Westnet - your first port of call for fibre broadband in Mayo

by Tom Gillespie

BROADBAND provider Westnet have the proud boast of not having increased their prices to customers in the past 19 years.

Company CEO Paul Cunnane said: “We have not increased our prices since the day we opened our doors. We are one of the very few people who can say that.”

The birth of Westnet came about when Paul, originally from Mullingar, moved from Dublin for a more peaceful life in Mayo.

But he found access to broadband was very limited which prompted him to set up his own broadband company in 2005.

The company was set up with the aim of establishing affordable, high-quality broadband to rural communities in the west of Ireland.

Since setting up, Westnet has established local access points and a high-capacity fibre-optic and licensed wireless backbone which runs the length and breadth of Mayo.

Today, with a staff of 17, they have their headquarters in Castlebar.

Paul, who has a background in IT, said: “The biggest change we have seen is the emphasis is very much on fibre.

“We started the business very much to fill in gaps. There was nothing whatsoever available and the only realistic way to build a network in those days was to build a wireless network. That was what we did. We built a very extensive wireless network covering Mayo, parts of Sligo, Galway and Roscommon.

“It was a huge achievement. We are very, very proud of it and most of that network is still up and running.

“At a very early stage we realised that the future was always going to be fibre and at the same time we realised that, as a relatively small player, we were never going to be the ones building the fibre networks.”

Paul, whose father’s uncle was Dr. Joseph Cunnane, the late Archbishop of Tuam, added: “We were clear-eyed enough to realise that people are going to want fibre and yet again the question we asked ourselves was if our customers are going to get fibre why wouldn’t they get it from us. So we were early movers on the National Broadband Plan.

“Our customer base covers most of Mayo and bits of the surrounding counties. It has started to extend nationwide because of the nature of the fibre network. It is not that difficult to set up in other parts of the country and we don’t necessarily say we are going to set up business elsewhere in the country. But what we sometimes have is local businesses who have branch operations in other parts of the country.”

Paul emphasised: “We want to get more people thinking of us as first choice. There was a time when we were the smaller player - that we were kind of the last resort. To be fair we set up the business largely on that basis when there was nothing else available.

“But we have now built a reputation in customer care and our aim is to get to a point where if you are thinking about broadband anywhere in the west of Ireland your first port of call is Westnet.”

Mr. Cunnane, who has worked in the IT business since 1987, starting as a junior computer programmer in a Mullingar factory.

He then held various IT roles in software, hardware and networks and became the international information systems manager for The Learning Company, a publisher of educational software and games, which was bought by toymaker Mattel.

Paul concluded: “We have a customer support phone line and SMS service operating seven days a week, backed up by our team of engineers. Our sales team can check a customer's location using sophisticated network-mapping software to see if a customer's location has fibre service available or is within our wireless coverage.”

Westnet can be contacted at www.westnet.ie or (094) 9067444.