The launch of enet fibredirect last year saw over thousands of SME’s in rural Ireland receive fibre optic connections directly into their businesses via the ‘Fibre to the Business’ (FTTB) project. This initiative, which has now been launched in four locations nationwide, is specifically targeted at small and medium enterprises and connects them to world-class fibre broadband and telephone services. This infrastructure is already delivering huge benefits for these SMEs, particularly in locations such as Claremorris, Loughrea and Ardee – where business owners have long suffered from slow, unreliable broadband services.
In Claremorris we spoke with Karen Loftus, Manager of the Claremorris Leisure Centre which employs 27 staff. The leisure centre caters to all needs with a large gym, studio, 25m swimming pool, sauna, steam room and Jacuzzi. The fibre network was activated in the leisure centre earlier this year and Karen is already seeing the huge benefits of the upgrade; “The fibre broadband has provided the centre with the tools to improve our training and classes. The day of music ‘buffering’ from streaming the music for these classes has gone. We can stream the music at ease now increasing the quality and standard of our classes. Likewise the ability to conference via the internet for training purposes has greatly improved reducing expense costs to the company on travel etc. The fibre broadband project has been a success for our facility and the transition process was easy.”
enet chief executive Conal Henry said, “The FTTB network allows speeds of up to 1,000Mbps (megabytes per second) which is more than sufficient for all current and future demands of these companies. The fibre connectivity they have availed of will allow them to do a lot of things that they couldn’t do before and, whether that is being able to stream music or to host conference, each business has a different need for fibre, and a different story as to why this broadband matters.”
enet is currently finalising its plans for the next wave of FTTB investment.