From today Irish cable broadband provider UPC Ireland will begin rolling out a high speed 20Mbps service to more than 422,000 broadband-enabled households in Dublin, Galway, Waterford, Limerick and Cork, and all other major cabled towns. UPC Ireland, which comprises the businesses of ntl Communications (Ireland) Ltd and Chorus Communication Ltd, is the largest pay-TV operator in the Republic of Ireland with 86,500 broadband subscribers as at 31 March 2008. UPC operates across ten European countries and is reported to have over 5.6 million broadband internet subscribers.
In a separate story, Irish telecoms provider Smart Telecom has signed a multi-million Euro contract with domestic firm ESB Telecom for the supply of a high-capacity 10Gbps next generation network across two national fibre rings that will span the whole Republic. The new NGN will enable Smart to deploy advanced broadband services such as IPTV to residential and business users. ESB Telecom is a wholesale provider of telecoms services, and currently operates a 1,300km nationwide fibre-optic network, as well as having 14 points of presence (PoPs) and more than 300 radio sites.