E-business boosted by arrival of giant cable

The Republic's e-commerce revolution took a significant step forward yesterday with the landing in Co Wexford of the State's largest telecommunications cable.

The £60 million (€76 million) fibre-optic cable can handle up to 30 million phone calls simultaneously and will result in faster and substantially cheaper international telecommunications services.

It is the result of a partnership between the Government and the telecommunications giant, Global Crossing, which is building a fibre-optic network spanning five continents.

The Minister for Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, and the president of Global Crossing (Ireland), Mr Gene Shutler, were in attendance for the landing of the cable at Ballinesker Beach.

From Ballinesker it will be connected to a landing station in Wexford and from there to a central distribution point at the CityWest business campus in Dublin. It is scheduled to be in operation by June 30th.

Ms O'Rourke said the economic benefits would be enormous. "The potential for both indigenous and incoming industry is huge because it means Ireland will have state-of-the-art connectivity," she said.

The Government was determined that not only big businesses but also local communities would have access to the State's rapidly improving telecommunications network.

The cable landed yesterday is 42 millimetres in diameter, but could comfortably handle all of Ireland's international telecommunications traffic for at least the next five years, according to Global Crossing.

The 40 gigabit-per-second pipeline will link directly with the company's worldwide network and ultimately connect Ireland to 200 cities worldwide, enabling businesses here to transmit huge volumes of data. Access will cost a tenth of current market prices, said a spokesman for the Department of Public Enterprise.

He said that in agreeing to underwrite the development, the Government had decided not to wait for private companies to bring Ireland's telecommunications capacity up to the standard which would soon be required. The Government had already spent £10 million on the project, but ultimately there would be no cost to the taxpayer, he added, as bandwidth - or telecommunications capacity - bought by the Government was to be sold on to private operators.

The development will enhance the IDA's ability to attract foreign investment as companies with high-capacity requirement can be guaranteed that it will always be met.

It is only the start of Global Crossing's involvement in Ireland. The company currently employs 16 at its Irish headquarters in Ballsbridge, Dublin. Mr Shutler said the number would rise dramatically as the company established a billing centre and a call centre here in the near future.

The company expected to have about 40 employees by the end of the year. "By the end of next year, depending on progress on both centres, it could be several hundred," he said.