BOARDS Consensus On National Broadband Network Or Not ?

bealtine

tak wrote:

Is 15 Mbps enough for this ?

No

tak wrote:

If so wouldn't this level of transfer be adequate for the majority of home users

Only if your aim is for mediocrity and even then aiming pretty low, we should be aiming as high as other countries, this would include the likes of Sweden, Korea and Japan amongst others.

15Mbps is the norm around Paris and even there it is not enough and the telcos there are rolling out fiber to most places.

zonEEE

All i would like is to be able to get dsl. Eircom wont update my exchange Im on wirless atm and its ****.

tak

There lies the heart of the problem so.
Anything short of fibre will not provide a long-term national network of adequate speed. The cost (or at least the pundits' estimated cost) of this is daunting.
A part network of fibre will be socially divisive.
And, from the wings, a plethora of small DSL and wireless broadband providers are telling the DoC that that is grand enough for people - or that poor "PC penetration" is the real issue . . .

Sponge Bob

PC penetration is now around 60% and not an issue, we have average EU penetration but way below average BB supply.

It never has been an issue except for morons who were put off by eircom spin under the last regime in eircom .

rahtkennades

bk wrote:

.....IMO there should be a universal obligation that everyone in the country can at least get 1m/256k. This would be a good minimum and would at least allow people to escape from dial-up and allow them a good quality of basic internet services (surfing, emailing, a little gaming, working from home, etc. but obviously not video). But we should be aiming much higher (>20m) for most people.

Isn't that what the proposal was from the 'last' government? To introduce a national broadband scheme 'guaranteeing' everybody 1m/256k (oh sorry, at 48:1 contention of course!):rolleyes:

The reality is that 1mbps, contended at that kind of level, is hopelessly inadequate. Sure it's better than 33kbps contended at maybe 20:1, but then so is carrier pigeon.

bk, this isn't your intention perhaps, but saying "oh well everybody should get 1m/256k to do 'a little gaming and working from home etc', is these days no better than the current USO of (correct me if I'm wrong) voice + 14.4kbps data. Sure can't people call their mammys with that? What more would they want?

We're starting from a small base. This is the time for policy decisions that will mean that when they are implemented, over perhaps 4 years, will leave an infrastructure that is at least current to the level that will apply at that time. Not something that should have been standard 3-5 years ago.

Of course all we'll hear is vague statements of intent, perhaps the commissioning of an independent (kaching!) study, and the odd bit of hand-wringing from the opposition. BAU.

Sponge Bob

rahtkennades wrote:

We're starting from a small base. This is the time for policy decisions that will mean that when they are implemented, over perhaps 4 years, will leave an infrastructure that is at least current to the level that will apply at that time. Not something that should have been standard 3-5 years ago.

Well my proposal brings up to 2.5gbit backhaul ( or multiples of 2.5gbit ) to within 60km or 30km of every citizen. Its a start , surely

There has to be a point at which the government hands over to the market but not at the expense of leaving its citizens and sizeable towns stranded well over 100km from decent backhaul .

bk

rahtkennades wrote:

bk, this isn't your intention perhaps, but saying "oh well everybody should get 1m/256k to do 'a little gaming and working from home etc', is these days no better than the current USO of (correct me if I'm wrong) voice + 14.4kbps data. Sure can't people call their mammys with that? What more would they want?

Well 1m USO would be far better then the 0k USO we currently have. I'm saying that 1m should be the bare minimum and that it should be done with the government over time pushing the fibre rings closer and closer to peoples homes and in conjunction with a fully open and fair LLU market.

That should mean that the vast majority of people would have far faster ADSL2+ speeds, with urban areas even starting to get FTTH and FTTC/B. I'd envisage only the extreme rural areas having 1m BB and with them even getting faster ADSL2+ speeds eventually.

Here is the interesting thing that I have found over the years, I've gone from dialup to 512k BB to 1m BB to 1.5m BB to 6m BB to 26m BB at the moment
Despite these massive jumps, the most revolutionary change came from going from dialup to 512k, always on, high download, low latency, fixed price, it was incredible. The changes I've had since are nice, but they are more evolutionary then revolutionary.

To be perfectly honest most things I do on the net feel exactly the same on 26m as they did on 1m. The only real difference is very large file downloads and the fact the I'm getting an IPTV service over the 26m from smart vision and to be honest, I'd much prefer Sky or NTL to what I'm currently getting over IPTV (far more channels and better picture quality).

PixelTrawler

So true BK - theres many thousands in the country that would be ever grateful for 1m/256kb - its a good decent USO standard to aim for

rahtkennades

bk wrote:

Well 1m USO would be far better then the 0k USO we currently have. I'm saying that 1m should be the bare minimum ....
That should mean that the vast majority of people would have far faster ADSL2+ speeds
....
...I've gone from dialup to 512k BB to 1m BB .... to 26m BB at the moment
... the most revolutionary change came from going from dialup to 512k, always on, high download, low latency, fixed price, it was incredible. ...

