[Article]3 preferred over eircom for broadband plan

Sponge Bob

Bulmers wrote: »

well most sites in 3 network have 2-3 E1s, best case scenario is 3 x 2Mbps = 6 but with overhead on the packet, realistically will give 4-5Mbps thruput total on a cell, then max of 20 users odd on a cell, you're quickly out of capacity, this is alot of what 3s current problem is, too many users and not enough backhaul, expensive problem to solve

It is About 6k nowadays ( in bulk) for a Wireless STM1 pair which gives them 155mbits backhaul per cell . The E1 solution costs many times more in rural areas with long tails .

Only a seriously dopey bollox would have designed an all E1 backhaul network post year 2002 and GPRS . It was acceptable for the Meteor rollout in the immediate pre GPRS era maybe

Marlow

Walkman wrote: »

but it seems 3 have quite a mountain to climb when it comes to providing a stable broadband service to the country

This is the misconception. 3 will NEVER provide a broadband service.

3G is mobile internet at best, it is not broadband and it was never meant as broadband replacement. It's a product designed for the sales guy on the road retrieving email and checking stuff up.

On top of that 3 shapes the upload to around 64kbit, even though 384kbit are possible. ISDN speeds.

Giving them the contract in the National Broadband Scheme is simply a joke.

/Martin

Marlow

Sponge Bob wrote: »

It is About 6k nowadays ( in bulk) for a Wireless STM1 pair which gives them 155mbits backhaul per cell . The E1 solution costs many times more in rural areas with long tails .

Only a seriously dopey bollox would have designed an all E1 backhaul network post year 2002 and GPRS . It was acceptable for the Meteor rollout in the immediate pre GPRS era maybe

The issue is evident: 3 is run by a bunch of (not quite mature) youngsters in Hong Kong, that basically just tender every country they service out.

The backend for phoneservice in Ireland is done by NEC. The broadband backend and delivery done by BT Ireland.

The owners of 3 have no technical clue whatsoever.

Thus their setup is very old fashioned (it's a telco approach, not a ISP approach) and that causes them issues trying to get into the Internet market with a product, that never was designed for broadband purposes.

/M

Slutmonkey57b

Walkman wrote: »

On another note alot of what they will/wont do is pure speculation at this point. Who knows how much they will invest in the network. My personal opinion is the will invest more than any here would imagine because basically the cant afford not to. Its easy, if they fail at this through their own doing then they are bust as the bad press will stop customers joining the network for phones too.

You couldn't be more wrong on that point. By handing over the NBS to 3, they have *no* incentive to invest in a decent network, because the NBS serves areas no other provider will ever touch on the grounds of excessive cost. They will never have serious competition in the NBS areas, and they will fleece the customers for everything they can get. This thing is what's known as a licence to print money.

As for bad press, if they were worried about that the Megathread wouldn't be so busy, would it? 3, like a lot of Irish companies, could not give a toss about the customer, quality of service, or obligations to anything except profit margins.

watty

If they have 3 sectors per cell, then backhaul has to be 3 x 7.2Mbps. Add overheads etc, you'd want about 30Mbps .. 35Mbps per 3 sector Cell.

non-IP backhaul (E1 / T1 / ATM / TDM/ ISDN type stuff) suits the voice calls OK, but adds to latency on IP applications such as Internet connectivity, Inter company VLANs or VPNs.

There won't be WiMax,. LTE or whatever. The NBS can only afford to pay for HSDPA (data on a 3G Mobile Phone Network). This is NOTHING to do with how good 3 does it or how they invest. HSDPA simply can't deliver a Fixed Broadband Network. This is not a flaw, but by DESIGN. It's designed for MOBILE use by handheld portable devices for short periods of time. Not for reliable low latency Fixed Broadband via Routers & WiFi to PCs and Laptops. (Though there are WiFi Routers that work with 3G/HSDPA modems).

Thinking that anything else can or will happen is wishfull thinking, fantasy. The limitations are the NBS funding and thus HSDPA as the inevitable connection/delivery medium.

