Northern Ireland Plough GBP5m Into Last Few Rural Broadband Notspots

The Northern Ireland Executive (NIE) has announced plans to invest a further £5 million to help plug the regions last remaining broadband “not spots” in remote rural areas by supporting new fixed line internet connectivity solutions from “third party companies“.

At this stage the details are a little unclear but it’s understood that the funding will be managed by the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD). The move would also appear to complement DETI’s recent public consultation (here), which launched last year with the aim of finding and filling the last remaining sub-2Mbps broadband ISP slowspots in the region.

Crucially N.I already benefits from close to total availability of superfast broadband (94%+ coverage) but there are apparently still plenty of “not spot” pockets left to reach.

Michelle O’Neill, N.I Rural Development Minister, said:

“I am committing £5 million to the delivery of broadband that will be used exclusively to target rural areas of high deprivation across the north that currently have no fixed wire infrastructure to access broadband. I hope that this funding will stimulate companies supplying broadband to get out into rural areas and use this infrastructure to provide access for rural dwellers and businesses to use broadband. I want this investment to stimulate rural businesses and give rural dwellers a wider access to services via broadband. This investment will bring my Departments total investment in rural broadband to £7.5million.”

O’Neill notes that the funding will be used to target some 37,000 premises in rural areas that don’t currently have access to a fixed line broadband connection from BT or Virgin Media.