Donegal County Council welcomes the announcement by the Communications Minister Eamonn Ryan of a €30m contract to construct a new direct telecommunications link to North America.
Project Kelvin is a cross-border venture between the Department of Communications Marine & Natural Resources, and the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment. The project is co-financed by Interreg funding from the European Union.
The project will involve the construction of an optic fibre submarine telecommunications cable which will be brought ashore in Co. Derry. Further links will ensure that Letterkenny as well as towns in Northern Ireland and in the border counties will have direct international connectivity. Communications between Ireland and North America will be routed directly without having to use external networks e.g. through London.
Amongst the benefits will be faster response times at lower cost for high capacity broadband. Connection prices as well as quality of service will be benchmarked against other international telecoms hubs, such as Amsterdam and London.
The transatlantic connection will link directly with the Council’s Metropolitan Area Network in Letterkenny and potentially with all other Council networks in the County over time.
Commenting on the announcement, the Council’s Head of Information Systems Brian Boyle said “ This is hugely significant investment for Donegal and a major boost to the telecommunications infrastructure in the county. Ireland’s first direct telecommunications link with the USA will service Donegal. This connectivity will be of tremendous benefit to the Development Agencies in their efforts to attract inward investment to the County particularly in the areas of software development as well as call & data centre operations”.
It is anticipated that the link will be operational by March 2010