Castlebar is the latest site to benefit from Enet’s fibre broadband network rollout, with a €1.5m investment announced today (22 February).
All major commercial and industrial zones in Castlebar are now set to be connected on a new “metro fibre ring” thanks to the investment, with several additional land banks where future developments are planned.
Enet claims this investment has “future-proofed Castlebar’s business community”, with bandwidth bottlenecks hopefully a thing of the past.
A three-way battle
100pc fibre, it’s one of the growing networks around the country – from Enet, Eir and SIRO – that guarantees business owners the broadband speeds which they have signed up for.
A couple of weeks ago, Ballyseedy in Kerry was the launch base for a similar project, though one which cost €650,000 overall.
It’s all part of a battle to land the Irish Government’s coveted National Broadband Plan, which sees Enet, Eir and SIRO racing up and down the country to help hook up towns with better broadband speeds.
750,000 homes and businesses will be connected with a minimum of 30Mbps broadband under the national scheme.
Eir CEO Richard Moat recently told Siliconrepublic that the company is pressing ahead with its own plans to grow its fibre footprint to 1.9m homes and firms by 2020, including 300,000 premises in rural areas that will be among the first to be connected to 1Gbps fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) services.
Enet will also be battling SIRO, the €450m joint venture between the ESB and Vodafone, which has commenced its own plans to connect homes and businesses in 50 towns to 1Gbps FTTH services.
Outside bet
“We will be bidding for the National Broadband Plan and our ambition is to bid for the entire rollout,” Enet CEO Conal Henry said.
Before Christmas, Department of Communications officials said that the plan is likely to award contracts to either one national provider or split the nation into two zones, with contracts awarded between two operators.
“Either way, we will be competing and if we don’t win the entire plan we will aim to at least win half the plan,” Henry said, with his company recently partnering with Magnet to overhaul its network capacity.
The Castlebar investment means it’s now seven Mayo towns within which Enet operates a fibre network, the others being Ballina, Belmullet, Ballinrobe, Claremorris, Kiltimagh and Knock.
Main image via Shutterstock
