National Broadband Ireland (NBI), the company responsible for delivering the Irish government’s National Broadband Plan (NBP), has revealed that its network is now available to more than 200,000 homes, farms and businesses across the country. Announcing what it called this ‘major milestone’ in coverage, NBI noted that its current network footprint means that ‘well over a third’ of premises targeted by the NBP now have access to full fibre infrastructure.
Offering up some detailed figures, NBI said that more than 77% of premises (437,887) have now completed the survey and design stages, while 62% of premises (353,684) have ‘moved to or through construction’. A total of 38% of premises (215,065) are now reported to be in the ‘build complete’ category, meanwhile.
Of further note, the company said that 60,000 premises have connected to its network, while claiming that its average take-up rate was well ahead of projections at 30%, with take-up reaching above 40% in areas where its infrastructure has been live for longer than twelve months.
Commenting, NBI’s chief executive Peter Hendrick said: ‘High speed fibre broadband connections with minimum speeds of 500Mbps are available to more than 200,000 homes, farms and businesses. NBI will ultimately serve 564,000 premises, so we have now reached over a third of the rollout and are ahead of our target of 185,000 premises passed and ready to connect by January 2024.’