From left: NBI CEO Peter Hendrick, Minister Ossian Smyth, TD, and NBI chair David McCourt. Image: Dylan Vaughan
The company said it has surpassed its end-of-year forecasts, but the targets set by NBI have changed multiple times in recent years.
National Broadband Ireland (NBI), the company responsible for delivering the country’s National Broadband Plan, claims that the project is on track – despite previous criticisms of delays.
The company’s end-of-year report claims that nearly 217,000 premises covered by the network are ready to connect. This figure surpassed the company’s target to pass 185,000 premises by the end of its contractual year (31 January), according to NBI CEO Peter Hendrick.
NBI also reports that take-up rates are reaching 50pc in areas where the network has been live for more than 18 months. The company claims that more than 68,000 premises were connected to the NBI network by the end of January and that this was significantly above all previous forecasts.
“We have also delivered on our target to connect 672 schools and 283 broadband connection points in community locations in every county across the country,” Hendrick said. “Ensuring that no one is left behind in the provision of high-speed broadband under the National Broadband Plan, we are also reporting significant progress on our roll-out to 27 offshore islands with the network currently live on 10 of those and engineering survey works commenced or complete on 10 others.
“We are confident that all 227 deployment areas covered in our programme will be completed on time and on budget.”
The National Broadband Plan aims to connect more than 1.1m people across 564,000 homes, businesses, farms and schools in Ireland where commercial operators do not currently provide high-speed connectivity.
Minister of State with responsibility for Communications and Circular Economy Ossian Smyth, TD, said high-speed, reliable broadband is “essential” to support Ireland’s growing economy and that the “ambitious” broadband plan is now on schedule and on budget.
“As a result, Ireland is now a global leader in digital connectivity and is on target to reach the European Commission’s target of gigabit broadband for all by 2030,” Smyth said.
Changing the goal posts
But while the uptake for premises connected to the NBI network is growing, the results are far behind targets that had been set in previous years.
In April 2022, a report by the Committee of Public Accounts (PAC) said the plan “does not represent value for money to the taxpayer”. There had been an agreed target with NBI to have 115,000 premises passed by the end of January 2022.
An interim remedial plan was submitted by NBI which had a revised target of 60,000 premises. The actual number of premises passed by the network by 31 January 2022 was 34,454, according to the PAC report. By February 2022, only 6,000 homes had signed up to receive fibre broadband. This figure grew to 30,000 homes, farms and businesses by February 2023.
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