Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...

over 80% of the population has access to the internet, with 9 in 10 people having an internet connection at 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 British Telecom 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 is also currently the largest internet service provider in Northern Ireland. In 2009, BT started rolling out

Fibre Optic An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

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 Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and

Belfast Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...

was chosen as one of the trial areas. BT Superfast Fibre (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 maintain telephone cables, ducts, cabinets and exchanges that connect nearly all homes and businesses in the United Kingdom to various national broadband and telephone networks. T ...

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

Virgin Media

Virgin Virginity is a social construct that denotes the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. As it is not an objective term with an operational definition, social definitions of what constitutes virginity, or the lack thereof ...

cable services are available throughout Northern Ireland in most cities.

Derry Derry, officially Londonderry, is the second-largest City status in the United Kingdom, city in Northern Ireland, and the fifth-largest on the island of Ireland. Located in County Londonderry, the city now covers both banks of the River Fo ...

has had cable since the mid-1990s when CableTel installed the infrastructure, later adopting NTL 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 ...

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 or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...

and

Telephone A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that enables 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 ...

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 An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

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