John Kennedy reports at Silicon Republic on how 3G broadband adoption has proven that the 3G infrastructure investments (€160bn on European 3G licences and €1m a week on a continuing basis in Ireland alone) were a visionary investment:
“At the end of the day, 3G was a bet we took that had shareholders asking for several years why we did this. And yet that investment turned out to be the entire basis of the mobile broadband revolution in countries like Ireland, which rely on 3G”
Butterworth also makes an important call to regulators to encourage them to start allowing the old 2G spectrum to be freed up so that mobile operators can offer 3G Broadband speeds to 99% of the country. According to the latest figures from ComReg, more than 354,674 people subscribed to mobile broadband in the first quarter of this year, up nearly 15% on the previous quarter and up 90.6% on 2008.
This story was part of the Digital 21 campaign to encourage Ireland to develop a National Digital Development Plan.
