Cormac Ryan, commercial director of Enet, and Peter McCarthy, group CEO of Speed Fibre Group. Image: Conor McCabe Photography
The expansion includes plans to connect all major business parks north and west of Dublin city in a 45km fibre route.
Irish telecoms provider Enet is investing more than €50m to expand fibre networks across Ireland over the next five years.
The open-access network provider, which is based in Limerick, said the expansion will see its fibre network connect major commercial, retail and industrial zones. It is looking to increase the availability of high-capacity data transport for data centre connectivity as well as mobile data and business traffic.
This includes plans to set up more than 45km of new fibre networks along the north and west of Dublin city – connecting all the major business parks that house multinationals as well as 25 data centres.
Fibre availability will increase by 900pc along this route, which will allow for 700TB of traffic once the expansion is complete.
Plans are also in place to invest in a new 10km network in north Dublin that will provide fibre connections to more than 1,000 businesses. An additional 4km backhaul and fibre infrastructure in west Dublin will connect a further 500 businesses to high-speed connectivity.
Enet is part of the Speed Fibre Group, an investment vehicle owned by the Irish Infrastructure Fund that is focused on telecoms infrastructure. It has already expanded its fibre network in Dublin by more than 18.5km between January and May this year.
Peter McCarthy, CEO of the Speed Fibre Group, said that the latest expansion will allow the company to deliver “the highest quality network connections in crucial commercials areas” across Ireland.
“By implementing critical fibre networks to provide high-bandwidth telecommunications connectivity to our wholesale customers, we are supporting thousands of businesses and consumers across the country with the network capacity they need to grow and prosper.”
The company told The Irish Times that the next locations where work is to begin over the next six weeks are Thurles, Co Tipperary, and Portarlington, Co Laois – with more locations in the pipeline to be announced in due course.
“By further enabling our world-class telecommunications networks, this investment will also really cement Ireland’s position as an ideal location for businesses to operate in,” McCarthy added.
In December 2021, Enet struck a deal with Fastcom worth up to €5m to deliver high-speed broadband to regional towns across Ireland. A month prior to that, it formally opened its new €1m headquarters in Limerick, including a data centre and a 24/7 network operations centre.
Updated, 8.02am, 15 September 2022: The previous headline on this article said Enet was making a €50 investment. It was amended to the correct figure of €50m.
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