Eir writes to Wexford County Council over concerns it is ‘not being catered for’ in new housing developments

By Simon Bourke, Wexford People

Eir has written to Wexford County Council (WCC) to voice its concerns regarding the planning conditions for new housing developments in the county. The company was responding to an article published by The Wexford People on December 15 which revealed that houses in The Paddocks in Wexford town were being delivered without any telecommunications ducting, thus limiting the number of broadband options available to residents.

Although it was subsequently confirmed that those who purchase the homes will be able to avail of SIRO’s broadband service, the lack of telecommunications infrastructure means that National Broadband Ireland’s (NBI) fibre-optic service – which includes Eir – will not be available.

The issue was initially raised by Councillor Jim Codd at the December meeting of WCC and, following his comments, Eir issued a letter to directors of services Eamonn Hore and Liz Hore in which they requested an amendment to the council’s current planning regulations so as to to “ensure that multiple fibre network providers are catered for in an equal and fair fashion for the benefit of all new homes”.

Issued by managing director of open eir, Una Stafford, the letter (seen by The Wexford People) outlines Eir’s concerns regarding “the current wording of planning conditions for new developments” in Co Wexford and how it is “impacting on the roll-out and availability of high-speed broadband connectivity choices to new homes in your local authority area”.

“The key issue facing open eir when trying to deliver broadband connections to new housing developments around the country is that the wording of planning conditions relating to broadband connections varies and, in many cases, is very unclear,” continued Ms Stafford.

“Due to this lack of clarity and lack of consistency, many developments nationwide only provide for electrical ducting to be installed, rather than a dedicated telecommunication ducting facilitating open access broadband installation. Electrical ducting is not available to other network infrastructure providers to access and therefore restricts multi-network broadband deployment.

It's been alleged that the new houses in Wexford town will not be able to avail of fibre optic broadband.

“This in turn is leading to a reduction in choice and competition for the provision of broadband infrastructure in new developments, by effectively restricting access to a single infrastructure provider using electrical ducting.”

Referencing planning conditions in Dublin City and Meath County Council, Ms Stafford said those councils facilitated “all broadband providers” by operating “pragmatic” and “fair” arrangements. Rather than simply benefitting Eir and increasing its customer base, Ms Stafford said altering the conditions for developers would have a positive effect for WCC in the long-run.

“The benefit of allowing for open access connectivity arrangements is that it will avoid future disruption and costs due to road openings, which will be a major benefit for the council and occupants of the dwellings. It also has the added, and vital benefit, of increasing the overall resilience and capacity of overall telecommunications networks.”

At the January meeting of WCC, a vindicated Cllr Codd asked officials how, in light of Ms Stafford’s letter, they intended to proceed.

“Following the publication of that article, there were phone calls and irate people contacting me, telling me I didn’t understand what I was talking about, but according to that letter I was correct,” he said. “I would like the council to comment on how we are going to deal with this.

"I’m not interested in defending any huge companies but I do want to defend the taxpayer. Are we creating a monopoly here? Is there a danger that when this reaches the courts we are going to be tearing up pavements?”

In response, chief executive Eddie Taaffe said he could not discuss specific cases but that if “there are issues with ducting we will look at it through the planning system and ensure the services provided in every development are as they should be, in accordance with national policy.”