National Broadband Plan surveying taking place in west Mayo
SURVEYING works for the National Broadband Plan (NBP) are continuing in several areas of Mayo.
National Broadband Ireland (NBI) crews have made substantial progress in the county, where the following areas are now being surveyed: Killadoon, Fahy, Thallabaun, Cregganbaun, Ashleam, Carrowniskey, Roonagh Point, Louisburgh, Derreen, Kinnock, Corragaun and Kilsallagh.
NBI contractors have been on the ground across the country for 13 months and over 186,000 premises nationwide have been surveyed to date. This involves physically walking the routes and documenting images, notes and measurements of the poles, cables and underground ducts in each area.
This will enable network design solutions for the provision of a fibre network to every premises in the Intervention Area – a map of over 544,000 premises nationwide has been identified as not being served with adequate broadband speeds.
In Mayo, there are 36,495 premises in the Intervention Area, which includes homes, farms, commercial businesses and schools. This equates to 43% of all premises in the county.
Under the National Broadband Plan, Mayo will see an investment of €145 million in the new high-speed fibre network.
Since August 2020, NBI crews have commenced with surveying works in townlands outside Ballina, Castlebar and Westport. These initial works pave the way for the next stage of deploying fibre on poles/ducts and includes the erection of poles, unblocking of ducts, and the insertion of sub duct into existing ducts, for the fibre to be installed.
NBI chief executive Peter Hendrick said the company was pleased with the progress being made: “We started physical work on the ground in January 2020 and despite the challenging environment caused by Covid-19, we’ve grown and mobilised the team to have over 800 people working on the project across all 26 counties and making good progress. We are acutely aware that people want access to high-speed broadband as soon as possible, and our goal is to deliver that.
“Survey designs are an important part of mapping out how every home and business will be connected, and these will provide the blueprint for how the NBI fibre is laid.”
NBI’s website https://nbi.ie/index.html has a search tool to enable the public to check whether their premises is within the rollout area, and to show indicative dates for areas being surveyed. There is also a facility to register for updates on this.