Cavan's broadband shame forcing companies to move

The lack of quality high-speed broadband is forcing a major international employer to abandon its Belturbet base for Cavan Town, The Anglo-Celt can reveal. PreSonus Europe Ltd, a manufacturer of high-end audio electronics and software, will this week move to a new premises 15 minutes up the road where they can avail of a higher quality broadband service.

The Anglo-Celt understands that they are the second company in the county in recent weeks to depart a rural town location in favour of a neighbouring hub boasting faster broadband speeds. Glass shower enclosure and bath screen manufacturing company Flair International Ltd, it’s understood, swapped Bailieborough for Kingscourt with broadband cited as the reason for the move.
PreSonus Europe Ltd, which employs six people at their Belturbet offices on the former IDA site on the Old Clones Road, will take up residence at a new offices in Church View Square, Cavan Town, later this week.
“It’s not a decision we’ve taken lightly. We gave Belturbet every chance. We gave telecom companies even every chance to keep us here by providing the broadband speeds we needed, but that just hasn’t happened,” Eugene Greenan, accounting manager with PreSonus for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told The Anglo-Celt.
“It’s a shame,” he added, stating that the company have very much made the town their home since first opening a base of operations there almost four years ago. “But we have to do what’s best for the company and, at this stage, what makes commercial sense and for us is to move,” added Mr Greenan, who is also a county councillor for Sinn Féin.
The move comes as a major blow for the Erneside town, which has suffered badly in recent years with the loss of businesses and services.
“Even though we don’t sell anything into Cavan, money is still flowing into the local economy in terms of accommodation, food and all the rest with it. We do a good bit of business from our Cavan site and, when we do have international visitors, they tend to stay a few days. That’ll obviously move now from Belturbet to Cavan Town, it’s another of those consequences,” says Mr Greenan.
In addition to those employed by PreSonas, some 20 people report into the Cavan operation.
Broken promises and growing frustrations at the lack of high-speed internet service have directly impacted on how the company has done business, Mr Greenan claimed.
“There has been no indication of when we can get decent fibre broadband to Belturbet. At the moment we’re working off about seven Meg (Mbps). The attraction for moving to Cavan Town is obviously better broadband now, but also in about six to eight weeks the 1gb SIRO broadband is set to arrive.
“As it is in Belturbet we can’t even make a Skype video call to customers. The fact we deal with so much international business here, good broadband is a critical factor in anything we do,” he said.
An elected member of the Sinn Féin party on Cavan County Council also, Mr Greenan criticised the responses given by a delegation of mobile telecommunication company representatives to the recent local authority meeting.
“We had guys in from Three, Eircom and Vodafone, and none of them could give a clear indication of when full rural broadband roll-out might happen. Eircom promised us as a company that we’d have high-speed fibre broadband in Belturbet by 2016, but we see now where that has been delayed too.
“There is only so long that a business can survive with slow broadband. If anything, that meeting with broadband company representatives left us more frustrated than before because clearly they’re more interested in bigger urban areas than rural towns and villages,” Mr Greenan said, referring back to a presentation by telecoms company representatives to Cavan County Council late last year.
Earlier this month, Eir, formally known as Eircom, said that an additional 100,000 rural homes and businesses across 200 communities will have access to a high speed broadband connection within the next year.
As part of its programme to deploy high-speed broadband to rural Ireland, Eir is
Eir, formally known as Eircom, announced further details of its deployment of high speed broadband in rural Ireland, Eir is installing new fibre cables alongside the existing roadside telecommunications infrastructure.
It follows a commitment by the company last year that it would extend high speed broadband to a further 300,000 homes and businesses to reach a total of 1.9m premises by the end of 2020 in a programme of investment totalling €400m.

Flair move to Kingscourt
Meanwhile, the Celt understands that Flair International moved from its base on the outskirts of Bailieborough town to Kingscourt, just 13 kilometres away, also for faster broadband speeds, with a similar amount of office-based jobs transferred.
The east county town is signed up for the high-speed metropolitan area network (MAN), part of a nationwide €35m government spend dating back to 2008.
Repeated requests for comment to the company had not been returned at the time of going to print.