The Government of Malta is committed to accelerating the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband services to all areas of Malta and Gozo, concentrating initially, on priority broadband users such as schools, hospitals, businesses and providers of other public services where possible. Eventually, Government plans to reach all residential areas in a phased approach through a nation-wide Fibre-to-the-Home network.
The Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications Austin Gatt said the network is essential for Malta to continue to be among the leading nations in the field of ICT, building upon its successes in creating new jobs in the ICT and service- based industries and enabling the Government to continue to be the European leader in eGovernment services. He said Government’s plans for eHealth and eLearning solutions, which will bring state-of-the-art health care and learning solutions into the Maltese homes, are dependent on having a resilient, future-proof network, offering services in a competitive environment.
The objective of having an ultra-fast broadband network is in line with the EU-wide objective of 100 Mbps service availability and wide-spread take-up by 2020.
The Government, in line with its Vision 2015, is determined to make Malta a centre of excellence in key economic sectors. In this regard, Government has long recognised that ICT and in particular access to the Internet via state-of-the art networks, is fundamental towards the realisation of this ambition.
Its efforts have led to Malta being the European leader in eGovernment services, and to be the first country in Europe to mandate 4 Mbps connections as the minimum threshold for access to the Internet. These achievements however are not sufficient to meet anticipated future demand.
Following the publication of the Green Paper on Next Generation Access Infrastructure, Government has carried out a series of consultations with stakeholders and commissioned a feasibility study to determine the cost of a fibre to the home network in Malta; the most suitable technologies to deploy; and the best investment model to implement. This has been a mammoth task involving the analysis and costing of various passive and active options.
These studies highlight the significant investment challenges associated with the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband networks, and Government is therefore prepared to share some of the risks and incentivise investment through direct intervention.
Intervention by the Government will aim to ensure that wholesale access is available on the market in order to foster healthy retail competition. An appropriate range of wholesale products will therefore be required to enable service providers to differentiate from each other.
The call which is open until the 16th April can be downloaded from the Ministry’s website at https://mitc.gov.mt/tendersitem.aspx?tenderid=123.
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