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Ray Bell

Ray Bell

Ray Bell is Head of Information Systems and Broadband/Digital Officer at Offaly County Council, Ireland, and a STEAM education advocate and TEDxAthlone speaker.

Sep 23, 2026

3:12
What exactly has been achieved?
3:14
Yeah, so just a little bit of background to this.
3:15
So I suppose, really in Offaly, we've about maybe 37,000 premises in total across the whole county.
3:20
Uh, the commercial operators were really looking after about maybe 24,000 of them, so that really left about 13,000, uh, homes, I suppose, really in the most rural parts of Offaly, um, that really no commercial operator would go in there, like your, your normal sort of your Eir, your Vodafone and stuff wouldn't go in there.
3:35
So back sort of in late, uh, 2019, [smacks lip] uh, government, uh, signed a contract with National Broadband Ireland, uh, and that was to really go in and, I suppose, go to them really remote areas of Offaly.
3:46
So that was signed in, um, as I said, the end of 2019, and then work would've really started to build over the last probably four to five years, and a huge amount of work has gone in.
3:56
If you can imagine, we're down every, uh, boreen, every, uh, rural area, every small road within the county.
7:34
... as soon as they want.

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