FRIACO: Modem contention ratios?

DeVore

One question we ALL need to be asking is:

Whats the Users:Modems ratio of this service.

This is a connection-contended service ie: for every 30 "modems" in the exchange, they will sell this service to X users (where X is a lot bigger then 30).

30 "Modems" in the exchange cost 15K to rent from Eircom... its called a port, there arent actually physical modems but they act exactly as if there were... now a port costs 15K a year to rent from Eircom.

15000/30 = 500 per year or about 40 Euro per month.
40 Euro per month > 25 Euro per month and thats not even taking into account a whole HOST of other overheads (like wages!)

So it MUST be watered down and pretty severely...

Now, if you are in dublin you are probably ok, as there will be a fair number of ports bought by each ISP and the chances of them all being used up is lower then if your exchange only has one port.


If you are in Kerry (say) and they sell FRIACO to 150 people (at 5:1 contention... pretty sweet if that was all it was) then 120 people are going to get engaged tones when the other 30 are on.


You see where I'm going with this?



You dont need to worry about the number of hours. Even at 5:1 contention the users couldnt possibly all use the hours available to them...



So ask the right question: How thin are you slicing the pie I'm buying into?


DeV.

flav0rflav

They have to buy a certain number of ports at each inidividual exchange, as I understand. Meaning they again can't take advantage of large scales of economy. They will also have delays if they wrongly predict the demand, as they try and provision more.

The other way, like I've seen elsewhere, is that you buy a total number of ports at one central location, and all calls are routed back to there, thus enabling a much better service from a whole range of perspectives.

I'm sure the different ISPs will have different ratios. Eircom being in a better position when it comes to planning and provisioning delays.

10:1 anyone? how about 20:1? do I hear someone down the back at 30:1?

DeVore

Originally posted by flav0rflav
They have to buy a certain number of ports at each inidividual exchange, as I understand. Meaning they again can't take advantage of large scales of economy. They will also have delays if they wrongly predict the demand, as they try and provision more.

Each operator must buy at least one port (30 lines) in each exchange they operate in.

The other way, like I've seen elsewhere, is that you buy a total number of ports at one central location, and all calls are routed back to there, thus enabling a much better service from a whole range of perspectives.

That is not allowed in Ireland. You must explicitly buy capacity in blocks of 30 lines in each geographical location.

And a finer piece of product-fuckage I have not seen before.
My hat is off to Eircom for effectively killing FRIACO to all except the biggest operators. Even UTV are struggling with this I'll bet you!

The trick here is that if you want to service even 1 person in Kerry you must buy 30 lines there.... leaving 29 unused and a massive loss for you until you sell like bejaysus there (if you ever do!)

Meanwhile you may have exchanges in Dublin that are jammed to capacity.

You'd think you could pool your connections to optimise your offering... well only YOU (as the small isp) want that.. eh?

I'm sure the different ISPs will have different ratios. Eircom being in a better position when it comes to planning and provisioning delays.

10:1 anyone? how about 20:1? do I hear someone down the back at 30:1?

10:1 will be good and it will still suck.

DeV.

DeVore

just doing some math here:

744 hours in a month.

10:1 means each person will AT BEST get 74.4 hours per month or about 2 hours a day.

Realistically it wont be optimal (the entire exchange would have to be full every hour of ever day.... who wants the 3-5am on tuesday shift?).

Likelyhood is some people will get 2-3 hours per evening. Some will get to listen to engaged tones.

As this happens more and more people will hog the lines when they get them making the situation worse again.

Sorry to be the doomsayer but you cant ration food to starving people, they are going to rush the camp and steal it all. The only way to do it is to ensure its NOT a restricted resource and then people will calm and use it as needed.


DeV.

shinzon

I wonder will they follow the BT aol model in the UK and provision more numbers to enable people to get on, the aol people have 5 numbers to try, fair enough there still alot of busies but you at least have a 1 in 5 chance to get on

regards

Shin

bk

Originally posted by DeVore
Even UTV are struggling with this I'll bet you!

That is probably why they are doing deals with Virtual ISPs like Pigsback. To get as much advertising and public awareness as possible and therefore as many people on the exchanges as possible.

The EUR 10 - 30 hour product is probably a way for them to get as many customers as possible, who wont use up many hours.

BTW I thought that they only had to buy the ports in some sort of geographical uber-exchanges, of which they are only 7 or 8 in Ireland.

bk

Originally posted by DeVore

Likelyhood is some people will get 2-3 hours per evening. Some will get to listen to engaged tones.

I'd expect UTV expect most average customers to go with UTV LITE at 1 hour a day.

UTV and IOL seemed to work okay after they introduced the off-peak packages (150 hour == EUR30), the FRIACO packages aren't a major change to this, other then spreading out the time people might connect at (thus helping the problem a little).

So I'm not too worried about this, I'm sure there will be problems at the start like there was with NoLimits, but it will work out okay after awhile.

DeVore

Originally posted by bk

BTW I thought that they only had to buy the ports in some sort of geographical uber-exchanges, of which they are only 7 or 8 in Ireland.

Thats RADSL. Different product entirely.

With FRIACO you have to buy a port in every pop in each geographical location you intend to support. And theres no official way of pooling those lines...

DeV.

maxheadroom

Originally posted by bk
UTV and IOL seemed to work okay after they introduced the off-peak packages (150 hour == EUR30), the FRIACO packages aren't a major change to this, other then spreading out the time people might connect at (thus helping the problem a little).

Hmm - as far as I can gather, the diference is that with the 150 hour off peak packages, all the contention happened at the ISPs POP, your call got routed right the way across the PTSN network and can either get placed or fail at the ISPs POP. This meant the ISP could concentrate all of their resources in one place.
Now, for FRIACO, they buy special FRIACO ports in your local exchange. If those ports are full, then your call won't get as far the ISP. they could have buckets of spare capacity at the POP, but your call would never get that far.

tuxy

Originally posted by bk

So I'm not too worried about this, I'm sure there will be problems at the start like there was with NoLimits, but it will work out okay after awhile.

i hope your wrong i used to get engaged tones more often than not with nolinits for over a year
it only improved when they kicked most the heavy users off
so it took them ages to sort it out and at the expense of pissing off thosands of customers

BigEejit

Originally posted by DeVore
And a finer piece of product-****age I have not seen before.

Did comreg or its predecessor ok this knowing full well that the only people who will like this is the top brass in €ircon?
Did they do a consultation? and did they not get strips torn off them by the OLO's for this fûcked up situation?

Scott Taunton

We are not stating contention ratios purely because they won't exist. Obviously, if we cram too many users into one area, the service will deteriorate to a point where our service looks awful to the customer.

We will therefore (at our own expense) be routing calls via standard PSTN service if our FRIACO ports are clogged.

This goes some of the way to explaining why we need to bundle CPS with our service. We are then able to route this without cost to the customer.

This will trigger our requirement to reduce our costs by ordering additional FRIACO circuits in that area.

I hope this is of assistance.

Scott Taunton
Managing Director
UTV Internet

acid

Originally posted by bk

BTW I thought that they only had to buy the ports in some sort of geographical uber-exchanges, of which they are only 7 or 8 in Ireland.

It's called Single Tandem FRIACO, have a read of this post which explains it pretty well.