Irish demand for internet connectivity via submarine cables grew by 44% in the past five years and is set to “increase significantly” over the next decade, government estimates show.
The government said this required investment in more undersea cables, with cables taking up to five years to deliver.
The Department of Communications has launched a public consultation on international telecommunications connectivity to help shape the government’s strategy in this area.
Documents prepared for consultation show that data centers in Ireland account for almost all internet connectivity via submarine cables, with these data centers serving users around the world.
The dominance of demand by digital infrastructure companies in Ireland’s overall internet demand is described as “rare” in Europe.
The consultation documents said Ireland has the second highest flow of industry data into its data centers of any EU member state.
“The study finds that Ireland is unique in having major cloud data centers for the three major cloud service providers with the largest market share,” a department document said.
The study published by the Department of Communications said Meta, Alphabet, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft account for 79% of total internet demand from industry in Ireland.
The department said Ireland is well served by the existing submarine cable network with 14 cables connected to Ireland: four connected to North America, nine to Britain and one to Iceland.
One of them has a spur connecting Ireland to mainland Europe. He said that, with Brexit, there is only that one cable connecting Ireland to mainland Europe.
He said that while there is sufficient capacity on the Ireland-Britain route, demand could exceed capacity in the next three to five years.
He said that in addition to the increasing demand, a number of cables also need to be replaced in the coming years.
Department documents said there are nine proposed or publicly known cable systems with links to Ireland estimated to have service dates within the next four years, but predicted not all would be delivered.
He said two landing-point projects in Ireland will receive €48 million in funding from an EU facility to build the cable infrastructure.
The documents appear to be silent on the security infrastructure in Ireland and in Irish-controlled waters, particularly the navy and air force, to prevent and respond to any bad actors, including hostile states such as Russia or China.
The documents said the European Commission made recommendations on safety and sustainability in February and that an informal subsea cable infrastructure expert group was being set up to design the cables, share information between member states, carry out risk assessments and develop the capacity of maintenance and repair.
Launching the consultation, Minister of State Ossian Smyth said Ireland “critically relies” on submarine cables for its economy and that broadcasting, gaming, machine learning and big data will only increase demand for the bandwidth provided from the cables.
He said Ireland is pursuing a strategy to be a key international hub between North America and Europe and that increased capacity and resilience are essential to this role.
The deadline for submissions is July 19.
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