Eircom to roll out BB countrywide?

Patrickof

Last night on the way home I was listening to Newstalk and the last item on the news was an announcment by the Gov that they would have eircom roll out BB to everyone.

Now I realise there's an election around the corner and I think they promised this at the last election, but has anyone heard any more details?

Or did I mis-understand?

smellslikeshoes

Sounds like a dose of pre election hot air.

OfflerCrocGod

Did the news piece mention anything about Eircom being payed for this? Eircom would upgrade every exchange in the country *if* the government payed for it.

crawler

the words "it would have to go to public tender" come to mind.

watty

But that would still leave maybe over 30% of people with no hope of broadband.

1huge1

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

Did the news piece mention anything about Eircom being payed for this? Eircom would upgrade every exchange in the country *if* the government payed for it.

not necessarly they do make more money from dial up

OfflerCrocGod

1huge1 wrote:

not necessarly they do make more money from dial up

Yes I know but Eircom won't say no if the government pledges to pay for it as they would be doing what Eircom asked them to do.

Liam Byrne

What's their definition of "countrywide" ? Does it still mean that they'll just be enabling exchanges and not giving a damn whether the people connected will be able to get BB ?

SkepticOne

I'm surprised Eircom's competitors aren't up in arms about this. They are the ones that have been forcing Eircom to expand to date and now the government is going to financially help Eircom to drive them out.

By competitors I don't mean bitstream resellers, btw.

Liam Byrne

True - imagine what Smart could do with that money, given the excellent service they already have with feck all cashflow.....

On three points alone - availability and speed - Smart would be a better bet. If eircom roll this out to exchanges, anyone more than 5km is screwed, and anyone within 5km gets a measly 1 or 2 meg connection for €60 per month.

Smart do this and anyone within 7km gets a 3 - 4 meg connection for €40 per month.

No contest!

OfflerCrocGod

Liam Byrne wrote:

What's their definition of "countrywide" ? Does it still mean that they'll just be enabling exchanges and not giving a damn whether the people connected will be able to get BB ?

They have never cared about line failures before why should they now?

watty

Liam Byrne wrote:

True - imagine what Smart could do with that money, given the excellent service they already have with feck all cashflow.....

On three points alone - availability and speed - Smart would be a better bet. If eircom roll this out to exchanges, anyone more than 5km is screwed, and anyone within 5km gets a measly 1 or 2 meg connection for €60 per month.

Smart do this and anyone within 7km gets a 3 - 4 meg connection for €40 per month.

No contest!

Or Digiweb artifically limited to 10km from base, on up 8Mbps wireless service. 15km would be twice the area and is technically feasible at the same speed. Though obviously not in Dublin City, which needs masts nearly every 1km due to population density!

At least Comreg are in consultation about allowing more range and also methods of filling "holes" between two bases/operators coverages.

There are lots of Donegal, Mayo, Kerry & Cork people always too far from exchange on any DSL technology and terrain means un-economic for WISP without base station install subsidy due to few people on each mast. Masts can't do the sort of population or coverage possible in Cities/towns like Cork, Limerick, Dublin, Dundalk, Galway, Athlone, Waterford etc. Actually a lot of these people should be given a FTV card for Irish TV from Satellite as they often don't get good service from that too, especially TV3.

Altreab

watty wrote:

Or Digiweb artifically limited to 10km from base, on up 8Mbps wireless service. 15km would be twice the area and is technically feasible at the same speed. Though obviously not in Dublin City, which needs masts nearly every 1km due to population density!

At least Comreg are in consultation about allowing more range and also methods of filling "holes" between two bases/operators coverages.

.

"artifically limited" ?? Can you clarify the who/what/why/where of this restriction? I have to admit i hadnt heard of this restriction :mad:
If the restriction is lifted then it would open up a heck of a lot of new customers for the wireless companies and not just for Digiweb and THAT would put the skids under Eircom in a hurry.

bminish

Altreab wrote:

"artifically limited" ?? Can you clarify the who/what/why/where of this restriction? I have to admit i hadnt heard of this restriction :mad:
If the restriction is lifted then it would open up a heck of a lot of new customers for the wireless companies and not just for Digiweb and THAT would put the skids under Eircom in a hurry.

I would say that Watty is referring to the 'coordination zones' AKA exclusion zones that exist around the issued license centers on 3.5 and 10 Ghz

As it stands currently no 3.5 Ghz operatopr may offer service beyond 15Km and no 10Ghz operator may offer service beyond 10Km
with both licenses there is an outer coordination ring at 30 Km, Coordination zones of different operators are not allowed overlap and no operator is allowed offer any service in the coordination zone, Oh and the other thing is that license applicants are not entitled to know the existing license centers with any more accuracy than the maps shown here which makes applying successfully tricky to say the least
Despite a statement to the contrary in the application form Comreg will also not consider terrain factors as a mitigating circumstance for the purpose of license applications where overlapping coordination zones may arise, even where the terrain factors are a sodding great range of mountains

in rural areas the policy of exclusion zones leads to large areas where coverage is not possible by any operator. Look at east Galway for an example of this.

This is a stupid way to run a spectrum licensing system, in fairness there is an ongoing consultation to see about applying some bandages to this system but the syem is so fundamentally broken that it should never have seen the light of day in the current form.
Any attempts to fix the current situation will have unintended consequences for the existing operators by altering their license conditions in ways that were not envisaged at the time of application .

