SIRO announced a huge €620m expansion of their Gigabit broadband network, and as we’re a vendor on the SIRO 100% fibre-broadband network, Blacknight broadband customers will benefit when the new infrastructure comes online.
From their press release yesterday:
An Taoiseach Micheál Martin TD has today (28th October) launched the second phase of our rollout of our Gigabit broadband network – Ireland’s only 100% fibre-optic network – which will see us almost doubling our footprint to 770,000 homes and businesses (over 2.1 million people) and reaching 154 towns across Ireland.
€620 million in funding has been secured through the European Investment Bank and a syndicate of Irish and international lenders, which will be invested in expanding the availability of SIRO’s services, as well as upgrading all our existing infrastructure for 2 Gigabit capacity – double the speed of the most powerful broadband services in Ireland today.
The additional funding will bring our total investment in its Gigabit broadband network to in excess of €1 billion. €170 million of the funding will be provided by the European Investment Bank alone in line with the European Commission’s “Connectivity for a Competitive Digital Single Market – Towards a Gigabit Society” strategy to deploy market leading broadband services to meet the future needs for Europe’s digital economy and society.
As Blacknight is now a broadband provider to all of Ireland, we’ll be offering these incredible speeds to our customers as they come online.
The funding will be used to bring a further 320,000 homes and businesses to its existing rollout programme to 450,000 premises. All 770,000 homes and businesses will ultimately have access to our 2 Gigabit fibre broadband service, which has already gone live in Kilkenny (right in our backyard!), with the upgrade for SIRO’s existing 400,000 premises completed by early 2022. With the increased data demands due to a shift to remote working all over Ireland, super-fast internet will be critical to any business or career success in this new reality.
From An Taoiseach Micheál Martin TD:
The pandemic further underlined the importance of connectivity in keeping society and our economy functioning, and our people and communities safer. SIRO’s investment is very positive in terms of creating greater access to reliable fibre broadband for more towns across Ireland. Creating a fully connected Ireland is a fundamental objective of Government, achievable through partnership between public and private funded operators, such as SIRO, working together to reach this goal.
These super-fast speeds offered by this new network will be life-changing for many people who live in underserved areas of Ireland or have been suffering from slower fixed-line internet and wireless-only broadband.
If you’d like more information about your broadband options from Blacknight, please get in touch with our sales team. For more information on our SIRO options and see if your Eircode can get it – check out our SIRO page here.