National Broadband Ireland has been fined €157,000 and sanctioned for delaying the rollout of its National Broadband Plan, the Commissioner General of Accounts (C&AG) has found.
BI also faces further sanctions under performance monitoring standards currently being assessed by the Ministry of Communications, Watchdog said.
Due to deployment delays, the NBI has collected less than half of the total government subsidies expected to be obtained under the scheme’s original projections. In total, we received a total of €177.2 million by the end of 2021. This represents 48 percent of the budget for that period.
Upon completion of the seven-year rollout to 562,000 rural facilities across the country, total subsidies paid to the NBI could reach €2.7 billion, including a €500 million contingency.
Last week, the NBI announced that the deployment had “passed” 80,000 facilities, including 7,000 farms, and 19,537 of those facilities had signed up for broadband service.
However, this is well behind the original rollout plan, which targeted 115,000 “passes” by January of last year.
The NBI blames Covid-related labor disruptions for much of the rollout delay.
However, C&AG found that in areas where fiber broadband technology is deployed, usage of the service is significantly higher than expected. An initial occupancy of around 16% was expected, according to Watchdog, but his actual occupancy was 24%.
“Actual occupancy rates through January 2022 are lower than estimates, but occupancy rates (ratio of connected facilities to transit facilities) are higher than initial estimates,” the report said. increase.
“Department store [of Communications] He also mentioned that one of the existing providers plans to turn off the existing copper network service once the NBI fiber network is deployed. This greatly increases demand as many consumers have less choice to use the service.
NBI internally estimates that by the end of the 25-year contract period, the utilization rate of available broadband services will reach 80% among ordinary households, with higher utilization among corporate customers.
The company’s latest figure for connected homes is 19,537.
