eNet gets Serious about selling fibre.

Sponge Bob

They are taking the service (up to 200m) out to the punters rather than wait for the punters to 'come to' them. Story on Silicon Republic here

This is a good idea . The amount of people around who do not realise that there is a high capacity fibre outside the door is amazing .

The number of companies who could upgrade from a 1Mbit - 2Mbit copper leased line to a 10Mbitfibre leased line , with a payback time one year or maybe a bit more, is equally amazing.

I hope that eNet make this abundantly clear during their charm offensive otherwise its a bit of a waste in my opinion.

Tom Young

Sponge Bob wrote:

They are taking the service (up to 200m) out to the punters rather than wait for the punters to 'come to' them. Story on Silicon Republic here

This is a good idea . The amount of people around who do not realise that there is a high capacity fibre outside the door is amazing .

Quite so. Yet try get a Right of Way to dig access from one of the councils!!?! Forget it.

Vested interests and local government well happy to charge and be right in the way of progress.

Network is there, so you are spot on.

Tom

PS: It's not Minister DCMNR, it's Minister Environment & Local Govt.

Sponge Bob

Tom Young wrote:

Quite so. Yet try get a Right of Way to dig access from one of the councils!!?! Forget it.

This is a Dublin problem ....mainly...and dates back to Dublin Corpo doing their nut about the unco-ordinated digging around the ITSC in the late 1990's

Vested interests and local government well happy to charge and be right in the way of progress.

Not in MOST of the 27 MAN towns which do not include Dublin.

Additionally , much of total the MAN length in towns like Galway and Limerick is within Industrial estates and Business parks which are not council owned ...thankfully.

DonegalMan

Silicon Rep wrote:

The firm responsible for managing the State’s regional fibre networks and metropolitan area networks (MANs) has launched a campaign whereby it will write to 3,000 businesses across Ireland that are located close to the MANs and encourage them to drive demand for broadband services in their area ...

... Lawlor explained that hundreds of businesses around the country have signed up for broadband services through the MANs.

[sarcasm]
Hundreds? And there was me that thought that the MANS were going to revolutionise Broadband availability.
[/sarcasm]

lucernarian

Originally posted by DonegalMan
The firm responsible for managing the State’s regional fibre networks and metropolitan area networks (MANs) has launched a campaign whereby it will write to 3,000 businesses across Ireland that are located close to the MANs and encourage them to drive demand for broadband services in their area ...

Lol I wonder if Eircom recieved a letter off Enet...

eircomtribunal

DonegalMan wrote:

[sarcasm]
Hundreds? And there was me that thought that the MANS were going to revolutionise Broadband availability.
[/sarcasm]

Two out of three is good enough for the DCMNR.
The three being
1. scheme done in time
2. scheme done within budget and
3. scheme doing what it was meant to do.

The original design flaw of the MANs must never be questioned. It's funny how it is now no longer used as the acronym for Metropolitan Area Network, but for Municipal Area Network.

It would be timely to change at least some of the remaining MAN projects to "fibre to the curb" or "fibre to the home" pilot projects. (The current MANs are "hard to access fibre beneath the curb" projects).
P.

bealtine

eircomtribunal wrote:

It would be timely to change at least some of the remaining MAN projects to "fibre to the curb" or "fibre to the home" pilot projects. (The current MANs are "hard to access fibre beneath the curb" projects).
P.

Fibre to somewhere/anywhere would be better no?

thegills

FTTH is never going to be widespread due to the cost; the Swedish Govt. funded FTTH to the tune of €6Bn.

The MAN's / ESBT have enabled telcos to get fibre access to the eircom exchanges around the country (Magnet, Smart for example). This enables these telco's to offer ADSL2+ type services.

Admittedly the telcos are targeting the large cities but it's a start.
thegills

Capt'n Midnight

thegills wrote:

FTTH is never going to be widespread due to the cost; the Swedish Govt. funded FTTH to the tune of €6Bn.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sw.html 9,001,774 (July 2005 est.)

They've got over twice the population so it cost less than €3Bn here /mar dhea

eircomtribunal

thegills wrote:

The MAN's / ESBT have enabled telcos to get fibre access to the eircom exchanges around the country (Magnet, Smart for example). This enables these telco's to offer ADSL2+ type services.

We could have got that with proper LLU provision.

What a roundabout way! The Eircom exchanges already have fibre backhaul.
It is extremely cumbersome and expensive for Magnet/Smart to get the independent MAN fibre backhaul to the eircom exchanges – and when they have done so they are double-****ed with the LLU bottle-neck situation and the poor last mile network of Eircom.

The MAN concept looks impressive on high gloss paper. It was sold to the gov know-nothing-about-the-situation guys by industry smart asses and it solves none of the problems that need to be solved. The DCMNR clings to the illusion that the MAN's got Eircom moving.

