So, how much broadband speed do we really need?
What’s the right amount of broadband speed?
There is no firm definition for ‘high-speed broadband’ in Ireland, but in 2015 the FCC (the US communications regulator) defined it as a minimum download speed of 25 megabits per second (Mbps).
Almost 70% of Irish households now have connections that hit this speed, according to ComReg.
Another venture, called Siro, promises speeds from 200Mbps to 1,000Mbps.
‘And Virgin Media (formerly UPC) has also long been able to provide fibre broadband to Irish households with top speeds of 360Mbps,’ enthuses comparison site Bonkers.ie.
However, all of this news only serves to annoy the nearthird of us who are still living in the digital dark ages. Even where I live, three kilometres from Dublin city centre, we can only look on enviously as these superfast broadband speeds are rolled out.
The broadband speed for my area in Dublin 3 is just 15Mbps at best.
At the start of this year, 30% of homes had slow broadband or none at all. But don’t despair – the Government has a plan! Communications minister Denis Naughton is promising that ‘77% of premises will have access to high-speed broadband by the end of 2018 – and the majority of the remaining premises by the end of 2020’.
The revised National Broadband Plan (NBP) intervention map will be available on his department’s website so that people can check to see the status of their premises.
This programme may well be going fantastically well and we will all soon be downloading high definition movies at lightning speed.
But the words ‘Government’ and ‘plan’ do not sit well together in my mind, or that of most Irish people.
So I will believe it when I see it!