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New broadband option for Midwest
10-11-2006
by Emmet Ryan

The West of Ireland is waking up to broadband following an announcement on Thursday that Azotel-Brisknet is to begin offering wireless connections to rural areas.

The Roscommon-based wireless internet service provider (ISP) said it will make broadband available to 95 percent of the population in rural areas of the West where there are currently few options for high-speed internet connections.

Azotel-Brisknet is currently providing a wireless service in County Roscommon, and has plans to move into counties Galway and Mayo early next year.

Azotel-Brisknet is the first wireless ISP franchise on the joint broadband franchise network launched by Hosting 365, Motorola and Azotel earlier this year. ENN reported in June that the three companies were working together on the project. Motorola provides wireless broadband technology through its Canopy service; Hosting 365 is providing support services; while Azotel provides core network and back office functions for internet operators.

"The broadband service being launched by Azotel-Brisknet is a good example of how the challenge of providing broadband in uneconomic areas can be innovatively solved by industry partners -- facilitated by e-net and the recent government investment in the MAN infrastructure," said Noel Dempsey, Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources

Ireland has performed badly in recent broadband penetration surveys, coming 24 out of 30 nations in a recent OECD study with just 9.2 percent penetration.

John O'Hare, managing director of Azotel, said the new service would encourage a greater uptake of high-speed internet services. "End users will now be able to get competitive, quality broadband in areas they wouldn't have been able to before," he said. Speaking to ENN, O'Hare predicted that as the infrastructure was already in place, the prospect of delivering broadband to rural areas would prove an attractive franchise opportunity for local business people.

"We are making it attractive for entrepreneurs to introduce broadband in these areas," he said. "By lowering the barriers to entry we are making it commercially viable to introduce broadband in areas where it wouldn't have been before."

The project is operated on a franchise basis allowing local entrepreneurs to avoid paying infrastructural costs and instead pay to use the infrastructure already in place.

O'Hare said the groundwork for the project had been in development for several years. "We have been developing and refining both the technology and the business model since April 2002 and are now entering a rapid deployment phase. An added advantage of the approach is that franchisees are themselves now feeding back experiences into the process, which will underpin the further roll-out of Azotel," he said.