SIRO To Invest €40 Million In Rollout To Six New Towns By the End of 2016

SIRO, the open-access broadband provider delivering Ireland’s first 100% fibre-optic broadband network, has announced that it will invest €40 million to expand its rollout to its next six locations – Mullingar, Newbridge, Ennis, Portlaoise, Drogheda and Carlow.

As a result, services will be live or construction work will be underway in 17 towns across the country by the end of the year – Dundalk, Cavan, Carrigaline, Sligo, Letterkenny, Tralee, Wexford, Drogheda, Westport, Castlebar, Mullingar, Newbridge, Ennis, Ratheniska, Carlow and Skibbereen.

Speaking at the National Ploughing Championships, Sean Atkinson, SIRO CEO, said: “Since we started construction in August last year, we have received a fantastic response in our rollout towns. We are delighted to add six new fibrehoods to our network build. We are now passing 10,000 premises per month and working in 17 towns. SIRO gives consumers and businesses in regional Ireland access to far better services than that available in Dublin and other cities, thus reversing the digital divide and allowing them to compete more effectively for investment and jobs.

“It is our ambition to become Ireland’s new national Telecomms infrastructure. We have plans for a second phase which covers over 300 smaller towns and we are shortlisted for the Government’s National Broadband Plan (NBP) which aims to deliver high speed access to all citizens by 2020. We believe that Fibre-to-the-Building is the only solution capable of future proofing Ireland’s needs.”

Using the existing ESB network, SIRO is delivered by fibre optic cables all the way to the building. This technology, known as “FTTB”, has no copper connections at any point to slow down the network and delivers 1 Gigabit download and upload speeds. For example, a high definition film (4GB) takes one hour to download with a 10mbps connection – with SIRO it will take 30 seconds. SIRO is offered on an open-access basis to all telecoms retailers in Ireland. Last month SIRO revealed Digiweb will offer services via its 100% fibre-optic Gigabit broadband network, joining Vodafone as its second retail partner. Discussions with other retail partners are ongoing.

Anyone interested in receiving updates on the rollout of SIRO should register for further details at www.siro.ie.