Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

over 80% of the population has access to the internet, with 9 in 10 people having an internet connection in the home.

Background

Northern Ireland is one of the best connected regions in Europe and has the highest availability of fibre broadband in the UK, with 95% of premises able to access fibre enabled cabinets in June 2013. In 2015 BT rolled out the first fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband connections in the UK, offering download speeds of 330 Mbit/s. Currently residents of Northern Ireland have a choice of 27 broadband service providers. As of 2020, 50% of Northern Ireland has access to ultra fast broadband, with speeds of 1 Gbit/s or greater.

BT

As well as being the largest provider of landlines, BT are also currently the largest internet service provider in Northern Ireland. In 2009, BT started rolling out Fibre Optic broadband in certain locations within the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...

was chosen as one of the trial areas.

BT Superfast Fibre BT Superfast Fibre (formerly BT Infinity) is a broadband internet access, broadband service in the United Kingdom provided by BT Consumer, the consumer sales arm of the BT Group. The underlying network is fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), which uses o ...

(formerly BT Infinity) first became available in the Balmoral area of South Belfast in spring 2010, now it is currently available in other areas of the city including West and South Belfast, and in many other parts of Northern Ireland. Belfast residents can now get speeds up to 900 Mbit/s with BT Superfast Fibre. As of 2020, BT, through its subsidiary

Openreach Openreach Limited is a company wholly owned by BT Group plc, that maintains the telephone cables, ducts, cabinets and exchanges that connect nearly all homes and businesses in the United Kingdom to the national broadband and telephone network. I ...

, is continuing to roll out fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband to businesses and residential households in Northern Ireland.

Virgin Media

Virgin Virginity is the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. The term ''virgin'' originally only referred to sexually inexperienced women, but has evolved to encompass a range of definitions, as found in traditional, modern ...

cable services are available throughout Northern Ireland in most cities. Derry has had cable since the mid-1990s when

CableTel NTL Incorporated, branded as ntl:, was a United States-listed British company founded in 1992, which provided cable television, cable internet and fixed-line cable telephone services. While NTL had its headquarters in New York City, the compa ...

installed the infrastructure, later adopting

NTL NTL may refer to: Companies * NTL Incorporated and NTL Internet, later Virgin Media, communications media company ** NTL Ireland, later Virgin Media Ireland * Arqiva, UK company formerly ''NTL Broadcast'' and ''National Transcommunications L ...

as its name, and then 2006 merging with

Telewest Telewest (previously Telewest Broadband and Telewest Communications) was a cable internet, broadband internet, telephone supplier and cable television provider in the United Kingdom. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and was also onc ...

becoming NTL:Telewest, and again later that year merging ultimately with Virgin, and then re-branding as Virgin Media in 2007. Derry has enjoyed Fibre Broadband since the early 2000s. The top speed available in some areas is 300 Mbit/s. Virgin offer TV,

Broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

and

Telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

services, and are currently the second largest company in Northern Ireland providing telephone and broadband services. Virgin currently offers the fastest broadband, with some areas able to avail of connection speeds of up to 300 Mbit/s down their own fibre optic cables. If customers are not in a fibre optic area they can take up Virgin's ADSL broadband which offers speeds of around 20 Mbit/s almost every area in Northern Ireland are able to get this service as it uses the telephone lines rented of BT to provide the service.

Fibrus

Fibrus, a broadband infrastructure startup, plans to connect 150,000 homes and businesses in Northern Ireland to FTTP broadband. The company plans to invest £100m in building broadband infrastructure in the country, and ultimately aims to deliver complete full-fibre broadband coverage by 202

In September 2020, Fibrus won a £165m contract to extend superfast broadband coverage in rural Northern Ireland. The deal was primarily financed by the UK governmen

References

{{reflist Broadband

Internet in Ireland

Background

BT

Virgin Media

Fibrus

See also

References