Telecommunications in the Republic of Ireland
Telecommunications in Ireland operate in a regulated competitive market that provides customers with a wide array of advanced digital services.
It was established on 1 October 2009, replacing the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) (Irish: Coimisiún Craolacháin na hÉireann).
The Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment has overall responsibility for national policy and regulation of both telecommunications and broadcasting.
As Bord Telecom Éireann, the company was state owned until 1999, when it was floated on the Irish and New York Stock Exchanges.
Ireland's telecommunications network is a modern digital system connected by an extensive national fibre optic network with multiple high-capacity fibre optic links to the UK, Continental Europe, North America and with dedicated capacity on routes to Asia and other parts of the globe.
It has major aggregation nodes at 140 locations around Ireland and onward fibre connections to another 470 central office sites.
94 Irish towns and cities also have access to publicly owned, carrier-neutral metropolitan fibre networks managed by Enet.
SIRO, a joint venture between ESB Group and Vodafone Ireland, provides another open access fibre to home network, used by multiple ISPs to deliver service.
Meteor and Eir Mobile were the first to launch 4G LTE services in Ireland on 26 September 2013,[8] followed by Vodafone on 14 October 2013,[9] and Three on 27 January 2014.
This is reflected by a sharp fall in the number of fixed line channels in use and an equivalent increase in mobile subscriptions.
From 1957 onwards, P&T began to roll out more modern crossbar switches primarily using equipment supplied by Ericsson built at their Athlone facility.
ITT Pentaconta crossbar switches, built by CGCT (Compagnie générale de constructions téléphoniques) were also used in some areas.
This saw significant improvements to many services, but the network was still quite underdeveloped in rural areas with long waits for new subscribers and the last operator-only exchanges only closing in 1987.
This saw a total transformation of the telephone network with modern automatic and digital services reaching even the most rural parts of Ireland by the mid-1980s.
By the end of 2011 Eircom announced that 75% of its working lines would be connected to Next Generation Broadband (NGB) enabled exchanges.
[21] Currently available services (Q3 2014) A typical monthly broadband Internet subscription cost $26.02 in 2011, 14% less than the average of $30.16 for the 34 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries surveyed.
[22][needs update] In August 2012 Pat Rabbitte, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, outlined a national broadband plan with goals of:[23] Founded in 1996, the Internet Neutral Exchange (INEX) is an industry-owned association that provides IP peering and traffic exchange for its members in Ireland.
In 1998 TV3 (Now Virgin Media 1-4) became the first privately owned commercial TV station and it remains the main free-to-air service after RTÉ.
