Maps used to connect buildings to fibre broadband may not include up to 80,000 houses.

IRELAND: As many as 80,000 homes could have been left off maps used by National Broadband Ireland (NBI) to connect people to the new €2.9 billion roll out of fibre broadband.

Former minister for communications Denis Naughten, who has advised home and business owners, predominantly in rural Ireland, to check the colour coding of their premises on NBI maps.

The maps use two colour codes, dividing the State into blue and amber areas. Blue areas are parts of the country where commercial operators are already providing high-speed broadband or have indicated future plans to do so.

Under the State intervention strategy, fibre will be made available to homes and businesses in amber zones.

High-speed broadband is defined by the Department of Communications as a connection with minimum download and upload rates of 30 Mbps and 6 Mbps, respectively.

"People need to make sure that they are amber on the national broadband map," Mr. Naughten said. "If they are not consistently receiving at least 30Mbps, particularly in towns and villages, then they need to make sure that they are provided with a high-speed broadband connection."

A number of inconsistencies in the maps were pointed up by Mr. Naughten, an Independent TD for Roscommon-Galway, where buildings should have been in the amber intervention area. According to him, this category includes 80,000 houses that are in blue but are not receiving enough service.

He gave several examples of rural Ireland where, ostensibly due to map errors, some pockets of dwellings were excluded from the intervention area.

According to the government, State aid is the reason why high-speed fibre internet cannot be made available to people whose connections already provide speeds greater than 30 Mbps. It stated that there was no room for involvement in the form of the NBI rollout since doing so would be against EU state-aid regulations.

A representative for National Broadband Ireland acknowledged that, based on changes to the department-provided maps, the organisation added some 20,000 additional premises to the broadband initiative last year.

To provide fibre broadband to anyone outside of specified intervention zones, he claimed, the corporation lacked "no jurisdiction, no legal power." He asserted that the corporation would comply if the department altered the maps, as it had in the case of the 20,000 residences.

Mr Naughten has advised premises owners check the availability of the fibre roll out — and their colour coding — by going to the high-speed broadband map at broadband.gov.ie and enter their Eircode or address.