The research also revealed the widespread adoption of smart devices in Irish households. Almost seven out of ten (67%) consumers own a Smart TV; with just under half (49%) of households in possession of a virtual assistant technology like Alexa; a third of the public using smart home technology like digital heating controls and lighting; and a quarter using security devices like video doorbells.
Noting the research findings, SIRO Head of Operations and New Developments Cian O’Mahony said, “At SIRO, through our work with developers to bring our high-quality fibre broadband to new developments, we see the huge appetite amongst the public for homes with smart and connected devices. Equally retrofitting existing homes with smart technology is a growing trend. Today’s research brings to life the reasons people are opting for smart home technology. These can vary depending on life stages. Those in the older age demographics are more likely to view smart homes as important for environmental reasons, with younger groups valuing the convenience that they provide.
Commenting on the sustainability advantages, SIRO Director of Corporate Affairs Amanda Glancy said,“Smart home devices deliver numerous benefits. More sustainable living, achieving climate change targets, enhanced security or savings on energy or heating bills are key attributes. The latter is very top of mind given the steep increases in energy prices. As fibre broadband networks continue to roll-out across Ireland, this research indicates more individuals, families and communities will take advantage of the benefits of smart homes, particularly for environmental benefits and reducing the cost of living.”
Research conducted by Amárach Research, surveyed 1,585 people in Ireland at the end of January 2022. Amárach Research undertook this piece of research among a nationally representative sample of respondents (age, gender, region and social class) on awareness of and attitudes to Smart Homes.
Head of Operations, Cian O' Mahony will be speaking at the IHBA Summit tomorrow, April 5th in Croke Park on Broadband and Housing Construction. 
January is the time of the year we set (or reset) new personal fitness goals.
COVID-19 has changed the way people work-out or exercise. Lockdowns where gyms and other sporting facilities closed or a reluctance to undertake group sports with increased risk of contracting the virus both altered behaviours. But COVID-19 also accelerated changes already underway. Health and fitness are increasingly migrating online; with the art of exercise becoming ever more digitised and by extension personalised.
Significant improvements in connectivity, underpinned by access to high quality broadband such as SIRO’s fibre broadband network, are also driving the trend. Digital fitness is a huge and growing industry, with companies all trying to bring the next FitTech innovation to this multi-billion market.
[caption id="attachment_7283" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]Last week’s annual Consumer Electronics Show, billed as the “most influential tech event in the world,” saw health and fitness technology take centre stage, with a vast range of FitTech apps and devices from global players represented.
Image by Consumer Electronics Show[/caption]
Irish tech companies are also active in developing both FitTech products and services. Companies such as Glofox (a gym management app solution, which supported gyms in moving online during the pandemic) or Kitman Labs an industry leading sports analytics company, using artificial intelligence to increase athlete performance and health, just two leading examples.
At an individual level, what are the key digital fitness trends we can expect to see in 2022?
Christmas Period 2021 - Daily Data Consumption[/caption]
On a typical day, we would see activity on the network increasing from around 8am as people across Ireland start to wake up and begin using their devices. Data Usage usually peaks from 6pm as households settle in for the evening, watching Netflix across multiple devices, turning on the Playstation for a game of Fifa, or catching up on the day’s events via social media.
[caption id="attachment_7274" align="aligncenter" width="969"]
Average Daily Data Rate[/caption]
On Christmas Day however, we observed a significantly large ramp up in data demand between the hours of 7.00am to 10.00am. Such usage would not normally be reached until the late afternoon of a normal day. One potential reason is the strong demand for gaming console updates. PlayStations and Xboxes were at the top of Santa’s list this Christmas and sometimes Santa is careless, leaving this for parents to do early on Christmas morning.
We observed high usage maintained throughout the day, with some unusual spikey usage patterns emerging as people put their devices down to enjoy Christmas dinner.
[caption id="attachment_7273" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
Christmas Day 2021 Data Rates[/caption]
2021 might not have been the ideal Christmas holiday, but having strong, reliable broadband truly enabled us to spend some much-needed quality time with our families, whether they are by our side, isolating or at the other side of the world.
