Telecommunications services

Description

The Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications has concluded a procurement for the establishment of a high speed and future proofed broadband network with minimum service requirements under the National Broadband Plan (‘NBP’). This contract award notice is for a ‘service concession’ to design, build, operate and maintain a wholesale next generation access network and associated services within the NBP Intervention Area (‘IA’). The IA currently covers over 544,000 premises, including almost 100,000 businesses, and will include any new premises that are built in the IA. The NBP’s vision is to connect all Ireland’s communities by dealing definitively with the broadband connectivity challenge in rural areas by stimulating investment at a wholesale level. The NBP aims to address the ‘digital divide’ between urban areas and remote rural areas. The competitive Dialogue process commenced in 2015 using a gap funding ownership model and was concluded in late 2019. Means the lot for the combined Southern Intervention Area and Northern Intervention Area under the commercial stimulus model.