Broadband for regions is e-commerce package aim

The Government's e-commerce package will result in £700 million worth of broadband capacity being "rolled out to the regions", the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, has said.

No one must be left behind in the dot.com revolution, and there must be "no digital divide", the Minister warned yesterday, when she opened a new call centre and software development facility for the British-based Cedar Group plc in Castlebar, Co Mayo.

Yesterday marked the closing date for the Government's latest call for infrastructural proposals under the National Development Plan.

Ms O'Rourke said £150 million of the predicted £700 million for e-commerce is to be provided by the Government, and will represent investment of up to 200,000 fibre kilometres of broadband around the State.

The Internet "cannot become a network of the elite", she added. "It began life as a network for the people and must remain a network for the people."

The Government's call for satellite technologies to extend bandwidth to some of the more outlying communities and regions is a clear effort by Government to "leverage investment in infrastructure", which will extend beyond the main towns and population centres, she said. This would provide digital opportunities in "the Castlebars, the Belmullets, the Crossmolinas and the Ballinas".

The Global Crossing broadband contract has been agreed to connect Ireland to 36 European cities and the US so far, and 13 contracts have also been signed to bring high-speed Internetcapable networks to 120 towns and villages in the State, she said, and 21 counties would be touched by the broadband.

She envisaged the investment as carrying a "significant social service dimension. "For instance, there is no reason why the investors wouldn't set up public Internet access sites in each of the towns and villages they go through.

"There is no reason why these companies wouldn't connect up all the public health, local authority and government services in the regions which they are passing through. In other words, the grant-aided projects must leave a digital footprint."

It was also essential that the farming and business communities "along the highways and byways of Ireland" be connected. The Minister said she believed each community should have a "portal site" and its own "window on the world".

The new Castlebar centre for Cedar Group plc is a subsidiary of the British company and expects to employ 250 people in the next year.

Next week the first public Internet kiosk on the Aran Islands is to be opened on Inis Mor by Circle Network, which is installing such kiosks throughout the State.