Broadband in Northern Ireland

Last updated

In Northern Ireland over 80% [1] of the population has access to the internet, with 9 in 10 people having an internet connection in the home.

Contents

Background

Northern Ireland is one of the best connected regions in Europe and has the highest availability of fibre broadband in the UK, with 95% of premises able to access fibre enabled cabinets in June 2013. In 2015 BT rolled out the first fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband connections in the UK, offering download speeds of 330 Mbit/s. Currently residents of Northern Ireland have a choice of 27 broadband service providers.[ citation needed ]

As of 2020, 50% of Northern Ireland has access to ultra fast broadband, with speeds of 1 Gbit/s or greater. [2] [3]

BT

As well as being the largest provider of landlines, BT are also currently the largest internet service provider in Northern Ireland.

In 2009, BT started rolling out Fibre Optic broadband in certain locations within the United Kingdom and Belfast was chosen as one of the trial areas.

BT Superfast Fibre (formerly BT Infinity) first became available in the Balmoral area of South Belfast in spring 2010, now it is currently available in other areas of the city including West and South Belfast, and in many other parts of Northern Ireland. [4] Belfast residents can now get speeds up to 900 Mbit/s with BT Superfast Fibre. [5]

As of 2020, BT, through its subsidiary Openreach, is continuing to roll out fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband to businesses and residential households in Northern Ireland. [6]

Virgin Media

Virgin cable services are available throughout Northern Ireland in most cities. Derry has had cable since the mid-1990s when CableTel installed the infrastructure, later adopting NTL as its name, and then 2006 merging with Telewest becoming NTL:Telewest, and again later that year merging ultimately with Virgin, and then re-branding as Virgin Media in 2007. Derry has enjoyed Fibre Broadband since the early 2000s. The top speed available in some areas is 300 Mbit/s. Virgin offer TV, Broadband and Telephone services, and are currently the second largest company in Northern Ireland providing telephone and broadband services. [7]

Virgin currently offers the fastest broadband, with some areas able to avail of connection speeds of up to 300 Mbit/s down their own fibre optic cables. [8]

If customers are not in a fibre optic area they can take up Virgin's ADSL broadband which offers speeds of around 20 Mbit/s almost every area in Northern Ireland are able to get this service as it uses the telephone lines rented of BT to provide the service. [9]

Fibrus

Fibrus, a broadband infrastructure startup, plans to connect 150,000 homes and businesses in Northern Ireland to FTTP broadband. The company plans to invest £100m in building broadband infrastructure in the country, and ultimately aims to deliver complete full-fibre broadband coverage by 2025.

In September 2020, Fibrus won a £165m contract to extend superfast broadband coverage in rural Northern Ireland. The deal was primarily financed by the UK government.

See also

Related Research Articles

Telecommunications in Ireland operate in a regulated competitive market that provides customers with a wide array of advanced digital services. This article explores Ireland's telecommunications infrastructure including: fixed and mobile networks, The voice, data and Internet services, cable television, developments in next generation networks and broadcast networks for radio and television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telewest</span> British cable and telecommunications company

Telewest was a cable internet, broadband internet, telephone supplier and cable television provider in the United Kingdom. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and was also once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NTL Incorporated</span> British cable and telecommunications company

NTL Incorporated, branded as ntl:, was a United States-listed British company founded in 1992, which provided cable television, cable internet and fixed-line cable telephone services. While NTL had its headquarters in New York City, the company's activities focused heavily on the United Kingdom, with operational headquarters in Hook, Hampshire.

KCOM Group is a UK communications and IT services provider. Its headquarters are in the city of Kingston upon Hull, and it serves local residents and businesses with Internet and telephony services. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange but is now privately owned by Macquarie Group.

The 21st Century Network (21CN) programme is the data and voice network transformation project, under way since 2004, of the UK telecommunications company BT Group plc. It was intended to move BT's telephone network from the AXE/System X Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to an Internet Protocol (IP) system. As well as switching over the PSTN, BT planned to deliver many additional services over their new data network, such as on-demand interactive TV services.

Analogue television in the United Kingdom includes terrestrial, satellite and cable services that were broadcast using analogue television signals. Following the termination of Virgin Media's analogue cable television service in Milton Keynes in November 2013, all television in the United Kingdom is broadcast in digital only.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virgin Media</span> British cable and telecommunications company

Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company, founded in 2007, which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. A range of videos advertising the company remain available on YouTube. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint venture between Liberty Global and Telefónica.

Fiber to the <i>x</i> Broadband network architecture term

Fiber to the x or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber optic cables are able to carry much more data than copper cables, especially over long distances, copper telephone networks built in the 20th century are being replaced by fiber.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WightFibre</span> Cable network operator on the Isle of Wight

WightFibre is a full-fibre network operator on the Isle of Wight. WightFibre provides telephone and broadband internet services only to homes and businesses on the Isle of Wight.

