Fibre broadband is on its’ way to Roscommon, with the town selected as one of the first towns where SIRO will roll-out its 100% fibre network, as part of broadband operator SIRO’s next phase of expansion.
Roscommon is one of the first towns to benefit as SIRO announces a €620m broadband network expansion that reaches a further 90 towns across Ireland. Broadband operator’s ambitious plan aims to make fibre available to an additional 90 towns and 770,000 homes and businesses.
The decision that Roscommon has been selected was announced at SIRO’s official launch of its fibre network expansion during an event held by the company and attended by An Taoiseach Micheál Martin in O’Reilly Hall, University College Dublin on Thursday 28 October 2021.
SIRO, a joint venture company between ESB and Vodafone founded in 2015, is almost doubling its existing network footprint from 410,000 premises to 770,000 homes and businesses across Ireland, connecting over 2.1 million people and making fibre broadband available to 154 towns. SIRO’s fibre network is currently available in 64 towns, including Monksland Athlone in County Roscommon.
The expansion is being funded by a syndicate of national and international lender, with the European Investment Bank being a significant funder of the expansion.
While SIRO’s latest network expansion will be rolled out over the next four years, the company confirmed that Roscommon will be one of the first of the 90 towns to benefit, with work to roll-out its fibre broadband in the town expected to commence from next month.
The introduction of SIRO’s fibre broadband to Roscommon will greatly enhance how people live and work in the town. SIRO’s reliable and resilient fibre broadband will facilitate hybrid and more flexible working, improve how businesses use digital tools such as cloud technologies or trade online, make Roscommon a more attractive destination for investment and increased connectivity to allow people to stay connected and access public services such as health or online education.
The investment will not only expand the availability of SIRO’s fibre broadband but will also see its existing infrastructure upgraded to 2 Gigabit speeds – twice the speed of the most powerful broadband services currently available to homes in Ireland.
Commenting on the launch, SIRO CEO John Keaney noted, “SIRO is pleased to confirm that Roscommon will be one of the first towns where we will roll-out our 100% fibre broadband network as part of the next stage of our development. Resilient and reliable broadband matters hugely to Roscommon because it means that more people have the option of working from home, with less cars on the roads and families able to spend more quality time with each other. Equally, more local businesses will be able to fully participate in the digital economy and work better and smarter.”
An Taoiseach Micheál Martin announcing SIRO’s network expansion programme stated, “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.”
Using the existing ESB electricity network, SIRO delivers fibre optic cables all the way to the building. This technology, known as Fibre-to-the-Building, has no copper connections at any point to slow down the network and currently delivers 1 Gigabit speeds (with the SIRO network currently being upgraded to 2 Gigabit speeds).
Source: Roscommon County Council
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