Northern Ireland Trail-blazes Fibre to the Home with Live Roll-Out

Northern Ireland Trail-blazes Fibre to the Home with Live Roll-Out. New social housing development provides residents with choice of high speed broadband alternatives. A new social housing development in Belfast is one of the first parts of the UK where residents will be offered a choice of next generation high speed broadband services. This is the result of an initiative by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) who are responsible for telecommunications policy in Northern Ireland.

Following the trial, residents will be offered both high speed copper-based

broadband services and fibre to the home. Virgin Media and Bytel, the service providers, are currently offering 20 megabits per second speeds. As a result of the trial both companies now plan to offer customers even faster connectivity in the future based on this technology being installed. Northern Ireland was the first region in Europe to have 100% broadband access. DETI is actively exploring what will be needed to deliver widespread access to next generation broadband in its private sector.

Economy Minister for Northern Ireland, Nigel Dodds, agrees that all broadband access is only the first goal in providing a high speed infrastructure in Northern Ireland: “We cannot be complacent. First generation broadband is rapidly being overtaken and the debate in the UK and in other countries is increasingly about higher speed, next generation broadband. We must look to the future and what has to be done to ensure our businesses and home users continue to have access to world class telecommunications.”

The trial shows that developers and service providers can work together now to install high speed technologies in new residential and commercial builds. Paul Robinson, of DETI’s Telecommunications Policy Unit, said: “These trial high speed residential solutions were both implemented with little technical difficulties or major challenges. The cost of installing high speed equipment is no different to installing first generation broadband. These high speed service offerings will allow residents to obtain ‘next generation’ broadband services such as video on demand, high speed video and TV streaming, Voice over IP services and even more as new services which are purpose built for high speed IP are rolled out.”