A public-private partnership model in the North has enabled the introduction of broadband access to every household, writes Jamie Smyth, Technology Reporter

Signing up for broadband just got a lot easier in the North with the announcement yesterday that all BT Northern Ireland telephone exchanges have been upgraded to carry the service.

About 98.5 per cent of the population can now receive a high speed internet line, offering a connection of at least 512 kilobytes per second.

The rest of the public will get broadband via wireless technology by the end of the year, says Mr Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Regions, with responsibility for BT Northern Ireland and Esat BT.

"The decision to provide 100 per cent broadband coverage in the North goes back to early 2004, when the Northern Ireland administration decided it wanted to differentiate the North from the rest of Britain, economically and socially," says Mr Murphy.

"In March 2003 the government put out a tender, a type of public-private partnership agreement, to part-finance the roll out of broadband to every single home and business."

BT Northern Ireland beat off competition from 26 other European companies to win the contract and begin rolling out the service to areas where it is not economical to offer broadband.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Industry is stumping up about £10 million to part-fund the contract in an effort to propel Northern Ireland to the top of the European broadband league - and there are signs that this policy is beginning to bear fruit.

There are 150,000 broadband users in Northern Ireland, at least 20,000 more than in the Republic - and more than 40 internet service providers are offering the service in the region, says Ms Anne Conaty, head of the the telecoms policy unit at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment. "The tender to roll out 100 per cent broadband is paying dividends," she says. "At the time of the tender, just 25 telephone exchanges were upgraded for broadband technology and now all 191 exchanges are upgraded, so there is no rural divide.

"We have become a model across Britain and our counterparts in Scotland are now doing a similar tender for broadband."

Ms Conaty highlights two elements of the tender that were critical to its success: allowing wholesale access and equity in price, meaning that BT must charge all consumers the same price for broadband products, regardless of where they live.

The firm must also offer wholesale access to its network of exchanges and its proposed wireless platform, which will offer broadband to the remaining 1.5 per cent of people who live outside the reach of local exchanges, says Ms Conaty.

In comparison to Northern Ireland, the roll out of broadband in rural areas of the Republic is paltry. Eircom said last week it had rolled out broadband to 80 per cent of the population and had a target of achieving 90 per cent coverage by March 2006.

But it is not economically viable to upgrade exchanges serving the remaining 10 per cent of the population and the firm recently asked the State to offer a similar Northern Irish-style tender process to cover the remaining areas. Discussions on the proposal have begun, says Eircom, which is critical of the State's policy of promoting community broadband schemes.

These schemes enable local communities to apply for public funding to attract companies to offer broadband in rural areas. But Eircom says they are unnecessarily bureaucratic for the public.

"We just think there is a better way to do it," says Mr David McRedmond, Eircom's commercial director, who is fronting Eircom's broadband campaign.

But rural coverage is not the only differentiating factor on broadband between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Consumers can also choose from a greater variety of products in Northern Ireland, where BT is offering a one megabyte broadband product for £17.99 and a bundled BT/Yahoo product for £26.99, according to Mr Murphy, who criticises the lack of competition in the Republic.

"The majority of consumers in Northern Ireland can get access to a two megabyte broadband line and we upgrade many people for the same price," he says.

BT Northern Ireland is also rolling out different flavours of broadband technology, including SDSL, (synchronous digital subscriber line technology). This technology enables businesses to send very large files over the internet at high speeds. The standard broadband technology in use in the Republic, ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line technology), only enables people to download data at very high speeds, not upload.

Mr Murphy says BT has plans to install SDSL equipment at about 15 per cent of Northern Ireland's telephone exchanges. It is also looking at deploying new technology, such as ADSL 2 and ADSL 2+, in Northern Ireland.

BT Northern Ireland has invested about £100 million over the past three years upgrading its network for broadband and just 1 per cent of its lines cannot carry broadband, says Mr Murphy.

"Northern Ireland is a test-bed for new technology for BT and we have replaced a lot of plant and equipment here where it was required. We have also introduced ADSL that extends its reach to about 8.5 kilometres."

The extremely low level of line failure rates for broadband contrast sharply with a 24 per cent failure rate on Eircom's network, which was revealed in the company's last annual report.

Ms Conaty says there is nowhere near the same level of lines failure as reported in the Republic, due to a big investment programme which took place in the 1980s, called Star network.

But the aggressive entry of new competitors to the Northern Irish marketplace is also a key factor, says BT's Mr Murphy.

"You have much more competition on a service provider level, you have the government and the industry initiative to drive broadband and you have communities coming together to push broadband," he says. "There is also infrastructure competition with NTL supplying 30,000 people with broadband."

BT Northern Ireland holds less than 50 per cent market share for the retail market, compared to Eircom's 77 per cent market share in the Republic.

Uptake of broadband in Northern Ireland is also being driven by a "push and pull" effect of demand-led initiatives introduced by the state, according to Mr Murphy, who cites a major schools technology project in the North as a good example of this.

"Students are using broadband at school and then asking their parents to get it at home."

There have been targeted state programmes to encourage businesses to upgrade to broadband.

Small and medium-sized businesses have benefited from more than £1 million in grants to cover 50 per cent of the cost of switching to broadband and a network of advisers help businesses with the new technology.

One of the few black spots in the North's broadband revolution is "local loop unbundling", the process of opening the last mile of the phone network to rivals.

So far, just a fraction of phone lines have been opened to competitors in Belfast, to offer their own broadband products to consumers and business. Nevertheless, Northern Ireland is far ahead of the Republic for broadband availability and its adoption by the public.