When A Plan Comes Together

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EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager (above a`nd Minister for Communications Richard Bruton (top)

This morning.

The European Commission has approved, under EU State aid rules, €2.6 billion of public support for the controversial National Broadband Plan.

Communications Minister Richard Bruton said:

“I welcome today’s decision by the European Commission to grant state aid approval to the National Broadband Plan.

The National Broadband Plan will deliver high speed broadband to 1.1 million people, almost one quarter of our country. Without high speed broadband it will be significantly more difficult to attract new jobs to rural areas and develop new enterprise opportunities and it will be more difficult to retain the jobs that currently exist in these areas. H

igh speed broadband will allow remote working, which can ease congestion and reduce emissions. It will ensure that the digital revolution happening in education, healthcare, farming and tourism does not bypass rural Ireland. We will make sure that rural Ireland is not left behind.”

Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of EC competition policy said:

“The National Broadband Plan in Ireland is expected to address the significant digital divide between urban and rural areas in Ireland, enabling Irish consumers and businesses to benefit from the full potential of digital growth. This will help households and businesses in areas of Ireland where private investment is insufficient.”

Hmm.

State aid: Commission approves €2.6 billion public support for the Irish National Broadband Plan (EU Commission)

Previously: National Broadband Plan on Broadsheet

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15 thoughts on “When A Plan Comes Together

  1. GiggidyGoo

    Dinny rubbing hands with glee.
    So permission had been granted by our.overlords in Europe – sure who needs a national.government at all?
    Does Verstager know that public funds are going into private companies?
    Where are we with the Apple tax?

    1. italia'90

      He’ll get his slice no matter who is awarded the contract

      100% Fibre To The Home is but a pipe dream
      I’m a network design consultant these days and part-time investor but I graduated from St. John’s University as a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) back in the late 90’s,
      going on to further study to become a senior engineer and eventually a Cisco Certified Architect (CCAr) and from my experience on some of the biggest projects across Ireland, there are only 3 companies I would trust not to screw it up and leave the country with an expensive spaghetti fibre mess;
      ESB Networks
      BT
      Eir

  2. curmudgeon

    I really hate that all this money is being spent on hard wiring premises up ,when they could spend less and have 100% 5G coverage for a fraction of the cost. Carrying the internet in your pocket 24/7 is a cheaper and clearly better alternative to wiring up premises at a cost of literally billions and yet it only benefits whoever is in that building at the time. I cant imagine having to come home to get internet like its the early 00’s all over again, why inflict that on the rest of country?

    Oh right I almost forgot: its a sweetheart deal with private investors. Taxpayer funds the build out a fully wired network at exorbitant cost and the private investor group gets to own it. So just pain ol corruption. No? Why did Denis Naughton get demoted then.

      1. curmudgeon

        Well whether or not its wired or cellular whoever end ups owning it has a license to print money for decades to come. It is as everyone knows another FG deal to make ome very select people even richer by robbing the tax payer. Its a white collar heist, with insider trading.

        Imagine the govt. decided that Irelands roads network would be built throughout rural Ireland using our taxes, but it would be run by a private company and in 25 years that company woud own it outright and charge us what they like to drive on it.

        1. Pip

          Is it not truly weird that it is happening in plain sight?
          Whither the opposition to this rodomontade*.
          (* thanks, Eamonn McCann)

    1. Cian

      5G coverage isn’t easy. To get the high data throughput you need to be close to the base-station. This means that there will need to be a lot more base stations – closer together. Not cheap, or easy (planning permission for 1000s of new phone masts???)

  3. :-Joe

    It’s no surprise that there is no plan whatsoever other than to abuse the public purse(as per usual thanks in no part to our corporate bean-counter minister for finance appointed in an undemocratically non-elected establishment for the 1% government) to line the pockets of the private sector and get a load of brown envelope kick-back’s for the political class in future…

    The number one issue that overrides all the bull-sh1t technical details is…

    WHO WILL OWN THE INFRASTRUCTURE THAT ALLOWS DEEP ACCESS AND CONTROL TO PUBLIC DATA IN THE FUTURE? THE STATE FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD OR THE PRIVATE SECTOR FOR THE PROFIT MOTIVES OF GREED AND AVERICE?

    It’s an f-ing disgrace, typical of oirland at it’s worst.. right in front of everyone’s faces and nothing more than a blatant F.U. to the public.

    Ask yourself why are all these ‘murican tech companies setting up here and why GDPR and human rights laws for the whole of europe around data privacy are being circumvented through the obvious intentional poorest level of regulation from the irish state…?

    The answer is simple… Ireland is a cheap hoare( and I have respect for prostitutes) to ‘murican business and foreign policy interests..

    If gurgle or facederp or Imazombie offered to run our country the f-ing invertibrate establishment would instantly jump at the chance and say ” for what price and what do I / we get out of it? “..

    F-ing joke of a country.. any belief in the public good, sovereignty and democracy is nothing more than an illusion, a pretense to keep you clueless 60%-ish voters making the same stupid mistakes at the ballot box.

    :-J

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