To be perfectly honest most things I do on the net feel exactly the same on 26m as they did on 1m. .....

That's fair enough bk, your point about the jump from dialup to any level of always on service is well made. All I was trying to suggest is that since we are starting from a very patchy situation, in policy terms we should be thinking 5 years from now, not 5 years ago. If the national policy is that all users are entitled to minimum......say 10mbps down..... then your infrastructure must be built to allow for this.

Sponge Bob

You forget that the USO is a Comreg issue and that Comreg do not enforce the USO , thats any USO ....and they have had 2 or 3 and variants thereupon and EU USO directives etc .

The national thingy plan yoke is Government Policy and is implemented by the Government, not Comreg thank ***k .

They have parallel uses but are mutually exclusive.

I agree totally with bks point that the leap from often rubbish dialup to reasonable speed always on is a revelation , 1024 / 256 is indeed a good base target .

tak

The experience of bk and more with basic b/band is (at this stage) aside from the question of a national network surely.
As it stands there are many enterprises and homes that could apply the speeds of fibre to their work or recreations.
There are also (as is usual with a new technology) bound to be wholly new types of business that would be enabled by the availability of high-speed internet.
It is not just dumb infrastructure like a road, a perpetual maintenance expense for little economic gain.
It's an intensively used utility that would create lasting jobs all over its extent.
More importantly, it would redistribute people throughout the regions in a way that deliberate industrial targeting or public service decentralisation ever could.
Unlike other utilities it needs relatively low energy input. So that many areas whose attractiveness for traditional industrial projects has long been limited by the lack of electrical power generation there could compete fairly for ICT industry placements.
The lead for this to be done in Ireland today can only come from Govt like SpongeBob says. BB providers are irrelevant till there is a proper network from which they can make serious applications to market. Eircom hasn't the boldness to go where there are no state guaranteed income streams.
Only when the state makes its committment to such a fibre roll-out plain to all the banks will the ground be broke.
€50,000 per man is not that much for a scheme which will certainly bring in as much per year for the tens of thousands who would eventually make a living directly from this utility.

Sponge Bob

Its slightly different to my mind tak

The presence of serious non eircom fibre in the large towns forces eircom to upgrade them nto VDSL ( announced Novermber last ) at a time when MOST EXCHANGES are not broadband enabled...although the majority will be by the time VDSL rolls out .

The absence of serious fibre in many parts of the state means that eircom do not compete because they simply do not have to, they therefore invest to protect their markets where there is danger , eg Dublin Cork Galway etc . OTOH there leased line biz is being eaten alive by fibre operators in the big towns where you can get 10mbits symmetrical at around €1k a month, uncontended . Half the price of a 2mbit leased line ....and there are scads of DSL operators including Magnet and Smart too....never mind cable.

10 miles out there could be nothing at all bar ****ty old satellite.

Fibre to within 60km of everyone is a danger to eircom

Fibre to within 30km of everyone is a clear and present danger to the monopoly everywhere.

If we can get as far as there then we can look at fibre to 15km etc .

It keeps the pressure on you see

qwertplaywert

Eircom claim 98 percent of all households will be able to get broadband by the time they finish upgrading all the exhanges they announced,they also said they will not will ugrade the rest for the remaining 2percent, that is what the government should be doing, implimenting exhange upgrades for that 2 percent who will never be given it by eircom.

tak

by the time they finish upgrading all the exhanges

They have not even put a year on when that's going to be done, man.
Anyway it's just a delaying tactic. Conditioning the public for what they choose to give them.
Say it was finished tomorrow. The demand and benefits of fibre would be even more stark to us all.
So why not fibre for all now ?
It won't be getting cheaper . . .

Sponge Bob

qwertplaywert wrote:

Eircom claim 98 percent of all households will be able to get broadband by the time they finish upgrading all the exhanges they announced

Standard eircom BS, even if 98% of houses were CONNECTED to upgraded exchanges at least 10% of those would have lines that fail for various reasons.

They have increased distances , they have doubled the line length they service in the past year and a half or so.

Given that the pi x r squared calculation is crude and that lines are never straight the effect is that

1. they now provide 1mbit at 8km . It was 4km less than 2 years back

2. 4 x 4 x 3.14 means an exchange covers 50 square km if all lines are straight

3. 8 x 8 x 3.14 means an exchange covers 200 sq km.

4. Their geographic coverage for dsl from a given exchange has therefore increased four fold in nominal terms . This is probably similar in the wild

5. in practice , and with crooked lines and boreens , the figures are more like 3km and 6km radius , still 4 x increase though.

This has had a hugely positive effect in rural areas .

Its not enough for me though