Kilkenny to become Ireland’s first ever ‘fibre optic city’

2 Mar 2015

A new deal with telecoms service provider enet aims to have Kilkenny City businesses enjoy 250Mbps broadband connectivity in the near future.

Dubbed ‘Fibre To The Business’, the new project is aiming to eradicate network bottlenecks for businesses reliant on high-speed internet connections.

Interestingly under enet’s fibredirect scheme, copper networks are not being used, with fibre optic cables being delivered directly into businesses – completion of the network’s construction should be by the end of June.

Copper isn’t the most efficient cabling when it comes to internet speeds, so this will change the game a bit, with the company claiming it can guarantee service levels, rather offer an ‘up to’ speed.

John Hurley, CEO, Kilkenny Chamber of Commerce, said the prospect of Kilkenny becoming “the first fibre optic city in Ireland” is exciting and will reaffirm the city as a preferred location in which to base businesses.

Conal Henry, CEO of enet, said that by building a fibre network directly into every business, enet is doing something no one else has done before.

“This fibre network completely replaces the out-of-date copper network which has reached its end of life – every business can finally get broadband from a broadband network!” Henry said.

Claremorris, Loughrea and Ardee have already acted as pilot towns for this scheme.

Kilkenny City via Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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