Poor rural broadband connectivity is a major problem for local businesses, according to a study from Big Red Cloud, a cloud accounting software business.
The survey of more than 250 small businesses states that 96 percent of SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) say they believe they’re at a competitive disadvantage due to poor connectivity in rural areas. Furthermore, 56 percent of these businesses said that broadband issues are the worst thing they face, even more so than IT issues with personnel, cyber crime, and other tech-related issues.
According to Big Red Cloud, this lack of reliable connection could be detrimental to these local businesses.
The National Broadband Plan, published in 2012 with an update in 2015, aims to fix this by providing almost 550,000 locations in rural Ireland with 30Mpbs connectivity in coming years. If implemented, the improved broadband connectivity should benefit 688,000 people in the Irish labour force.
Project Ireland 2040, the National Planning Framework’s recent plan, along with the National Development Plan released in February, also emphasize the establishment of more reliable broadband connectivity in rural areas.