Ireland's eircom has reached a major milestone in its next-gen broadband rollout program, announcing that it has passed 1 million premises with its fiber network.
In Cahersiveen, the site of the 1 millionth customer, Alex White, T.D., Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, was in attendance at an event along with eircom's chairman, Padraig McManus; group CEO Herb Hribar and Carolan Lennon, managing director of eircom wholesale, along with other local representatives, businesses and residents.
Joining these executives was Alan Landers, owner of 'San Antoine' a B&B in the town, which was the 1 millionth premises passed.
eircom said that its fiber network is close to reaching 50 percent of homes and businesses across Ireland with speeds of up to 100 Mbps over its fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) hybrid copper and fiber-based last mile network. Similar to Deutsche Telekom, eircom is using a mix of VDSL and vectoring to provide the higher broadband speeds over its existing copper network.
Because it is an open access network, 15 competitive service providers are using the network to provide service to residential and business customers.
In County Kerry, 25,000 homes and businesses can access the higher speed services in Killarney, Ballyspillane, Muckross, Tralee, Killerisk, Castleisland, Killorglin and now Cahersiveen.
However, eircom's ambitions will continue with plans to reach 1.6 million homes and business by the end of 2016. When that program is completed, the service provider said that its fiber-based broadband service "will be available to every town in Ireland with a population of 900 residents or more."
To reach its broadband goals, eircom has committed $1.94 billion, which includes $516 million for fiber broadband services.
For more:
- see the release
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