The good news is that two thirds of all Irish Homes now have a broadband connection. According to Comreg there are 1.3 million subscribers to broadband services across the State which is a vast improvement on what it was. This works out as a pro capita rate of 30% if you include mobile broadband.

These figures offer some encouragement particularly when compared with 2003 when Ireland was second last in Broadband penetration but it shouldn't be forgotten that we are still playing catch up. Compared with the Netherlands or Denmark, for instance, Ireland still looks like "an-also-ran".

Coincidentally Lord Stephen Carter is across from the UK this month. He is the keynote speaker at the Telecommunications and Internet conference on the 21st September at Dublin Castle. He is an interesting character as he is a leading light in the Europe's telecommunication industry and the architect of "Digital Britain", a study commissioned by the powers that be in the UK on how Britain should develop their data communications to support modern business in an attempt to bolster the country's economy.

Using infrastructure spend to bolster an economy is nothing new, look at the building of new roads, airports and other transportation infrastructure which leads to new jobs during the actual build but, more importantly, sustained growth after the infrastructure has been built because of the opportunities such capital items create. Data communications offer the same benefits only more so as roads simply open up transportation at a local level while the Internet mean access across a planet-wide marketplace and vast amounts of knowledge.

One of Digital Britain's key objectives is the delivery of ubiquitous super fast broadband and to do that they are looking at fibre to the home. Ireland has a different demographic to the UK with a small dispersed population so ubiquitous fibre is a big ask due to the expense of the technology involved.

However,  a Cork research lab may have that one partially cracked as they develop a technology called PIEMAN which enables fibre optic data transmission across 100km of cable rather than the current 20km without resorting to electronics to boost the signal. This will significantly reduce the cost of fibre to the home and may make that sort of initiative more achievable given Ireland's ribbon development.