What Quality of Network do we think Eircom show have?

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Further thoughts:

bk wrote:

The problem is if they go their own way and go MPEG4, then we will likely be the only country in Europe, which means the boxes will be much more expensive and their will be much less variety.

While most of Europe started with DTT before MPEG4 became widely available, this is not the case with Ireland. There is no shortage of MPEG4 DTT kit on the market now with three users in France (Canal+, TPS and the Eurosport HD French service all use MPEG4 DTT). NTV in Norway is also using it. No doubt there are others.

The problem with using MPEG2 on a roll out is you get locked into a bandwidth inefficient technology with hundreds of thousands of MPEG2 only capable receivers in place that provides little room for delivering good quality pictures, more channels or HDTV into the future. Virtually every European country has issues of compatibility in frontier areas – far more so than Ireland. Any box that can do MPEG4 can also do MPEG2, so there is no incompatibility risk with Northern Ireland with this strategy.

Compared with the test stage when they only had one high bitrate “demo” channel which made full use of the TV’s picture delivery quality with today when they are stuffing 25 channels using MPEG2, one notices a material decline in the picture quality (while still much better than unclear reception that was offered by the old analog transmissions). TV broadcasters haven’t kept up with quality improvements in home receivers because of bitrate constraints. MPEG4 allows them to correct this issue.

TPS are getting the same HD picture quality using 11 Mbits/sec as they previously had with 18 Mbits/sec using the MPEG2 CODEC. Using MPEG4 in 2006 for DTT is the only sensible choice.

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SkepticOne wrote:

So neither reselling nor LLU provide the level of competition required in Ireland.

While I accept most of what you are saying about reselling, why not in the case of LLU and what are you proposing as an alternative?

Triple play fibre is OK in urban areas, if someone is prepared to make the investment. However I can’t see it reaching deep into rural areas for decades and then some.

While wireless may be part of the solution in rural areas, it has scalability and speed limitations which make its successful widespread adoption in urban areas unlikely. The more people that use the airwaves with faster and faster data rates (to compete with DSL etc) the faster the wireless infrastructure grinds into a gridlock. One also ends up with more and more ugly cellsites as the demand grows, which brings its own pressures on the system’s scalability and reliability.

I would liken the use of airwaves for broadband to using one’s motor car for personal transportation. It is better to use public transport (ie wireline or fibre) in urban areas otherwise you will face traffic jams and health problems from polluted air as car use grows. While wireless has its place in delivering mobile solutions it should be used sparingly because it has finite scalability and reliability in the real world.

The copper loop is the best short / medium term solution for broadband because it is already in place and capable of wide-scale rollout (ie “dslization”). I don’t think you will get new entrants into the market to duplicate eircom’s copper loops (and they’d be better off using fibre in such an exercise).

In my view an efficient unbundling system is vital for both urban and rural areas to achieve maximum coverage and speed at a competitive price. There is no point in burying one’s regulatory head in the sand and letting eircom win the day.

There are basic competition rules about the market share any one company should be allowed get away in any market. Around 80% is far too much. LLU is the most efficient way to dilute this problem away.

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IrishTLR wrote:

I'm getting a little tired of hearing how great the French are. I'd rather concentrate on the Irish issue.

Nobody is stopping you from advancing your own (“non French”) proposals if you wish.

Please however don’t fall into the trap of “re-inventing the wheel” as so often happens in Ireland – going down a particular new route, when a tried and tested solution is already copyable off the shelf from other countries.

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bk

Probe, this discussion about DTT should really be on the Broadcasting Forum or the Terrestrial Forum, not IOFFL.

watty

Given an analogue switch off date of 2012 and no plan for Digital rollout, though the whole DTT debacle is slightly reminiscent of Ireland's BB efforts. But the reasons appear different, in reality it is lack of Government will to intervene that has resulted in both being a mess.

bealtine

bk wrote:

Probe, this discussion about DTT should really be on the Broadcasting Forum or the Terrestrial Forum, not IOFFL.

Indeed it is the right place, however imho there are similarities between bb and DTT, it clearly shows a lack of political will (or understanding) on the part of the minister "in charge" and/or a lack of regulatory knowledge that is utterly staggering. Of course hiding behind the "fully liberalised market" excuse du jour is hardly satisfactory in both cases, when clearly neither market is "fully liberalised" at all. Reselling (in the case of bb) is not a "fully liberalised market".

The political will to implement *anything* at all is symptomatic of the uselessness of government when it comes to anything more technical than a pencil.

The DTT issue however is more pertinent to "joe ordinary" than the issue of bb. If I am not mistaken most UK channels (analogue) will be switched off next year. (just in time for an election too, might I add) and Joe will be asking where's my BBC gone?

Still having said all that the intricacies of DTT are best served elsewhere:)

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bk wrote:

Probe, this discussion about DTT should really be on the Broadcasting Forum or the Terrestrial Forum, not IOFFL.

Perhaps certain aspects of the DTT debate belong elsewhere within the structure of boards, but I think it is important to recognise that broadband is at the core of digital convergence where the internet, voice telephony, the “IP versions” of the print and broadcast media and other applications come together to share a single infrastructure. Any debate on the future of broadband can not close its eyes on individual elements of this convergence trend because they form a material part of the consideration of what is adequate in capacity terms and what is not.

