[Article in ENN] IrelandOffline rejects DSL limit claims

damien

http://www.enn.ie/frontpage/news-9552513.html

Reinvigorated lobby group IrelandOffline has refuted claims by Eircom's CEO that technological limitations are preventing some from signing up for broadband.

In an interview with RTE on Friday, Eircom's Dr Philip Nolan said that the lack of DSL broadband availability, even in densely populated areas, was a result of the inherent technological limitations of DSL. He denied that the lack of broadband was due to any reluctance on Eircom's part to upgrade its network infrastructure to facilitate DSL.

Even in exchanges which have been enabled for DSL broadband, Eircom has to carry out a test on the line of prospective broadband subscribers, to see if the company can provide a reliable DSL service. As a guideline, subscribers need to live within 3.5 kilometres of an exchange to receive the service, since the quality of service degrades as the distance from the exchange increases.

"The 30 percent line (test) failure rate in Ireland is shocking, it's only 1 percent in the UK," said Damien Mulley, chairman of IrelandOffline, speaking to ElectricNews.Net. "BT is using technology which has pushed the distance limit from 3.5 kilometres up to 6 kilometres and 99 percent of houses are within 6 kilometres of an exchange."

He said that if a potential customer in the UK fails the line test, BT will send an engineer out to the house free of charge, to investigate the problem. A common problem is the internal wiring of the house, with internal phone extensions leading to interference on the DSL line. BT will fix the internal wiring of the house for a fee.

Mulley cites figures which show that Ireland has 75,000 DSL subscribers and that more than 2,000 people are subscribing to the service each week. He points out that for Ireland to attain the European average by the summer of 2005, it will need to add 275,000 DSL subscribers by that time.

"There's no way we're going to reach that figure," he said.

Mulley spoke as the chairman of a reinvigorated IrelandOffline, a pressure group which seeks to point out the gaping holes in Ireland's broadband policy, despite headline figures which suggest that broadband will soon become universally available.

IrelandOffline is a voluntary organisation consisting of home and business Internet users unhappy with currently available Internet connectivity products and services. Its brief is to campaign for the development of flat-rate and high-speed Internet access services and to promote innovation and competition in the Irish Internet marketplace.

The new executive was formed after its former chairman, Christian Cooke, proposed that the group be disbanded since the government seemed to be largely ignoring it. "We're making some progress, people are starting to listen to us, the membership wants to get more involved," said Mulley.

dahamsta

damien.m wrote:

"The 30 percent line (test) failure rate in Ireland is shocking, it's only 1 percent in the UK,"

Didn't bealtine say it was something like 0.4% at the EGM? If that's the case, you should be saying "less than 1%" or even "less than half of 1%"! Give them an inch, they'll take a mile!

adam

bealtine

dahamsta wrote:

Didn't bealtine

adam

I did say that:-)

and here is the link:

http://www.btplc.com/News/Pressreleasesandarticles/Corporatenewsreleases/2004/nr0475.htm

makes for some interesting reading...

Moriarty

damien.m wrote:

"BT is using technology which has pushed the distance limit from 3.5 kilometres up to 6 kilometres and 99 percent of houses are within 6 kilometres of an exchange."

The line tests for 512k have been completely removed damien - it's now effectively a universal service. You order it with any ISP and your line will be enabled right away. BT seem confident that the vast, vast majority of people will have no problems. I'm almost sure BT have said that they can push 512k out to 10km from the exchange aswell - it's 6km for 1mbit.

damien

Moriarty wrote:

The line tests for 512k have been completely removed damien - it's now effectively a universal service. You order it with any ISP and your line will be enabled right away. BT seem confident that the vast, vast majority of people will have no problems.

Yes I know.

cgarvey

Good stuff, well done for a nice quick response. Well done to ENN too!

.cg

Paddy20

Every day it's getting better Me Likes :cool:

spongebob

10km for 512k is correct. Thats c.6 Miles . There are places in rural Ireland over 10km out so it could only ever be a near universal service .

BT only use the line test in order to schedule engineer visits to find out WHY THE LINE DID NOT PASS .

BT are also totally committed to the removal or pairgains (also called Dacs) systems from their lines where the customer requires BB while Eircom are committed to banging as many as possible in as widely as possible. It is a myth that the deployment of pairgains in Ireland was an 80's/90s thing. It really only got going in the past 10 years which is when the Internet kicked in and Eircom then started to actively con people with extra line special offers in the late 1990's and has worsened since 1999 and privatisation .

The latest pairgains are up to 16:1 jobbies . The copper deficit is growing rapidly in Ireland .

M