With failed pay-roll computer systems sooner or later the point is reached where gov has to admit that they do not work, with the MAN's the DCMNR will fudge and fudge on.

Fibre to the home, or fibre to the curb (so that short copper dsl or cable runs will achieve high speed connectivity) is the future. Now is the time to start it and not long after the others have done so.
The MAN's fibre loops down in the ground of the smaller towns will serve no purpose.
This project should be re-evaluated and adjusted. It is a waste of money, albeit most of it is paid for by Europe.
P.

watty

Make all mobile phone masts have Wireless Broadband and connect as many as possible to the MANs.

Otherwise the MANs will forever be in glorious isolation. ESB and Eircom both already had good networks. The problem isn't even just the poor copper local loops in many areas and pair gains, but lack of willingness to offer:

1)ISDN at all on exchanges that are actually native ISDN
2)An "always on" fixed pices all you eat internet on an ISDN Channel.
3)Broadband that runs over ISDN (they won't do it here but do it elsewhere).
4)Broadband at all in the exchange.
5) LLU

All of these are problems as well as the quality of local loop. My local loop for 5 years was faulty and Eircom refused to send someone to test claiming it was OK from exchange test. (< 19K modem). When eventually they did send someone to test physically from this end inside 2 hrs he had replaced a section of cable in street and since connection has been 100% with 42k speed.

So they can even fix LL if they will admit it is faulty!

thegills

It is extremely cumbersome and expensive for Magnet/Smart to get the independent MAN fibre backhaul to the eircom exchanges

On what basis are you making this statement?

The eircom exchanges do have fibre backhaul but eircom will only make managed bandwidth available, they don't deal in dark fibre. Have you any idea what it will cost to get an STM-1 from say an exchange in Cork back to Dublin???

It is a waste of money

Magnet, Smart don't seem to think so. Without the MAN's there would be no Magnet or Smart outside of Dublin.

thegills

eircomtribunal

thegills wrote:

On what basis are you making this statement?

For example direct from the horses mouth. See paragraph 2 of http://colin.netech.ie/archive/41

thegills wrote:

The eircom exchanges do have fibre backhaul but eircom will only make managed bandwidth available, they don't deal in dark fibre. Have you any idea what it will cost to get an STM-1 from say an exchange in Cork back to Dublin???
Magnet, Smart don't seem to think so. Without the MAN's there would be no Magnet or Smart outside of Dublin.

ENets announced "price revolution" has still to be seen.

P

Solair

I agree with that, but would add that there wouldn't have been Smart/Digiweb/Magnet etc in Dublin or Cork either without the MANs and a few other alternative fiber optic networks that are in existance.

Eircom's fiber backhaul is designed around eircom's own demands and you'd have to deal with them.

Accessing an exchange from a MAN isn't a big deal and certainly is cost-effective and it removes eircom wholesale from the equation completely which can only be a good thing!

There's no problem, unless you're eircom / a massive eircom shareholder, with a few alternative ways of routing backbone data.

And Dublin City Council is partly justified in going "mental" about utility companies digging holes in the roads without any kind of coordination.
However, they can't really lay all the blaim on the utility companies. The city councils of Ireland have failed miserably to provide any sort of infrastructure to assist with the laying of cables / pipes. There should be more publically owned ducting systems and there should be areas of pavement that can be easily removed and relayed. This could be combined with dedicated cable crossings in roadways either ducts or areas of brick paving that can be lifted and relayed again.

The Irish approach appearst to be to lay the cables any old place resulting in endless disruption of traffic, holes dug in the road and huge waste of resources.

Where the utility companies (all of them) do need to take more responsibility is when it comes to filling in after they've dug up a road. It's regular to see holes dug and filled in a totally pathetic way causing the patch in the road to sink and create a big pothole after a few weeks of traffic.

It's just another example of Ireland's national and local government's inability to plan anything!

thegills

For example direct from the horses mouth. See paragraph 2 of http://colin.netech.ie/archive/41

I have read this article and the piece you refer to doesn't reflect reality. I hope you don't judge e-net / ESBT based on this type of "Horses Mouth" info.

In general the MAN's pass by the eircom exchanges in the MAN towns. For example the Limerick MAN passes by the 6 exchanges. There is little civils invloved in connecting the MAN to an exchange. The carrier then needs to buy backhaul from ESBT, and MAN fibre from e-net. If you think that the carriers are paying in excess of 6 figures for each exchange then your seriously misguided.

thegills

SeaSide

a six figure sum is looks pretty accurate to me

damien

I have also heard that when E-Net dig to an exchange from the MAN that they charge the telco full whack while owning the ducting and are able to then rent additional space in the ducting to anyone else who wants it.

