ENET BELIEVES its extension of the Metropolitan Area Network (Man) infrastructure to Carrigtwohill in Co Cork will generate strong revenues and pay for itself in the near future. The 11km extension of the fibre-optic network will connect the IDA Industrial Estate in the town as well as a number of other homes and businesses.
According to Conal Henry, chief executive of Enet, the extension comes as a result of a “significant investment” from the company’s own cash reserves. “There’s a number of high-employment businesses in the area, and a lot of those companies in the IDA business park would like to use the infrastructure,” he said.
Enet currently manages the 92 Mans, which were built by the State from 2003 onwards as a way of providing a high-quality communications infrastructure to carriers on an open-access basis and cost a total of €176 million. Mr Henry said demand for the network had been increasing steadily for some time as companies and customers sought more bandwidth for their operations. He said competitors have also become more active in the area, citing Eircom as an example of a company that is now taking its wholesale business more seriously.
“The issue that the Mans were built to solve, to supply a service and provide platform competition, we’re not a very long way [from] solving that,” he said. However, Mr Henry said the next issue facing the Government, which is hoping to build a next-generation broadband network nationally, was access.
He said an upgrade to this part of the network would be “horrifically expensive” and would be too large for a private company to undertake. However, Mr Henry argued that there would be a huge long-term benefit for the State if it decided to make the investment.
He added that Enet has raised the matter with the Government and is seeking ways to address it, though there are no formal plans for a solution at this point in time.
He also said the industry as a whole is generally in agreement on the need to address the issue of next-generation access, though he did not think a cross-industry partnership was a likelihood. “There’s a pretty clear acceptance of the overall shape of the problem,” he said. “The difference comes in how that is addressed.”
