Last year we began offering fibre broadband through NBI, the national fibre broadband initiative seeking to bring broadband internet to the parts of Ireland that don’t already have access to broadband connections.
In that time, to put it simply, we’ve changed lives.
Simon Woodworth, a cyber-security lecturer at University College Cork, signed up for NBI fibre, and it’s changed his life. The difference in speed was jaw-dropping for Simon. He’d been relying on slow DSL for years, and during the various COVID-19 lockdowns, he tried to use fast wireless, but it proved unreliable for the type of work he was doing. Having a fixed fibre connection for someone who works in cyber-security has been the difference between night and day.
“Download speeds are very close to 1Gb/s, which is incredible this far out in the countryside,” said Simon in a recent press release put out by us. “Before, it was frequently as bad as 1 mb/s and sometimes non-existent. The speed difference is just incredible. But it isn’t just about speed. It’s about having a broadband service good enough that I no longer have to worry about it, the same way most people nowadays accept rural electricity as a reliable service. This is all great for working from home as I can pull down large lecture videos in seconds. Netflix is now effectively instantaneous when before it would buffer constantly. And finally, I can now entertain backing up about 1.5TB of photos to the cloud to keep them safe.”
In addition to people like Simon, NBI will bring high-speed fibre internet to over 500,000 premises throughout Ireland that did not have access to it before. Locally, over 8,000 premises in Carlow alone will be able to get state of the art super-fast fibre internet. With more people working from home or starting hybrid office/home working arrangements, consumers now have more options on where to live. Fibre internet from NBI makes it possible, and you no longer need to live in a city or town to get world-class high-speed internet.
“Let’s face it, the new reality post-pandemic is hybrid or remote working, and the one thing consumers and businesses need to make it work is high-speed internet. For too long, rural areas have been underserved by big broadband providers; high-speed options simply didn’t exist for them,” said our CEO Michele Neylon. “Now, with the rollout of NBI, hundreds of thousands of businesses can come online and operate at the same high speeds that have been available elsewhere. This supports our national vision for this country to make the most of digital opportunities.”
In the NBI rollout, 8,000+ premises in Carlow, 18,300+ in Kilkenny, 79,000+ in Cork, 15,300+ in Wexford, 26,900+ in Kerry and many more all over Ireland will be eligible for fibre broadband. Rural businesses can finally get broadband speeds that simply weren’t available before. The frustration of distance, antiquated hardware, and slow speeds will be a thing of the past.
All Irish consumers can see if they qualify for fibre broadband from NBI in rural areas through Blacknight’s Eircode checker.