Let us remember the people behind the network, the men and women who spend months and years planning, designing, building and installing the gold-standard fibre broadband to more than 100,000 Irish homes, and have continued to do so during the pandemic.
As we begin 2022, many of us will continue to work from home. Ensure that you have a broadband connection that you can rely on by switching to SIRO 100% fibre broadband. Our network easily supported updating of hundreds of gaming consoles at the same time on Christmas morning, and we will continue to support Irish homes for all your remote working, studying and entertaining needs in 2022.
The gold standard, what does it mean? It’s a term thrown about by many that can be applied to virtually anything: broadband, accommodation, even a cup of coffee.
For myself, as CTO of SIRO, it means achieving and maintaining superior quality of customer service that inspires others to follow suit. Irish people have always valued quality customer service that’s delivered with care. Since the pandemic, there has been a notable shift in customers valuing trust and mutual understanding from their service providers. A recent survey from The CX Company noted that companies need to show “massive commitment, collaboration, energy and passion” to satisfy the emotional drivers that add to the customer experience. As a CTO of SIRO, with years’ experience of service delivery in telecommunications, one thing each internet service provider (ISP) needs to excel is: Agility.
The ability to react to a changing environment is critical. As is the ability to identify and resolve an issue in a timely manner. SIRO is a wholesale open access network with 19 retailers, and during the pandemic, we were deemed as an essential “critical” service, which meant two things: the people of Ireland needed us, and the pressure was on. Our SSPs had to adapt to ever changing restrictions and guidelines all while ensuring that our customers could carry on working during a global pandemic. So how does an open access wholesaler with 19 retailers ensure that our customers experience in “the last mile” is positive?
“We were deemed as an essential “critical” service, which meant two things: the people of Ireland needed us, and the pressure was on”
For starters, one of the key roles we have as a wholesaler, is supporting our retailers. Our retailers set the performance, as ultimately, they provide the service. So, our role is ensuring our retailers have the appropriate tools to manage their “service” end. Our installers, for example, can provide a heatmap to measure the performance of our connectivity in a home and determine which is the best place for our customers to place their modem. We provide the connection and the CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) and deploy engineers to complete the last steps in the connection. This ensures that our customers receive the highest standards of care and service. Our ultimate goal is to meet our customer expectations, as we are passionate that a SIRO connection is the last you’ll truly need.
While our retailers primarily offer residential services, the same level of care and innovation is provided for our enterprise connections too.
Some of our retailers have begun looking at Fibre to the Room, expanding on the concept of FTTH. Vodafone, for example, provide Wifi enhancement tools for homes that may have difficulty connecting in varying parts of the home. This is known as their “Super-Wifi” product which is having huge success. On average, an Irish home contains 15-20 devices that are Wi-Fi-enabled or connected to the internet, and we foresee that growing each year. As devices develop and demand grows, we as an ISP must continue to innovate, adapt and improve our services to accommodate.
Wifi-Six or “11ax” is a Wi-Fi enhancement tool that will enable better utilisation of the bandwidth provided, which we foresee as a tool that can enhance the in-home broadband experience for our customers and reduce the number of calls to centres.
As a wholesaler, SIRO are happy to support our retailers in ensuring our customers connection remains optimal. We need to ensure that we are providing our retailers with the level of support that’s required to ensure each customer receives the gold standard of service, at each step in their connection.
When SIRO first began its journey, we were a small wholesaler with very few retail partners. We had a vision of bridging the digital divide between Dublin and regional Ireland with pure fibre connectivity. Ireland had fewer than 11,000 fibre connections, and the incumbent Eir had the lion’s share of the broadband market with xDSL connectivity.
Now, we’ve achieved “Five 9s” availability and enabled over 400,000 homes with 100% fibre connectivity, all while balancing the delicate relationship between wholesaler and service provider.
Search Your Eircode today to connect to SIRO 100% Fibre Broadband. 
This week, SIRO announced that we’re launching Ireland’s first 2Gb consumer broadband service. It’s initially available in Kilkenny from 19 October, but watch this space for further rollout announcements. When I started working on our 2Gb project last year, I got the same reaction from most people I talked to: “Why? After all, SIRO already offers a gigabit service – isn’t 1Gb plenty for just about every home?” It’s a reasonable question, and I gave the same two answers every time.
