National high speed broadband coming to two Laois online blackspots
Two further Laois towns and surrounding rural areas are soon to get high speed fibre broadband this year.
National Broadband Ireland (NBI), the company rolling out the new high speed fibre broadband network under the Government’s National Broadband Plan this week announced that construction has commenced to deliver high-speed broadband to almost 4,300 premises in the Mountrath and Ballylinan deployment areas.
NBI says that Laois has approximately 13,000 homes, schools and businesses in the Intervention Area, which are rural broadband blackspots who cannot get other broadband services.
Under the National Broadband Plan, county Laois will see an investment of €49M in the new high speed fibre network. This is aimed to enable e-learning, remote monitoring of livestock or equipment, e-health initiatives, better energy efficiency in the home, and facilitate increased levels of remote working.
Having successfully completed the Survey and Design phase of the project, 2,518 Laois premises in the Mountrath area are now under construction to have high-speed fibre delivered.
A further 1,763 premises in the Ballylinan deployment area of the county also have build works underway.
Homes, businesses and farms in these areas will be ready to connect to the National Broadband Network later this year.
Works have already been completed in other parts of Laois and there are 4,163 premises that are available to order or pre-order high-speed, reliable broadband across the county, with 344 connections already made to the network.
Peter Hendrick is Chief Executive Officer at National Broadband Ireland.
“Our teams continue to work on the rollout plan and substantial progress has been made on works in Laois.
“We are confident that the rollout will continue to gather pace as our ability to move premises from the construction phase to the order phase ramps up. We are currently working closely with retail service providers, and other stakeholders, to connect homes in Laois. Minimum speeds of 500Mbps will be available.
“Our mission is to end the digital divide across the country. Digital connectivity is critical to many of our activities, and this new Fibre-to-the-Home network, will be a key enabler for the sustainability of local businesses and communities.”
Under the National Broadband Plan, 559,000 premises nationwide are included in the Intervention Area, which was established by the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications to identify areas where commercial operators are not currently providing access to high-speed broadband or do not intend to.
NBI is encouraging people to check their eligibility and register for updates at www.nbi.ie to receive regular notifications related to their own premises as works progresses in their area.
Visit nbi.ie/map/ and enter an Eircode to see if connection is available. See National Broadband Ireland’s website for estimated connection dates or sign up to the NBI email notifications at https://nbi.ie/eoi/ for updates.