Eircom to pass 1m homes and firms with fibre this summer (video)


24 Jul 2014

John Shine, managing director of Eircom Group's Networks division

The managing director of Eircom Group’s Networks division John Shine outlines the operator’s progress in rolling out fibre infrastructure across Ireland.

Shine joined Eircom last year to oversee the network rollout. In his previous role at ESB, Shine served as deputy chief executive, as well as managing director of Network, where he oversaw a €6bn network upgrade.

Now he is in the driving seat of the biggest network rollout and upgrade in Eircom’s history.

After connecting its 100,000th paying fibre customer back in March, Eircom is now on track to pass 1m homes and businesses with fibre services this summer.

According to Shine, the operator recently increased its planned national fibre footprint from 1.2m homes and businesses to 1.4m across Ireland.

Ambition

“Our ambition by 2016 is to have 1.4m homes passed with our next-generation access (NGA) and that’s going really well.

“This summer we expect to have 1m homes passed. If you think from a standing start in April 2012, where we put our first cabinet in place to have over 4,000 erected and over 1m homes passed.

“In the course of two years to deliver out fibre closer to our customers, I think we’ve installed 7,000km of fibre and installed 3,500km of sub-duct. The scale of all the components of the project is huge.”

Shine said at least 15 other telecoms operators are using this infrastructure to provide next-generation access products to their customers.

Eircom is one of the first telecoms companies in the world to deploy VDSL2 Vectoring technology in its Next Generation Fibre Access Network, boosting broadband speeds up to 100Mbps.

By July 2016, it estimates 70pc of the country across 26 counties will have access to fibre broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps.

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