First: build it and they will come. Ever since I started working on internet services, over twenty-five years ago, we’ve consistently seen that users will find a way to use any size of connection you can provide. One of my first upgrades was putting new software on dialup modems so that they could run at 33kbps – or 0.002% the speed of our new 2Gb service. Even then, people were sceptical – what could users want to do that would need that much bandwidth? Would they pay a premium for it?
More recently, when SIRO started promoting our 1Gb service in 2018, we got the same question – why would anyone possibly need a 1Gb service at home? Three years later, it’s our most popular service, widely used by homes and businesses around the country as the gold standard of broadband connections.
My second answer was that providing extra bandwidth allows our partner retail telcos to be innovative in the services they provide. For example, they might dedicate 500Mb to your gaming console; 500Mb to your remote working devices, to ensure lag-free video conferencing; and 1Gb to the general house Wi-Fi. We already see this happening in other countries where 2Gb services have been around for longer, and we’re looking forward to watching Irish broadband providers use SIRO connection to come up with innovative ways to make the most of the extra bandwidth we can now provide.
As more people move to working from home, businesses increasingly depend on high-quality fibre connections for video calls, remote access, and backing up increasing volumes of data. We saw this in action when we upgraded Cartoon Saloon to our symmetric fibre services during lockdown last year, so that they could continue to work on their Academy Award-nominated film Wolfwalkers while their staff remained safely remote. Getting more businesses online with more reliable fibre connections is key to helping Irish companies evolve and compete globally for both business and talent.
“We’re delighted to announce that SIRO in collaboration with Actavo have enabled 27,000 homes and businesses to avail of fibre to the home connectivity. When we first launched in 2017, we aimed to connect 17,000 premises. However, the demand for reliable broadband has enabled us to exceed our original goal, by almost 60%, more than doubling our presence from four to now nine towns in the county. Kildare is a county known for many things, one being its commuter county status but now that SIRO’s network spans across nine towns, we hope to enable the people of Kildare to work, live and play closer to home”.SIRO CEO John Keaney, noted:
“When we first launched our fibre roll out to Kildare towns, we couldn’t have anticipated the full extent of the demand in the county. Demand for reliable and resilient broadband exploded during COVID-19 due to working from home and eLearning, in addition to staying connected with family and friends. These ways of living and working are here to stay, and fibre broadband is now viewed as an essential service. Just like water or electricity, high quality broadband is now fundamental to how we live. Access to this service gives individuals, families and communities much greater choice in how they live and work and in ways that work best for them”SIRO fibre broadband for home is available to order from: Sky, Vodafone, Digiweb, Blacknight and PureTelecom.
In our second instalment of the Smart Home series, we talk with Lisa Marconi, leading Irish interior designer and founder of the world’s first 3D digitised interior design service, Design Led.
Tell us about yourself and career to date
I ran my own design studio, Dust, with my friend and co-founder, Sarah, for 6 years. For the first four of those years we also ran an online interiors store. First as a bricks and mortar shop and subsequently, an online store. We focused on residential work with a full renovation and new build service and a popular one-off consultation service. The idea for Design Led came to me in late 2019. In early 2020, I began looking into it and was given a place on the Enterprise Ireland New Frontiers Entrepreneur Accelerator which funded me for 6 months to develop the idea. I accepted my place and we closed Dust in August 2020. I have been working full time on Design Led since my accelerator ended in February 2021.Tell us about your company Design Led, it’s new digital platform for interior design, and what specifically it will it offer?
Design Led will offer a new way of accessing interior design expertise. It will create a 3D world that lets you easily access professionally designed rooms and adapt them to your existing rooms. It will allow you to customise and personalise these designs, with algorithms in place to recreate the experience of having an interior designer by your side as you do it. You can design yourself, but in a safe space where it is hard to make a bad decision. It will then streamline the shopping experience so that you can buy everything in your room directly from your shopping list via the Design Led platform. We want to make the entire process of putting your home together as seamless and easy as possible.Who is the target market?
