The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Kerry’s ‘Third World’ Broadband
WE’VE BEEN PROMISED HIGH SPEED BROADBAND FOR YEARS BUT AVERAGE DOWNLOAD SPEEDS IN KERRY REMAIN THE THIRD SLOWEST NATIONWIDE. TADHG EVANS REPORTS.
BROADBAND IS AS IMPORTANT AS ELECTRICITY TO A LOT OF BUSINESSES NOW.
PAT ROHAN
THE ICMSA’s chair on farm and rural affairs, Pat Rohan, has described Kerry’s broadband woes as ‘thirdworld stuff ’.
His comments come in the wake of documents released by the Department of Communications, Energy & Natural Resources this week that once again shows Kerry to have broadband quality that’s among the worst in the county.
Kerry’s average download speed of 8.6 Megabits per second (Mbps) is the slowest in the country with the exception of Monaghan (8.2 Mbps) and Wexford (8.5 Mbps). Kerry’s download speeds are almost twice as slow as the national average, and almost three-anda-half times slower than speeds in Dublin and Waterford.
More than 51,000 premises in Kerry, including 8,000 businesses, are without access to a good broadband connection.
Statistics are available for each of Kerry’s 2756 townlands, the vast majority of whom are entirely without Next Generation Access (NGA).
There are 39 townlands in Kerry that have more than 100 premises without access to a service that Mr. Rohan describes as ‘a necessity’.
Farranreagh in the Valentia area is shown to be one of the worst blackspots for broadband in the country: all 330 of its premises have been identified as being in need of intervention by the government’s National Broadband Plan (NBP). Fenit follows in an unwanted second place with 258 unserved premises
Mr Rohan hails from Breac Luain, Annascaul, where a staggering 146 premises are without access to decent broadband. His home peninsula of west Kerry is terribly affected by the issue, with Muiríoch also identified as being one of the most obvious blackspots in the county.
He tells The Kerryman of the travails of people in the area:
“A lot of the real basic things that farmers need to do like registering calves and accessing milk records now have to be done online.
“I can’t even get phone connection at times, let alone internet connection.’
“It’s terrible for business in these affected areas too. Broadband’s as important as electricity to a lot of businesses now.
“A lot of services are closing in rural areas, so it’s more important than ever before to have good broadband.”
The national statistics tell of an urban-rural divide, and Kerry is no exception in that storyline.
Tralee, Killarney, Listowel and their surrounding areas have almost blanket coverage by high speed broadband.
Other more built-up areas like Kenmare, Cahersiveen and Killorglin are not without their problems, but the quality of their coverage far exceeds what’s available in more rural areas of the county.
Poor broadband in rural areas emerged as one of the hottest issues ahead of last February’s general election, and some observers acknowledging it as one of the reasons for the hammering that was handed out to the Fine Gael-Labour government of the time.
In spite of this, the Minister for Communications, Energy & Natural Resources, Denis Naughten TD, confirmed in April that the government’s National Broadband Plan would be unable to complete its nationwide NGA coverage until 2022 – as opposed to the original deadline which was set at 2020.
Though Minister Naughten pledged to negotiate for more aggressive rollout timelines, he admitted last week that even a deadline of 2022 was ambitious.
The ESB is trying to resist an EU directive that would make their infrastructure available for broadband firms, which would facilitate a faster rollout of high speed broadband.
Disputes have also emerged over which company should be awarded the contract to connect over 500,000 rural homes and businesses.
The National Broadband Plan aims to deliver a minimum speed of 30 Mbps to all premises in the state by 2022, and its rollout is scheduled to begin in mid-2017.
As for Kerry, who knows?