The first homes in the remote Black Valley – once a black spot for communications – have been connected to high-speed broadband.
It fulfils a pledge made last February by a senior executive with National Broadband Ireland (NBI) that the valley would have better broadband than Ballsbridge within months.
The valley, deep in the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks between Killarney and Kenmare, was among the last places in Ireland to be electrified in 1977.
The sensitive location posed a challenge too in the roll-out of the latest technology, which seeks to transform the community in a similar way to electricity almost 50 years ago.
The population of families has declined in recent years, and the once thriving local primary school is to be turned into a community and information centre.
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Anna Downing (86) is one of the first of the 91 homes in the valley to be connected. She believes the move will make it more attractive for some of her 13 grandchildren and seven great grandchildren to visit with their families.
Phone service only arrived in the Black Valley the 1990s in the form of a radio link for 25 customers. Since then there has been a variety of services, including a limited internet and a trial in one house of Elon Musk’s Starlink service.
Connected for just over a week to the new broadband service, Downing has already used it to contact four of her six children who live in Australia, Florida and England.
“My grandchildren, some of whom work from home, can come now and stay for more than a weekend. Before they would have to go,” she said.
Lockdown during Covid really brought home how “essential” a good internet service was, she said. “It means families will spend more time together.”
For chief executive of NBI Peter Hendrick, the Black Valley had become a “symbol” of the roll-out of the national broadband plan.
Residents in the area will have the same access to 1-gigabit, reliable broadband as in any other part of the country.
Some 94,000 homes, farms and businesses have already been connected to NBI’s network across Ireland, he said.
The value for money of the National Broadband Plan has been widely questioned, with the contract cost rising to close to €3 billion. However, Minister of State for national development Ossian Smyth was keen to accentuate the positives when speaking in the Black Valley on Friday.
“The National Broadband Plan is one of the largest State infrastructure projects since rural electrification, and communities such as the residents of Black Valley will reap the benefits of it for decades to come,” he said.
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