“Green” telecom is about to take on new significance. For all too long the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland have suffered from a relative lack of capacity in terms of bandwidth, even as the southern Republic became a rising star in the European Union and the troubles left the North. It’s impacted the kind of connectivity available to support businesses and the economy, but Hibernia Atlantic, thanks to government funding, is seeking to change that.
Hibernia owns a trans-Atlantic submarine cable network that provides diverse capacity to European and U.S. customers. It plans to add two independent submarine routes to its system that will create a physically diverse ring network between Ireland and the U.K. — the first new Irish cables built since 1858. The network will hook up with a telehouse in Northern Ireland for access to other service providers.
Meanwhile, Hibernia is adding terrestrial extensions to beef up capacity in the northwest portion of the Irish landmass, reaching 13 cities, including Northern Ireland’s capital, Belfast.
“Hibernia is a U.S. and Irish company — for us it is quite historic,” Eric Gutshall, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Hibernia America, told Telephony. “It will allow Belfast to get up to the 21st century with respect to handling capacity and to attract those global companies and organizations that come into the region.”
Hibernia was tapped to build the network by the Project Kelvin initiative, and it will cost about $40.2 million to complete. The sponsors providing this pot of gold include the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment for Northern Ireland, the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources for the Republic of Ireland, and the European Union via a program that funds competitive networks.
