Shannon Connect
The Shannon Broadband partners established the Shannon Connect project in late 2003 to help stimulate and quantify demand for broadband services in local communities, and to work with service providers to meet that demand.
A range of activities have been undertaken as part of this initiative including:-
Broadband Coordinators have been appointed in each county to help create awareness of the benefits of broadband and to assist individual communities develop their broadband services. Broadband workshops and information seminars have been held across the region targeting both communities and SMEs. A series of Broadband newsletters have been distributed to homes and businesses in the region. Broadband articles have been placed in a number of regional newspapers to increase awareness of broadband Interviews and live broadband discussions have been aired by the various community and commercial radio stations across the region. The potential of broadband as a tool for driving the economic development of rural areas has been highlighted locally, nationally and internationally through Shannon Development’s eTown initiative. (see http://www.etowns.ie for full details) To date the Shannon Connect team have helped over 30 Communities submit Group Broadband Scheme proposals to the DCMNR to cover over 80 towns and villages across the region.
Group Broadband Scheme funding is available to support efforts by community groups to implement broadband in smaller centres of population. For more infomation click here
General Broadband Information can be found here:- www.broadband.gov.ie
General information on using the Internet can be found here:- www.lifesteps.ie