From left: Ronan Whelan, commercial director of Siro, with Cormac Ryan, commercial manager of Enet. Image: Chris Bellew/Fennell Photography
Enet and Siro have announced a partnership that will allow the former to gain access to Siro’s growing number of 1Gbps connections across the country.
With plans to bring 1Gbps fibre broadband to 15 Irish towns in the coming months, Siro, the Vodafone and ESB joint initiative, has revealed it is now part of a partnership with another national broadband provider: Enet.
Until now, Siro and Enet have been friendly rivals for contracts to bring high-speed broadband to rural parts of Ireland as part of the National Broadband Plan, but now they are working together.
As part of today’s (4 May) announcement, the pair said that under the agreement, Enet will become a Siro aggregator, enabling the former’s customers to gain access to Siro’s fibre optic network.
This new deal follows a previous agreement between the two to allow Siro to use the Enet network as an integral part of its build.
So far, Siro has connected 70,000 premises to its fibre-to-the-building network – one of the largest in the country – and Enet now plans to connect the Siro network to a number of additional national broadband and regional broadband retailers.
New software platform
One of the major components of the deal included Enet making a “significant investment” in the development of an automated software platform that aggregates its own network as well as Siro’s.
The new platform is designed to combine qualification, provisioning, billing, ticketing and life-cycle management across both wholesale and retail services.
Commenting on the announcement, Sean Atkinson, CEO of Siro, said: “Our partnership with Enet highlights the industry demand for an alternative national telecoms infrastructure.
“Together with Enet and our other partners, we will reverse the digital divide in Ireland and future-proof the country’s broadband needs for decades ahead.”
Conal Henry, Enet CEO, added: “Enet is pleased to announce this deal, which complements our deep-fibre network and enhances our reach to end-customer premises.
“With Siro providing the last-mile fibre access, Enet will integrate this fibre broadband service with the metropolitan area networks as well as our own national fibre network to offer a full end-to-end offering to all retail service providers.”