.brendan

crawler

100% spot on as always Brendan - that said I would think that the publication of the consultation on increasing the usefulness FWALA licenses would be due to be published soon.

As you say - there will be consequences but hopefully these will be positive and hopefully all interested parties responded to the consultation to give Comreg options on how to do this best.

We cant alter the fact that it was broken to begin with but we can influence how it is improved

watty

Altreab wrote:

"artifically limited" ?? Can you clarify the who/what/why/where of this restriction? I have to admit i hadnt heard of this restriction :mad:
If the restriction is lifted then it would open up a heck of a lot of new customers for the wireless companies and not just for Digiweb and THAT would put the skids under Eircom in a hurry.

Well some technologies don't work well past 5km to 8km. But for rural & low population densities there are ways of extending even to 120km. But the economics may not be right unless the Government have subsidies for isolated pockets of users.

It's encouraging that Comreg are re-visiting how the Wireless licences work as for many people in Rural Ireland, Wireless is the only viable technology. WiMax is irrelevant, the issues are economics and licenceing. The wireless technology to do it is available in many standards.

1huge1

120km thats interesting, the only wireless service I know to offer such distances is AM/LW radio
are you referring to wimax but somehow I can't see Irish broadband offering a service that can go that far

netwhizkid

Those Maps shown by bminish, Basically certain areas could get the signal but the various companies are not allowed to serve those areas becuase they are too far away.

What a crock of Sh*te, I am within two of those transmitters Red Zones and cannot get Broadband at all. Eircom's FWA is available but is too expensive plus a new windfarm has the FWA signal all f*cked up. I really don;t know what is going to happen.

I was speaking to Mr. Bertie Ahern Taoiseach face to face today and raised the issue with him, he agreed with me and said that the National Broadband Plan will be announced "Next month" this could be between here and the end of April so hopefully something good will come of it.

Urban Weigl

1huge1 wrote:

120km thats interesting, the only wireless service I know to offer such distances is AM/LW radio
are you referring to wimax but somehow I can't see Irish broadband offering a service that can go that far

In the Australian outback, Ericsson has made modifications to 3G/UMTS/HSDPA that extends its range to 200km, while still achieving several megabits per second at that distance. That's at 850MHz, though, which is much lower than the 2100MHz band that is used for 3G here.

qwertplaywert

so whats the governments timeframe for this country wide bb........15 years?

bminish

netwhizkid wrote:

Those Maps shown by bminish, Basically certain areas could get the signal but the various companies are not allowed to serve those areas becuase they are too far away.

There is one operator with a nationwide 3.5 Ghz no prizes for guessing who that might be...

.brendan

bushy...

netwhizkid wrote:

Those Maps shown by bminish, Basically certain areas could get the signal but the various companies are not allowed to serve those areas becuase they are too far away.

What a crock of Sh*te, I am within two of those transmitters Red Zones and cannot get Broadband at all. Eircom's FWA is available but is too expensive plus a new windfarm has the FWA signal all f*cked up. I really don;t know what is going to happen.

Sounds like you are doomed to dialup or satellite , grand for forums etc and that other non-interactive stuff , it means though you miss out most of the internet and are surfing 1996 style. And it is all going more and more interactive as i'm sure you have noticed.
Maybe Bminish would be the man to give an idea of stats , i'm sure the upload is increasing every month


How doomed are you ? If the windfarm has "the FWA signal f*cked up" as you put it , no other provider has a hope.
Green , free energy > NWkids broadband any day i'm afraid.

OfflerCrocGod

qwertplaywert wrote:

so whats the governments timeframe for this country wide bb........15 years?

Careful now!

qwertplaywert

aye
was problery being a bit too opitmistic

netwhizkid

bushy... wrote:

Sounds like you are doomed to dialup or satellite , grand for forums etc and that other non-interactive stuff , it means though you miss out most of the internet and are surfing 1996 style. And it is all going more and more interactive as i'm sure you have noticed.
Maybe Bminish would be the man to give an idea of stats , i'm sure the upload is increasing every month


How doomed are you ? If the windfarm has "the FWA signal f*cked up" as you put it , no other provider has a hope.
Green , free energy > NWkids broadband any day i'm afraid.

The Turbines are the eastern side of the parish and the Eircom FWA Tower is slap bang in the middle of the new Windfarm, plus the blades are nearly constantly spinning except for a massive storm, When the brakes come on and about two weeks in August when there is "nar a breath of air".

The Topography of my Parish is like a giant bowl with Mountains on the North, East and south areas with a large valley to in the middle and this extending out towards the west. There are Turbines in the East, and soon to be the south east. I personally own the highest point the Parish at 606metres and was considering using it for turbines but my friendly company would not get back to me.

The only hope I reckon is for either 3G to arrive or eventually RTE will have to erect another Transmitter as the aforementioned turbines have given Sky TV a monopoly on Tv where I live.

The terrestrial signal is almost eradicated except for those (me included) living within the "Cancer Zone" of what is basically a giant scaffolding pole which was hastily erected with 17yr old ex Mullaghanish equipment after a generous local person allowed RTE to put this up on their land for free and without rent in a bid to solve the situation.

Unfortunately the new receiver is too low down and a new deflector had to be put up to send the TV signal back across the valley. The so called "fixing" RTE done only restored signal to about 33% of the parish and those of us within the "Cancer Zone" must use a UHF booster to receive this new signal.

The whole thing is a mess and sadly there doesn't seem to be the will to get it sorted out.

(sorry for going off topic, but I thought i'd just give people an idea of what is going on)