So if Smart went in, they get charged full whack, then when BT go in, they too get charged full whack. I would have thought they'd drop prices for both parties. Can anyone confirm if this is bull or not? If that was the case it would nearly be better for telcos to negotiate as a a single group and get a discount. Though I guess E-Net is afterall a "for profit" company that runs a Government asset, they're not into social justice or charity or such hippy thinking.

thegills

a six figure sum is looks pretty accurate to me

Let me get this straight. Magnet / Smart are targeting the top 64 exchanges in the country to start with. 64 times €100k = €6.4M just to access the exchanges??? ot to mention backhaul, IP transit, etc.

So if Smart went in, they get charged full whack, then when BT go in, they too get charged full whack

This is not the case. Typically eircom insist that the telco has to have a different chamber so the existing connections can't be used.

eircomtribunal

I am not claiming that access to the eircom exchanges would cost an OLO €100,000 a pop. What I started with was

What a roundabout way! The Eircom exchanges already have fibre backhaul.
It is extremely cumbersome and expensive for Magnet/Smart to get the independent MAN fibre backhaul to the eircom exchanges – and when they have done so they are double-****ed with the LLU bottle-neck situation and the poor last mile network of Eircom.

The MANs only alleviate one problem for the competitor: possibly reducing the backhaul costs (– and this should have been reduced by regulatory means and not by doubling the infrastructure), but ENets pricing is not radically cheaper, and the backhaul cost is only a part of a number of costs of unbundling.

The Last Mile quagmire stays untouched.
The more difficult to supply areas, the last 5% population, the ****ty end of the stick, will not be helped by the MAN's either.

As to the LLU costs and how to make a business case for LLU competitors (or not!), the citigroup report on eircom in its dealing with the SMART broadband offer, was an interesting calculation example.

You remember the grant Esat/BT was given for unbundling? It was a substantial sum, several (10 or more?) millions if I remember correctly, to unbundle some (30; 40?) smaller exchanges.
Most of the money ended up with Eircom, the taxpayer never got a return on the investment, as there was no possibility for Esat to start a profitable venture on those unbundled exchanges (I had been very critical of Esat/Bt about this then, until Bill showed me the underlying figures and costs). But then perhaps in the years to come, when ComReg has finally come to grips with implementing workable LLU, BT will have a better starting position...

With ComReg giving Eircom the highest EU line rental and LLU pricing, guaranteed into the future, LLU competitors will stay at a continuing disadvantage. Eircom can at the press of a few keyboard buttons change their bitstream offers to keep the LLU competition at bay.

I am not saying the MANs are a total waste, I wish and hope they will provide some useful infra-structural competition, but the case for them is not convincing. The hype and misinformation about them put out by the DCMNR is not helping – but that is the way our PR driven policy culture has developed into.
P.

Sponge Bob

eircomtribunal wrote:

The Last Mile quagmire stays untouched.
The more difficult to supply areas, the last 5% population, the ****ty end of the stick, will not be helped by the MAN's either.

eNet is not supposed to sort out the Last Mile nor do I think they should ever go there , I think that the strategy of connecting those high demand customers who are physically 200m (ish) away from eNet fibre is the best thing they can do for now . Next year they can start to consider 500m etc.

eNet so far have been a National backbone alternative .....when packaged with the ESB or the mysterious Aurora ....or a tail alternative to extend OLO network fibre for the likes of Colt , BT Ireland and Colt.

If eNet can deliver a package into a large interconnect in Dublin from Ballina or Galway or Cork ina seamless manner then they are doing what they should be doing.

Being proactive and saying 'we will come to you ' is a good thing in my opinion.

If there were a structural weakness in eNet it is that they have not bitten the bullet and gotten themselves a serious mast on each significant MAN (all MANs to follow thereafter ). Hop to it lads and build 10 big masts on the 10 biggest MANs with a co lo at the base .

crawler

Sponge Bob wrote:

If there were a structural weakness in eNet it is that they have not bitten the bullet and gotten themselves a serious mast on each significant MAN (all MANs to follow thereafter ). Hop to it lads and build 10 big masts on the 10 biggest MANs with a co lo at the base .

Jumps up and down in great excitement applauding loudly - sure I have been only telling them to do that for the last 3 years! Interestingly if you look at the new tenders on e-tenders they do mention a mast

Sponge Bob

crawler wrote:

Jumps up and down in great excitement applauding loudly - sure I have been only telling them to do that for the last 3 years! Interestingly if you look at the new tenders on e-tenders they do mention a mast

These more recent ones do mention wireless.

http://www.e-tenders.gov.ie/search/search_show.aspx?ID=OCT045967 Donegal

http://www.e-tenders.gov.ie/search/search_show.aspx?ID=OCT047150 Cork

http://www.e-tenders.gov.ie/search/search_show.aspx?ID=OCT046299 Shannon

but are heavy on the ducting too. (does eNet get these automatically once handed over ?)

Wicklow, the hilliest county in Ireland, gets no wireless

http://www.e-tenders.gov.ie/search/search_show.aspx?ID=NOV047587