A major global telecommunications company is likely to be chosen within a month to be the main provider of broadband connectivity - or high-speed data transmission - for the State.
According to the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, the Department is negotiating with two competing major broadband firms as part of a public/ private partnership development.
Public/private partnerships are being used by the Government to initiate and drive the construction of the kind of major telecommunications infrastructure the State badly needs but on which, independently, private sector companies would be less likely to collaborate.
Government sources are tight-lipped about the identity of the competitors, but the scale of the project - which would require not just the ability to supply and manage capacity reliably but also to provide full, duplicate backup capacity, or redundancy - limits candidates to a brief short-list of the very largest international telecommunications firms.
Such a list might include giants like MCI/Worldcom and a set of others which are currently involved in merger plans, such as AT&T/MediaOne, Bell Atlantic/GTE or SCB/Ameritech.
According to the Minister, the primary provider would establish a site within the State and provide broadband connectivity across the Republic.
Additional negotiations, backed by European structural funds, are under way to bring in telecommunications companies to link to the site and manage broadband services across the State.
It is understood that the principal supplier would be expected to provide connectivity to both Europe and the United States at highly-competitive prices, enabling Ireland to compete favourably against other European states in the race to lure large corporations and companies engaged in electronic commerce.
The Government has agreed to allocate £12 million (€15.24 million) in the Budget for broadband connectivity projects in 1999. According to the Minister, that amount could rise to £60 million over three years. A significant slice of that sum will initially go towards a major project to bring together a number of telecommunications companies to lay a cable under the Atlantic to link into the American telecommunications "backbone", or top-tier broadband network. It is understood that the principal broadband supplier would be a member of that cable-laying consortium.
The cable project went to tender in late March and the Government expects to announce the members of the consortium within a months time. It is understood that negotiations are still under way to determine whether the cable would land in Ireland first or go to Britain, from which a second cable would be extended to Ireland. The Government would be expected eventually to sell its stake in the project since, following the privatisation of Telecom Eireann, it would be unlikely to wish to remain in the telecommunications business.
According to a spokesman for the Department for Public Enterprise, the initial thrust of the broadband initiatives will be to increase significantly broadband capacity to principal European points on the global Internet backbone, such as London, Paris, Amsterdam and Stockholm. Capacity would presumably first come from the existing three fibreoptic cables which have been placed under the Irish Sea to Britain, but could involve laying further cables.
"We are looking at early solutions," he said, noting that capacity should be upped "significantly" by year's end. He added: "The cost of connectivity in the Irish market needs to come down and come down quickly. An increase in competition would pull down prices."