Marlow

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

As for bad press, if they were worried about that the Megathread wouldn't be so busy, would it? 3, like a lot of Irish companies, could not give a toss about the customer, quality of service, or obligations to anything except profit margins.

They've already made it into the "Last Word" and nothing changed, so no, they don't care about bad press.

/M

PogMoThoin

Marlow wrote: »

They've already made it into the "Last Word" and nothing changed, so no, they don't care about bad press.

/M

Did you notice the Today FM number changed to 083 a few weeks ago, cosy. Doubt you'd get the issue brought up on The Last Word now.

thebman

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Did you notice the Today FM number changed to 083 a few weeks ago, cosy. Doubt you'd get the issue brought up on The Last Word now.

So ring Joe. Same show, different station.

Blaster99

Marlow wrote: »

They've already made it into the "Last Word" and nothing changed, so no, they don't care about bad press.

/M

Does anyone seriously pay any attention to the Last Word? If the world was actually like it is according to that show then we wouldn't have a job or a house.

Cabaal

I would imagine it'll be very unlikely that Today FM will now bash one of there largest advertiserrs, I know TodayFM used to bash Eircom and they used to have Meteor as their telephony provider but the average joe on the street is not aware that Eircom own Meteor so it was unlikely to affect anyone really

thebman

Blaster99 wrote: »

Does anyone seriously pay any attention to the Last Word? If the world was actually like it is according to that show then we wouldn't have a job or a house.

A large number of consumer issues have been resolved using these shows.

They are our real regulators TBH as long as enough people are involved to warrant air time.

watty wrote: »

I've been saving line rental (now nearly 27 Euro) and 100 Euro per month in dialup costs for the 3 years since I got Digweb Metro. No phone line. It actually PROVIDES two lines via a built in VOIP. I have 2 x dual DECT cordless and a Multifunction fax on it.

I transferred my eircom number as one of the numbers. Real Phone line is only needed for Digiweb DSL service.

Anyway this is very off topic.

Sorry Mods.

That reads like an ad

Metro's fine as long as your not in a heavily contended area and don't mind the cap. The contention ratio isn't in the contract either. Digiweb just say it is contended.

Its still one of the best services available if you don't want a landline IMO though.

watty

brim4brim wrote: »

Metro's fine as long as your not in a heavily contended area and don't mind the cap. The contention ratio isn't in the contract either. Digiweb just say it is contended.

Its still one of the best services available if you don't want a landline IMO though.

That sounds a bit like an ad too.
Comreg state a maximum contention in the FWALA licences, it's on their site.

Inherently unless you have massive bandwidth the real contention on any Wireless system is depending on number of online users per sector. The engineering contention limit of Comreg or Quoted Contentions should be for total customers with no assumptions as to how many are online. In practice a proportion are idle, thus "real" contention is better than Design Contention.

The HSDPA problem is that the actual peak number of connections possible is equal to the total customer contentiono ratio allowed by Comreg for DSL and Fixed Wireless.

On DSL or Fixed Wireless
If you see a real speed of 1/3rd your package speed, then the Actual Real contention is simply 1/3rd. Assuming Comreg's 48:1 max for Broadband is adhered to, obviously HSDPA that only allows 24 connections for 3.6Mbps and 48 connections for 7.2Mbps is in reality in the real world closer to a customer contention ratio of 256:1 !!! Of course in this case only 1/5th or 1/10th of customers can actually connect! On DSL & Fixed Wireless, all can really connect. On HSDPA if you see 1/3rd of 7.2Mbps that might mean only 3 people connected close to mast or only one person connected at maybe only 1/2 the cell range! You only need 6 users to ensure you are 1Mbps and you can be less than 1Mbps as a SINGLE user on HSDPA.

People getting good HSDPA speeds are simply on very underutilised masts. Voice calls come out of the "pot" too. With many more "smart phones" and HSDPA enabled gadgets (Archos 5, iPhone, N96, HTC-touch, E-series, Blackberries etc), expect HSDPA use to rise apart from Laptop/PC fixed use.


