eircom to reach 1 million homes in Ireland with fiber-based broadband by 2015

eircom, Ireland's incumbent service provider, is so bullish about the country's Fiber to the Cabinet (FTTC) and Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) opportunities that it's set an aggressive plan to roll out these services to 1 million homes over the next four years.

Set to begin working on the network this fall, the FTTC and FTTP network initiatives are part of a larger EUR 100 million (USD 140 million) investment to upgrade eircom's last mile network. This latest drives Fiber to the Home (FTTH) trials eircom conducted last year in Dublin and Wexford.

Over these fiber-based networks, eircom plans to deliver its own IPTV service to compete against country's dominant cable operator UPC Ireland and satellite provider BSkyB.

In phase 1, eircom expects to deliver 40 Mbps speeds and higher to about 100,000 homes via FTTC and FTTP.  

As part of the first phase of its last mile network upgrade, the service provider will initially equip six counties with FTTC and FTTP in addition to large cities such as Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick. Within those six counties, the initial targets include: Mervue (Galway), Douglas (Cork), Dooradoyle (Limerick), Tallaght, Ballyboden, Palmerstown, Swords, Donabate Co. Dublin; Clonee, Co. Meath; and Letterkenny, Co. Donegal.

For more:
- TeleGeography has this article

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