Thousands of Irish businesses could soon have gigabit fibre speeds

15 Dec 2020

From left: Liam Tully Jr, Telcom; Sylvester Cullen, ESB Telecoms; and Shane Tully, Telcom. Image: Maura Hickey

A new partnership offering high-speed fibre services will see an initial roll-out for enterprises in Dublin, Cork and Galway.

Telcom and ESB Telecoms have today (15 December) announced that they will join forces to offer high-speed fibre connectivity of up to 1Gbps to enterprises nationwide.

The service will be made available to up to 16,000 businesses across 13 urban networks, with an initial focus on Dublin, Cork and Galway.

Telcom said the offering will have guaranteed upload and download speeds ranging from 100Mbps to 1Gbps.

Telcom’s CTO, Liam Tully Jr, said: “With ESB Telecoms’ 22 nationwide points of presence, connecting to all major data centres and in-built diverse failover, this service provides the type of performance and resilience that organisations require.”

The company’s chief commercial officer, Shane Tully, added that as reliance on cloud-based applications grows, access to high-speed, cost-effective fibre services is critical.

“In the current environment, it’s vital for business to partner with strong and stable vendors. ESB Telecoms ticked all the boxes for us, in having a national wholly owned, fibre-optic network that is aligned with connections to Siro, and which can scale now and into the future,” he said.

This marks the first retail partnership to utilise Siro’s gateway to ESB Telecom’s ethernet network service following an agreement announced in September.

The service – named the Ethernet Tail Extension – enables Irish telecoms operators to access ethernet infrastructure. Speaking at the time, Siro’s chief commercial officer, Ronan Whelan, said: “Connectivity is the nervous system of the country and Covid-19 has further emphasised the need for reliable fibre-to-the-premises broadband.”

Telcom said it has seen a significant uptick in organisations looking for high-speed connectivity in recent months. Earlier this year, Siliconrepublic.com heard from a several Irish telecom providers to find out how they managed the surge in demand at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis.

A few months later, as restrictions continued and the number of remote workers grew, State regulator ComReg published findings on how the telecoms industry coped since Covid-19 restrictions came into place. It suggested that the number of people willing to pay more for better home broadband grew from 28pc in April to 50pc in July.

Jenny Darmody is the editor of Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com