DSL real contention is essentially only on connection in exchange from DSLAM to INEX etc, as the actual copper from exchange isn't shared. Bitstream contention may be real on some exchanges and artificial on others. Smart simply have much more backhaul allocated to point where statistically on average there is enough. It's unlikely to be a real 1:1. It's not needed. The real contention experienced on Fixed Wireless and DSL suggests that about 1/10th of total sum of packages and users is needed as backhaul on a large exchange. IPTV ideally needs a server at the exchange otherwise that would need a real 1:1 backhaul.

Mobile systems often assume all 3 sectors are not fully loaded at same time, thus might have backhaul contention of 3:1! On non-mobile systems users have a "package" that limits your speed even if the users connect fall low enough to give a higher speed. This is GOOD, as your speed varies only typcally by 3:1 with contention rather than randomly more than 700:1 with contention as it does with HSDPA Mobile @ 7.2Mbps.

So some sums and your experiences show that virtually no-one on Fixed Wireless or Bitstream DSL experiences the Customer Base Max contention allowed by Comreg of 48:1 (i.e. 100kbps on a 5Mbps package), but that worse than that is regular on HSDPA as it only allows 24 or 48 connections has a total of 3.6Mbps/2 or 7.2Mbps/2.5 approx at that loading, that's about 75kbps and 60kbps. The factor or 2 or 2.5 is generous. It can be worse. That's the average sector speed loss due to signal level and S/N increase as codes added for more users. W-CDMA (HSDPA) scales badly and also slows as signal is slower. This affects all connections.

In Germany, 2007, P2P was nearly 75% of traffic. That was a from a small percentage of users. You only need 5 per 100 P2P users on NBS to see bad contention. Unless the Cap is low and you have disconnects over cap.

Magnet: Rory

I was watching the news last night....about 4 national projects were either scaled back/cut completely due to either cut backs on the government’s side or cautious businessmen. I think.....after all the huffing and puffing.....that we're stuck with this.

Ah well get the shovels ready for 2018 eh.

mrplop

There's only 378 pages of complaints about three on this forum - we should give poor old three a chance!

Could this government get any worse?

Irlbo

Im not having a go,but you are all to blame for,this,every thread on this forum is Eircom bashing,Eircom is crap,Eircom is sh*t etc,and when it comes to crunch and 3 gets selected for the Braodband forwarding plan,you all go up in arms,it was Eircom or 3,why are you surprized it went to 3 with all the Eircom naysaying you see on here,Minister Ryan must have been having a gander and said maybe people would be better off with another provider since they have such bad opinions of Eircom,you laid your own beds folks!

bealtine

Irlbo wrote: »

Im not having a go,but you are all to blame for,this,every thread on this forum is Eircom bashing,Eircom is crap,Eircom is sh*t etc,and when it comes to crunch and 3 gets selected for the Braodband forwarding plan,you all go up in arms,it was Eircom or 3,why are you surprized it went to 3 with all the Eircom naysaying you see on here,Minister Ryan must have been having a gander and said maybe people would be better off with another provider since they have such bad opinions of Eircom,you laid your own beds folks!

I really have to answer this.
Yes eircom are most of the things you mention and are constantly bashed here on these fora.
However, at least what they are selling is real broadband not some half baked solution that is utterly unsuitable for the specifications supplied. The decision only serves to show the paucity of technical understanding of the issues that is prevalent in the Dept of communications.
The exact technical issues have been trashed out here and elsewhere.

The point is exactly as you outline "maybe people would be better off with another provider", indeed yes they would be better off, just not with one that can never possibly work. It'll be like the evoting machines or the PPARS fiasco, half baked and simply won't work. Thanks Eamonn for your complete misunderstanding of the issues. You have become like your political masters, FF, utterly out of touch with the real world.

thebman

Irlbo wrote: »

Im not having a go,but you are all to blame for,this,every thread on this forum is Eircom bashing,Eircom is crap,Eircom is sh*t etc,and when it comes to crunch and 3 gets selected for the Braodband forwarding plan,you all go up in arms,it was Eircom or 3,why are you surprized it went to 3 with all the Eircom naysaying you see on here,Minister Ryan must have been having a gander and said maybe people would be better off with another provider since they have such bad opinions of Eircom,you laid your own beds folks!