Our core market is really millennials/Gen Xers who aspire for a beautiful home but are struggling to achieve it on their own. They want help with their home design but they don’t want to use an interior designer. This can be for any number of reasons from the cost, to wanting to have more ownership over their home design. Our customers know what they want their home to look like but they’re just not sure how to make it a reality. Or they’re completely overwhelmed by all the choice out there and don’t know how to make a coherent choice that looks good.
Is this service the first of its kind in Ireland?
It’s the first of its kind in the world! There is no other product out there currently on the global market that is digitising the interior design process. There are low cost online interior design solutions and apps that let you draw up your home, but these are different. The first offers the same design process as traditional interior design and so throws up all the same problems. Whilst the home design apps give you some of the tools that are similar to the ones designers use but they don’t actually offer you any design advice. What Design Led is doing is taking the tech of those home design apps and putting a layer of interior design over the top so that you are guided as you create your home.Do you feel this is a natural fit for a generation of digital natives vs. older groups?
Yes absolutely, this is first and foremost, a product for digital natives. People who look to digital products to outsource problems in their lives. Unsurprisingly, our market research has shown the greatest interest in our product from this age group. However, interestingly, there was significant interest from an older demographic for the platform as well which I was surprised by. There are several people from this group in our test group so I definitely don’t think the product excludes older people. I would say though that older generations still place a high value on seeing products in person and are nervous of buying without doing this. There is a generational shift away from this with Gen X and subsequent generations.What is the demand for this product?
From the market research we’ve done, people seem hungry for a new solution. Many people who want help with their home design aren’t using interior designers for the reasons I’ve mentioned earlier. I think there will always be a place for the high-end, bespoke interior design but for those with smaller budgets, there is a gap in the market for something like Design Led. Our demo video which showed our new design process had a really positive reaction from the Design Led community. People are really excited about it and we have a growing list of almost 200 people signed up to our test group to use our prototype when it is released.What would you say to potential customers who appreciate the convenience of the service but might traditionally prefer to physically see and touch the products?
I think things like improved product images on websites, being able to order fabric samples and seeing reviews has made the buying online process less of a gamble. You really can have a good idea of what you’re going to get before you buy. There are obviously still people who really want to see the physical object however I do think this is something more prevalent in older generations. I think if you trust the retailer you’re buying from and can see they have satisfied customers, then it is not something that a customer needs to worry about. And as the technology improves, especially with advances in VR, there is the potential for a user to be able to experience a product physically in terms of touch and look. At this point, I think physically going to a shop will become even less important.Is there an opportunity for Irish companies to benefit more from the gamification of interior design in terms of the supply and sale of Irish made home interiors and furnishings to an online marketplace?
I think there are undoubtedly opportunities for all companies that sell products for the home in the world of 3D and it’s an area that is worth investing in. Currently using 3D design in your home design is predominantly for the higher end of the market and it’s companies at this end that create their products in 3D formats. This is changing as the technology becomes more accessible and, I think, for Irish companies to compete in the global market, this is not something that should be ignored.
What’s the ambition for your digital service, e.g. where would you like it to be in 5/10 years’ time?
We want to transform the way people design their homes. In 10 years’ time, we hope to be the number one destination for all things home design in the world. We have big plans in terms of the technology we hope to develop for our 3D design studio. We also want to use our tech to innovate the online magazine format and have plans for a home design focused social media platform. We will be launching to the UK & Ireland this year and have plans to expand globally as our funding rounds proceed.Finally, can you tell readers where to find out more about the service and how much you expect it to typically cost?
Our design studio will be completely free to use! Whilst we will have Design Led membership options which will give our users access to in person design advice and discounts on products sold through our platform, we’ve made sure though that the design studio itself is free. We wanted to make sure anyone could access it. People can see our demo video and sign up to be part of our test group here - https://designled.io/your-design-studio
Is it time for Irish homes to get smarter? SIRO's Head of Operations Cian O’Mahony gives his views on the life-changing potential of smart homes.
Is it time for Irish homes to get smarter?
