Cost of a DSLAM

Cuauhtemoc

This is my first post on the forums despite having read them alot.

Does anyone have an idea of the cost for Eircom(n) for converting/enabling an existing exchange for dsl.
I know this would have a lot of variations such as the capacity/size of the exchange, cost of the extra bandwith or whatever. Then on top of this the maintenance/customer service costs etc.
Just curious as to how eircom arrives at its €55(~€27 wholesale) for the residential package.

Second point.
The speed of the dsl connection(ignoring contention issues atm).
We see far superior adsl connection speeds offered in different countries available at similar or lower prices.
Is this because eircom is installing el cheapo dslams in their exchanges and not newer ones capable of higher speeds.
Or is there a genuine infrastructure reason that they can't offer these higher speeds without charging far more.
Or is this higher bandwith available but they just want to charge sme/soho users exortionate rates for it.

_________
C.

SkepticOne

According to this site, DSLAMs cost around $100 per port with high volumes getting a better deal.

As to speeds, it looks as if the quality of Eircom's copper plant is low and that is the limiting factor. Prior to RADSL, Eircom required lines to qualify for 1 Mbit connection even if 512k was being ordered. However, even at this relatively low 1 Mbit speed huge numbers of line failures were reported on this board. Another user group found that 80% of their members failed. Note that distances from the exchange in Ireland are not especially huge.

flav0rflav

As Sceptic says DSLAMS are about 100 per port, but that increases for smaller dslams.

But the wholesale cost, from my reading of comreg statements, is supposed to be based on the ongoing running costs of the service. Yer man, the american prof, was involved in determining a model for these costs. Unfortunately eircom don't agree on this costing strategy. The dslam cost should only be a very small part of the wholesale monthly price.

As regards adsl line speed:
bad wires - bollox, we have wires in the majority just the same as most other european countries, in fact, I'd suggest the are newer than most european lines. I would not be surprised if eircom are either incompetent/sneaky in relation to line failures.

Cheapo dslams, no. There are using industry standard Alcatels.

The reality is that it is a business decision to only run at 512k/1M. The dslams are configured to only run at these or lower speeds. ADSL modems when they start, measure the line quality (noise, distance, etc) to see how fast they can go, upto 8M for standard ADSL. Most of them record the info.

My home adsl router shows it is at 15% capacity at 512k ie. it could run at 3M. The one in work here is 17% at 1M, ie. ~5.5M possible.

There is no competition to eircom to bring in higher speeds. They also do not want to canabalise their dialup/ISDN/leased line revenues. Of course the regulator is supposed to sort that out.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by flav0rflav
As regards adsl line speed:
bad wires - bollox, we have wires in the majority just the same as most other european countries, in fact, I'd suggest the are newer than most european lines. I would not be surprised if eircom are either incompetent/sneaky in relation to line failures.

While I agree that it's mainly lack of competition, I did hear that Eircom did a deal in the 80's to buy a cheaper grade of copper wire for their network. This might explain the very short distance (one mile according to an Eircom worker) to the exchange needed to qualify for ADSL, the need for high interleaving and consequent latency and the large numbers of failures.