real value to our customers. Today is the next step in that journey. This is good news for the industry, good news for our employees and good news for Ireland,” Donovan said.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com