As stated earlier some of the DSL modems/set top boxes used by DSL providers in the country I shall refrain from mentioning by name [which are normally “free”] include DTT chips. In addition to making the box more interesting from the perspective of the consumer (they don’t have to buy a separate DTT box, and have only one additional remote control to find under the couch cushions, and can jump from channel 2 (which comes via DTT) to channel 42 (a HD movie coming down the line via DSL) seamlessly. It saves the service provider from having to invest in “duplicative backhaul” for the terrestrial channels (i.e. these terrestrial channels don’t have to be transported to the MSAN over fibre) allowing more space to carry pay channels over the wireline IP infrastructure. Benefiting both parties is the fact that only one MPEG4 decoder and the related chip to process the feed is required in the combined DTT/DSL box.

It would be nice if the software platform on which boards.ie (and similar) incorporated a facility for virtual links for threads over multiple discussion groups. In that way a moderator could incorporate one or more secondary links to a thread which was relevant to multiple interest categories. This would allow a thread to stay where it is and at the same time be exposed to people in other groups which shared an interest in same.

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Sponge Bob

probe wrote:

Perhaps certain aspects of the DTT debate belong elsewhere within the structure of boards, but I think it is important to recognise that broadband is at the core of digital convergence where the internet, voice telephony, the “IP versions” of the print and broadcast media and other applications come together to share a single infrastructure. Any debate on the future of broadband can not close its eyes on individual elements of this convergence trend because they form a material part of the consideration of what is adequate in capacity terms and what is not.

The mpeg4 argument properly belongs in the ICDG terrestrial forum I fear. Your other argument is of course correct but I fear that as DSL is only available to 65% of homes at most that the initial thrust of 'what to do' should be to get that to 100% or to 90% with high quality wireless for the rest.

In other words I feel that 100% BB coverage is a primary aim , 256k would do for phase one simply becuase its such a huge improvement on the 12k analogue connectiosn you often find in rural areas today.

mpeg4/iptv/convergence implies a circa 10mbit universal pipe (beat me up bk) which is far too sophistaicated for Ireland in this decade.

I feel the universally available increments will be 256k then 2mbit then 5mbit then 10mbit.

Phase 4 of that network rollout (phase 3 if we get the finger out) will provide the pipe which will make convergence possible. For the presentg and near future dare I say its a pipe dream .

We have no agreement or colelctive national vision on phase one yet and as I said before in this thread we must first crawl in a straight line.

The French did lay the foundation in the 1980s when all business lines everywhere were provisioned as Basic Rate ISDN by 1989. WE still do not have 100% of exchanges upgraded to supply Basic rate ISDN 17 years later.

Your converged pipe will be a reality in the 10 largest towns of course, and within 2 years I should think but not universally.

bk

Sponge Bob wrote:

mpeg4/iptv/convergence implies a circa 10mbit universal pipe (beat me up bk) which is far too sophistaicated for Ireland in this decade.

No argument there 10mb would be fine for two MPEG4 SD streams (with nothing left over for net use) or it might barely do for a single HD stream (12mb preferable for all overheads etc.)

It is an argument for a different day weither that would be sufficient or not to meet peoples needs, but if mixed with a DTT service it could work.

Mixing with a DTT service is actually a really good idea as it saves on bandwidth.

Sponge Bob wrote:

Your converged pipe will be a reality in the 10 largest towns of course, and within 2 years I should think but not universally.

I agree that seems possible, as long as Comreg and LLU can be sorted out, then I believe competition will drive it, just like in Paris.

However I'm much more concerned by rural areas getting even a basic service, which is unlikely to happen without some sort of government intervention as they aren't really of much interest to business.

Sponge Bob

bk wrote:

No argument there 10mb would be fine for two MPEG4 SD streams (with nothing left over for net use) or it might barely do for a single HD stream (12mb preferable for all overheads etc.)

15 mbits and not 10mbits is the medium term objective for all in about 10 years so. HSDPA will hit that in 2008 BTW

I agree that seems possible, as long as Comreg and LLU can be sorted out, then I believe competition will drive it, just like in Paris.

Yes. It can be realised in the 10 biggest towns with about half the population and which are all on the ESB fibre and all by the end of 2008 , once Comreg is abolished and replaaced with something useful .

However I'm much more concerned by rural areas getting even a basic service, which is unlikely to happen without some sort of government intervention as they aren't really of much interest to business.

As am I , 256k is some 10-20 times better than what is out there now. Lets start our universal service at 256k by the end of 2008 and let the market take care of the bigger towns.

watty

IPTV is barely capable of SD TV in Ireland. Magent has had to change from MPEG2 to MPEG4 to still have poor QOS delivering ONE IPTV stream at SD on their ADSL2.

BT has a converged DTT / IP box for ADSL. It makes sense. There are people working on that here, but using much more modest broadband (cached VOD on loacl hard drive in setbox) and Satellite as there is no DTT.

Multicast 150kbps to hard drive 24 x7 beats live unicast VOD for user experience and network costs.

Here in Ireland we have Digital Divergence, no digital convergence yet!

watty

Sponge Bob wrote:

15 mbits and not 10mbits is the medium term objective for all in about 10 years so. HSDPA will hit that in 2008 BTW

Yes. It can be realised in the 10 biggest towns with about half the population and which are all on the ESB fibre and all by the end of 2008 , once Comreg is abolished and replaaced with something useful .

As am I , 256k is some 10-20 times better than what is out there now. Lets start our universal service at 256k by the end of 2008 and let the market take care of the bigger towns.

Yes USO of 256k and even maybe subsidy in some ruaral areas and the towns will happily end up with 20G per apartment on their own easily if there is real LLU and access to backhaul.