National Broadband Ireland, the name associated with the Granahan McCourt-led Consortium bidding for the National Broadband Plan (NBP), has submitted its final tender to the Department of Communications, Climate Action & Environment for the delivery of the project.
The consortium represents the last entry standing for the tender following the departure of SSE from the original bid earlier this year. Eir withdrew its bid last July following the decision by wholesale network provider Siro to bow out the lrevious September.
Enet, Ireland’s largest open-access network operator and the company who manage the state-owned metropolitan area networks (MANs), will be an integral part of the ongoing operation of the network when built.
The documentation lodged today demonstrates the Consortium’s commercial, financial, legal, as well as technical solutions for the delivery of 1Gb/s broadband to every home, farm and business in the intervention area. The submission also nominates a number of key partners for the project – enet, Nokia, Actavo, The Kelly Group and KN Group.
In addition, Nokia, the multinational data networking and telecommunications equipment company, has been nominated as one of the key technology partners. National Broadband Ireland’s partners for the construction phase of the project include the Denis O’Brien-owned Actavo, The Kelly Group and KN Group.
To complement the physical build, the company will have long term access to open eir’s rural pole infrastructure and duct network.
David C. McCourt, founder and CEO of Granahan McCourt, said: “We have assembled a world-class team with financial resources, unrivalled construction expertise and proven experience of operational capabilities to deliver this project for the Irish Government and for the citizens in rural Ireland.
“Throughout my career, the businesses I have been involved with have serially improved connectivity in technologically underserved regions of the world and have pioneered the roll out of telecom networks of substantial scale. We know this experience will prove to be crucial for the NBP and that’s why I can be so confident in our ability to co-ordinate all the elements required to finance and deliver a project of this size and complexity.
“The Consortium is committed to the project’s success from a policy and a commercial perspective and we look forward, subject to being awarded the contract, to delivering world-class high-speed broadband to every home, farm and business in the intervention area.”
Peter Hendrick, National Broadband Ireland’s Bid Director, said: “For over three years I have led this bid and developed the key partnerships required to deliver this project. We know this is a project of scale and complexity, so when selecting construction partners, it was important that they have specific expertise and track record in terms of delivering similar projects.
“Also, I can confirm that Nokia has been selected as a key supplier and will play a critical role with the provision, installation, integration and commissioning of active equipment or the electronics that drives the bandwidth. Much has been said about the 30Mb/s target set by the NBP, but the network we intend to build is a Gigabit network, capable of delivering 1Gb/s.”
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