DEAR EDITOR,

Zanussi-grade spin from National Broadband Ireland (NBI) tells us that broadband connections are available for more than 200,000 households, farms and businesses across the country.

It reports that three in five premises covered by the National Broadband Plan are now under or completed construction, and that 60,000 premises have now connected to the high-speed fibre infrastructure.

On sterile figures alone, NBI is moving with all the urgency of treacle flowing uphill. But for us waiting for this fibre Godot, can more urgency be applied?

In my townland in Co Waterford, I am a five minute drive to a main road, surrounded by telephone poles, and with no landscape obstacles.

Based on these factors, but devoid of any engineering nous, I hold the view that a fibre broadband connection to my house and my neighbours could be run up in a day’s work.

An NBI website check tells me my townland is at the pending survey level, and expected date of connection is sometime in 2026. In November 2019, when the NBP contract was signed, connection targets were puffed up while gung-ho language was used to say that this project will be driven like witches who could not be burned.

Oh, the innocence.

In 2023, the NBP is moving towards completion at sloth speed. Rural communities are being told broadband connection dates that do not reflect the critical need for digital connectivity for business, work and personal reasons.

A broadband connection is on par with water and electricity supply to your home. The location of your living space or workspace should not be a barrier to function in an e-society.

The provision of fibre powered broadband in Ireland is a history written with promise ink, dipped in an inkwell of a lack of ambition and delivery.

No man is an island. In Ireland, areas without fibre broadband like mine are islands in a digital sea with citizens on the shoreline enduring a ‘Vladimir’ and ‘Estragon’ wait for the cable to come ashore.