1000 Mbps broadband coming to Dundalk!

SIRO is a joint commercial venture between ESB and Vodafone and will deliver a 100% “fibre to the building” broadband product, on a wholesale basis, initially to 50 towns across every county in Ireland, including Dundalk. €450M has been invested by both companies.

SIRO will offer speeds of 1 Gigabit (1000 Mbps) per second to broadband operators (Three, Eircom, Digiweb etc), but they may choose to offer a range of different products & speeds to end consumers at different price points.

Recent data from ComReg, the Irish telecoms regulator, showed that 43% of fixed broadband customers in Ireland receive just 10 Mbps. Direct access to 100% fibre broadband of 1 Gigabit per second will transform the internet experience of small and medium businesses (SME), remote workers and consumers.

No similar nationwide roll-out of a 100% end-to-end fibre-to-the-building service on the electricity network is taking place in the Irish/European market. The unique nationwide delivery on the electricity network will mean that this service, unlike any other, will be delivered with minimal disruption. SIRO will offer products ranging from 200 Mbps to 1 Gigabit (1000Mbps) per second.

This project will deliver the fastest and technically most reliable broadband service to 500,000 premises in Ireland by the end of 2018. There is scope for a second phase under the joint venture. Fibre connectivity will be available to every home in Dundalk and Blackrock, with speeds of 1,000 megabits (1 megabit = 0.125 megabytes) per second, compared to 250 (from UPC) at best in Dublin. This is as fast as Google Fiber in the US, which is only available to a select few residents there.

For home users, this means Internet TV services like Netflix will be much more accessible, and technology such as VoIP (voice over IP) can now easily replace regular phone lines. For small business, it means they are now much better placed to exploit all that cloud computing has to offer and properly establish their business’s online presence. It also facilitates remote access for people who normally have to commute long distance.

Paddy Malone of Dundalk Chamber, had this to say: “Dundalk Chamber was delighted to hear the fantastic plans that SIRO have for Dundalk. This will put us as the premier location in the country and the island for broadband enabled businesses.”

“It is up to all of us in Dundalk to spread the message that Dundalk is THE location not just for Ireland but for Europe. When this facility is operational (rolling out with very little physical disruption) it will add to the existing facilities of DKIT, motorway, 3 airports (Dublin, Aldergrove and Belfast City) and a population of over 2,500,000 within 75 minutes drive.”

He concluded, “This is probably the best news Dundalk has had in the last 50 years.”

Siro is much faster than Eircom’s eFibre. eFibre only brings the fibre line to the nearest street ‘cabinet’, where it connects to a copper phone line before it goes into your home. That means it’s restricted to a maximum of about 100Mbps (and a huge number of eFibre lines don’t make it that high). Siro takes a fibre line right into your living room or kitchen, meaning you get maximum fibre speeds with no “last mile” bottleneck like traditional broadband technology.

Siro is a ‘wholesale’ product, meaning that you won’t buy the broadband package from Siro itself. Instead, it will be from a local operator that resells you a Siro-based fibre broadband service. In other words, you might be buying the product from UPC or Vodafone or even Eircom.

Siro will only roll out to towns with at least 4,000 homes or businesses. Rural users will have to wait for the government’s proposed state-subsidised National Broadband Plan.