Claremorris’ businesses are being urged by their Chamber of Commerce to seize the fantastic opportunity available to become Ireland’s first fibre town. However, the development of the country’s first “fibre to the business” (FTTB ) network in Claremorris will only happen if over 50 per cent of the town’s businesses sign up according to chamber president Jimmy Flynn.
Well over 100 local businesses attended the information seminars that took place on Wednesday and Thursday last week in the McWilliam Park Hotel, Claremorris. Businesses were told that, for the project to be built, they need to sign up before March 6 by contacting the Chamber of Commerce. This will enable construction work to start and all businesses to receive a direct fibre connection.
According to Jimmy Flynn, president of the Claremorris Chamber of Commerce: "We’re delighted that so many of Claremorris’ business community turned up to hear about this fantastic opportunity to build a direct fibre connection to every business in the town. They realise that the superfast broadband that this project will deliver has the potential to create a significant competitive advantage for Claremorris in terms of keeping, developing and attracting new companies and new jobs.”
The proposed first of its kind in Ireland, the FTTB network, will provide a better broadband experience, eliminate bandwidth bottlenecks and enable local businesses to fully enter digital markets and exploit online applications. Enet, the promoters of the scheme, stressed that this is a genuine fibre rollout, with fibre optic cables being delivered directly into premises (whereas other fibre services connect to a local telecoms exchange or cabinet and then rely on copper networks to reach premises ). The fact that fibre is delivered directly into businesses transforms broadband capabilities with speeds of up to 250Mb per second being supported from day one, making it the fastest fibre delivered broadband speeds in Ireland.
Conal Henry, Enet CEO said: “The signs are very positive that Claremorris’ businesses appreciate the significance of the project and the benefits of having broadband speeds of 250Mbs per second available to them. By building a fibre network directly into every business, we’ll be doing something no one else has done in Ireland. This fibre network will completely replace the out-of-date copper network which has reached its end of life – remember copper networks were built to carry voice traffic and not broadband! Our fibre carries significantly more data at much higher speed without any loss in quality.”