Openreach Limited is a company wholly owned by BT Group plc, that maintains the telephone cables, ducts, cabinets and exchanges that connect nearly all homes and businesses in the United Kingdom to the national broadband and telephone network. It was established in 2006 following an agreement between BT and the UK's telecoms regulator, Ofcom, to implement certain undertakings, pursuant to the Enterprise Act 2002, to ensure that rival telecom operators have equality of access to BT's local network.

Sky Broadband is a broadband service offered by Sky UK in the United Kingdom. With the introduction of Sky Fibre, Sky Broadband now refers to ADSL broadband products.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virgin TV</span> Digital pay cable television service in the United Kingdom

Virgin TV is a digital pay cable television service in the United Kingdom, owned by Liberty Global (50%) and Telefónica (50%) after the merger its UK businesses to form Virgin Media O2. Its origins date from NTL and Telewest, formerly two of the UK's largest cable operators, which merged on 6 March 2006. All NTL:Telewest services were rebranded as Virgin Media in February 2007. Since the acquisition of Smallworld Cable in 2014, Virgin is the sole national cable TV provider in Great Britain. Currently about 51% of UK households have access to Virgin's network, which is independent from BT's Openreach network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virgin Media Ireland</span> Irish telecommunications company

Virgin Media Ireland is Liberty Global's telecommunications operation in Ireland. It is the largest digital cable television provider within the country. As of 31 December 2014, the company offers broadband internet, digital television and digital (VoIP) telephony to 1 million customers. Until 4 May 2010, Virgin Media Ireland traded under the name Chorus NTL and UPC Ireland until 5 October 2015. Its main competitors in the Irish pay TV market are Sky Ireland, Eir and Vodafone Ireland.

BT Wholesale and Ventures was a division of United Kingdom telecommunications company BT Group that provided voice, broadband, data, hosted communication, managed network and IT services to communications providers (CPs) in Great Britain. It was merged with BT's Business and Public Sector division to form BT Enterprise in October 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet in the United Kingdom</span> Overview of the Internet in the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has been involved with the Internet throughout its origins and development. The telecommunications infrastructure in the United Kingdom provides Internet access to businesses and home users in various forms, including fibre, cable, DSL, wireless and mobile.

Smallworld Fibre was a British telecommunications company based in Irvine, North Ayrshire. The coverage area was Irvine, Dreghorn, Troon, and Kilmarnock in the west of Scotland, and Carlisle, Lancaster and Morecambe in the north-west of England, serving over 40,000 homes. Smallworld provided broadband, telephone, and digital television services to residential customers from 2001 until 2014, when the company was acquired by Virgin Media.

BT Superfast Fibre is a broadband service in the United Kingdom provided by BT Consumer, the consumer sales arm of the BT Group. The underlying network is fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), which uses optical fibre for all except the final few hundred metres (yards) to the consumer, and delivers claimed download speeds of "up to 76 Mbit/s" and upload speeds of "up to 19 Mbit/s" depending on package selected. The fibre terminates in a new roadside cabinet containing a DSLAM, from where the final connection to the customer uses VDSL2 technology.

Andrews & Arnold Ltd is an Internet service provider based in Bracknell, England. The company was founded in 1997 and launched in 1998, serving businesses and "technical" home users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Broadband Network</span> Telecommunications network in Australia

The National Broadband Network (NBN) is an Australian national wholesale open-access data network. It includes wired and radio communication components rolled out and operated by NBN Co, a Government-owned corporation. Internet service providers, known under NBN as retail service providers or RSPs, contract with NBN to access the data network and sell fixed Internet access to end users.

Trunk Networks is a British internet service provider (ISP) and cloud service provider based in Uckfield, offering business and residential broadband and VoIP services, amongst others. The company was founded in 2008 as the result of a merger between a virtual ISP and an IT support company.

References

  1. ↑ "Ofcom | the Communications Market Report: Northern Ireland". Archived from the original on 2015-02-19. Retrieved 2015-02-18.
  2. ↑ "BT in Northern Ireland - BT in the UK & Ireland - BT UK & worldwide | BT Plc". www.bt.com. Retrieved 2020-11-08.
  3. ↑ "Northern Ireland". www.openreach.com. Retrieved 2020-11-08.
  4. ↑ "BT Press Releases". Archived from the original on 2010-03-17. Retrieved 2010-10-27.
  5. ↑ Paton, Tom (2020-07-14). "5 Best Broadband Deals Northern Ireland | Belfast & Rural Providers". Broadband Savvy. Retrieved 2020-11-08.
  6. ↑ Jackson, Mark (2020-01-21). "Openreach Grow FTTP in Northern Ireland to 260K Premises". ISPreview UK. Retrieved 2020-11-08.
  7. ↑ "Virgin Media Belfast | Virgin Media Broadband Northern Ireland | Virgin TV Packages". Archived from the original on 2011-01-03. Retrieved 2010-11-26.
  8. ↑ "Virgin Media Deals - Broadband, TV & Phone". Virgin Media. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  9. ↑ "Virgin Media - Official Site". Virgin Media. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.