For generations leaving the immersion on was one of the worst offences that could be committed in an Irish household, worse even than missing the ‘long’ mass on a Sunday. The arrival of the plug-in timer has resolved this ecumenical burden, for those of you who remember to use it! Now, technology has leaped forward again with the onset of smart homes. But what do smart homes mean in practice for Irish householders? Smart homes can mean different things depending on your stage of life and on the built environment or building type in which smart technology is being installed. Below, I look at these aspects.Elderly
A segment of our population I have been very engaged with recently through lock downs, both personally and professionally, are those over 70. The bandwidth demands of our senior citizens is often overlooked. However, their ability to continue to adjust and use technology, particularly during the pandemic, has been marked. Many have lived through a world war and other life challenges, so they come armed with resilience and adaptability. The first thing to note is that elderly are serious bandwidth consumers already. Tablets for the zoom calls with grandkids in New Zealand, no problem. RTE Player on the smart TV? A must. DAB radio for the stations they prefer, even an old Amazon Dash Button to replenish the kitchen essentials. Society will always be judged on how it looks after the vulnerable and smart tech can give older people greater comfort and convenience in their lives. Stakeholders to the fore in enabling smart tech must now also look across the generations and consider how smart homes can better support our elderly in their earned autumn years. Technology is responding to this need, with the application of smart tech for the elderly an area which has really taken off in recent years. Increasingly it spans a broad spectrum from connecting with loved ones right up to sophisticated remote medical monitoring.Families
The volume of connected devices in the home now is a figure that varies depending on the publication, but likely north of 10, and growing rapidly. A key focus in this space will be privacy and security, as the application of technology to this demographic is more of a base skill set. We grew up with it to a degree. For SIRO, we recognise our role is to ensure we deliver a broadband installation which gives as strong a foundation for a seamless experience across all devices as possible. Positioning our entry point as close to the centre of the home, providing the customer with advice on modem positioning (no photo frames near it, not behind a TV, up as high as you can facilitate). In addition, we help customers connect their first two devices to the broadband network and carry out a speed test to demonstrate the product they have purchased is working correctly. Beyond this, our retail partners are coming to market with Wi-Fi enhancement products to further underpin the backbone connectivity which all these devices require. This will likely become the norm in all homes.Youth
The pace of technological development has accelerated in each generation, and this will be no different for the babies born in 2021. They will apply technology available today in an even more sophisticated way than we currently do. The next generation will go further, turning existing technology features into tangible benefits – even to solve global problems. This will include reducing carbon emissions throughout the home through fully interconnected devices or making connected home security enhancements accessible to all. Think a fridge that adapts to the ambient temperature; a washing machine which senses the weight and shortens its spin cycle or a set of security cameras and scanners that have a WPS set up to the home Wi-Fi and link back to monitoring stations. These features exist today but applying them as standard across our homes will move the next generation on to a whole other level of expectations. Providing the very best fibre broadband infrastructure creates the platform on which the full potential of smart tech will be realised.Built environment
As homes are constructed, we typically think of the thickness of the walls and the effectiveness of the roof. However, increasingly the commentary has moved to the presence of fibre broadband. A real shift in sentiment has been experienced through lockdown, and the feeling is that purchasers of all homes, new and old, are now attuned to the importance of purchasing a property that will facilitate their 10+ devices and importantly, the ability to work from home in the new post-COVID-19 normal. Fibre broadband is the gold standard in broadband connectivity. SIRO continues to work with a range of developers across Ireland to ensure our 100% fibre-to-the-premise service is available in all new developments. We also advise on home layouts to ensure a customer can enjoy broadband from the first day they move in, including that the devices and the modem are strategically positioned to maximise efficacy of use. Similarly, with SIRO’s enterprise product we work closely with each business on the installation of our fibre service, in both new and existing business premises, to ensure they can use the service in the way their business demands. Whether that’s wireless connectivity with machines on a manufacturing floor or wired upload speeds capable of sending the next Oscar-nominated animation feature across the Atlantic to Hollywood studios. Smarter homes, in addition to retrofitting of older homes, can make a meaningful contribution in driving a more sustainable and energy efficient Ireland. Part of Ireland’s green and digital recovery must be fostered not just within our business community but also within our homes and a focus on smarter homes must be part of that objective. The ‘immersion generation’ can drive the smart home movement too. Investing in smart home devices might just be the way to exorcise their childhood demons! Cian O’Mahony, is Head of Operations at SIRO, a joint venture between ESB and Vodafone, rolling out a new 100% fibre broadband network across Ireland.