This article is from page 22 of the 2012-12-18 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 22 JPG
BUSINESSES in Clare need further investment in broadband to support enterprise and jobs growth across the county. In a new report, Connecting the West: Next Generation Broadband in the Western Region, the Western Development Commission highlights this need.
The report includes case studies such as that of MeteoGroup in Ennis, a company that finds the cost of telecommunications services for a given level of broadband capacity more expensive in Ireland than at its other sites across Europe. Another Clare company, eTeams based in Scariff, highlighted the practice of eWorking, where employees work remotely from the company office, but need broadband connections to do so.
The Western Development Com- mission’s report examines the likely rollout of next generation broadband services and makes recommendations to ensure next generation access for all areas and better value for money for state investment in infrastructure.
Mr Ian Brannigan (acting CEO) said “broadband costs in the Western Region need to be competitive with prices available across Europe. Rural and regional areas need quality broadband services at a competitive price to ensure that businesses can compete on a level playing field”.
“The evidence from across the region presented in this report indicates that in many areas broadband services lag those that are available elsewhere in the country, for example, the western region accounts for 18 per cent of the households in Ireland but accounts for 28 per cent of applicants to the Rural Broadband Scheme (RBS) highlighting the weaker broadband services there.”
The WDC report noted that a better value of next generation broadband infrastructure can make geographic distance to customers far less relevant and provides easy access to worldwide markets. “This can be a real benefit to promoting regional and rural job growth, but only if the infrastructure and services are there,” said Mr Brannigan.