Eircom, Ireland’s largest broadband provider by subscribers, will launch fibre-to-the-home (FTTH)-enabled speeds of 150Mbps, 300Mbps and 1Gbps in the first 16 – of a planned 66 – locations by the end of August. Silicon Republic cites CEO Richard Moat as saying that the 1Gbps FTTH service will launch on a wholesale and retail basis in August; the operator has already published wholesale reference offers for other telcos wishing to use the infrastructure. Moat commented: ‘We are building the FTTH services in 16 towns at the moment and we’ve already run a trial in Belcarra in Mayo, delivering 1Gbps to 50 premises. Local businesses have told us that the effect of high-speed fibre has been transformative for them.’
As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, Eircom commenced work on the FTTH rollout in November last year, with the project running in parallel to its fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) rollout, which is set to pass 1.6 million Irish homes by mid-2016.