There is a massive sticky about three on this forum due to the number of complaints

If he was going by here, he would have told both of them to fook right off.

Irlbo

Im an Eircom employee and work in Broadband department,and I worked for Eircom previously,and for my sins moved to worked for other companies,smart etc,I am back with Eircom.and I can tell you,they are the best company in regards to Telephone,broadband and PSTN related services,I wholly believe in what we sell,yes there are issues in regards certain lines and areas,in terms of speed,glitches and in some parts no availablity,but in general,things are good,and the vast majority out there are happy,good service at a competition,from a company that does look after you when your line is in difficulty,3 getting the Broadband plan,why????

mike76

let's not start an eircom v 3 thing,

Its quite simply a totally unreliable unsuited Platform that won't work against one that does.

All of the customer services issues arise out of 3's wholly ineffective technology, despite all the abolute bull that eminates from their CEO. They are not fit to tie the laces of other wireless broadband providers.

That is why the NBS will be a total failure and all of the officials and com reg people who sanctioned this decision will be relocated and/or hopefully fired.

watty

eircom was going to use Meteor's new 3G/HSDPA as much as possible too.

The issue is not 3 vs eircom but the plan from the beginning. Why only 3 & eircom tendering in the end?

No-one will be relocated or fired. The scheme will be presented as a successful solution for rural Broadbrand to the rest of Europe. At next election they will hold it up as one of the successes, based solely on the numbers taking it up.

Actually the scheme will be successful. Much more successful at increasing "broadband penetration" than the GBS. It all depends on what your targets are and what you measure as to if something is a success.

Mlo

I would agree that the issue is the capability of the system and not Threes history (though I am a disgruntled Three customer)

For most of what's required HSDPA may cut it, ie with enough masts general websurfing may be ok, (it'll be better than dialup and might match heavily contended DSL, maybe) I've also used VPN on Three and generally it's also ok (obviously allowing for all the contention stuff etc)

Let's even be generous and presume Three can get the IP adress mess cleared up.

The problem to me seems to be gaming and VOIP. I (used to) play Guild wars BTW (and will again once I have some kind of internet connection). GW has fairly modest bandwidth needs but for any kind of player vs player gaming you need a better than 200ms ping and for organised gameplay you need Teamspeak or Ventrillo which add to the bandwidth needs.

I can count on one hand the number of occaisions lst year that I had a consistant enough ping and bandwidth to play properly.

Now that's a three year old game, so how will the technology cope with games that are coming down the line that are more bandwidth hungry?

Now

Hank Scorpio

Irlbo wrote: »

Im not having a go,but you are all to blame for,this,every thread on this forum is Eircom bashing,Eircom is crap,Eircom is sh*t etc,and when it comes to crunch and 3 gets selected for the Braodband forwarding plan,you all go up in arms,it was Eircom or 3,why are you surprized it went to 3 with all the Eircom naysaying you see on here,Minister Ryan must have been having a gander and said maybe people would be better off with another provider since they have such bad opinions of Eircom,you laid your own beds folks!

Point one - Theres a massive sticky on the thread page regarding three mobile and it has the most views/posts than any other thread.

Point two - Theres a reason why theres many posts about eircom, there "upgrades". Before they did this there wasnt even 1/3 of the amount of complaints/whining. It looks like you layed you "own bed" in that regard

Point three - If eircom bothered to upgrade more exchanges in rural areas there wouldnt be a problem in the first place, its not alot to ask... Look at the north, 100% DSL availabilitiy or extremly close to it.

And btw when your posting try sometimes to look from the posters side, not your "company". IMO Eircom are to blame for everything wrong with broadband in this country.

smellslikeshoes

nuxxx wrote: »

Point three - If eircom bothered to upgrade more exchanges in rural areas there wouldnt be a problem in the first place, its not alot to ask... Look at the north, 100% DSL availabilitiy or extremly close to it.

Not true at all. In 2006 northern Ireland announced 100% broadband availability NOT 100% DSL availability. There is a big big difference between those two figures. Fact is BT were given money to make broadband available which made upgrading some of the more rural exchanges cost effective. With Eircom it is not a question of being "bothered" to upgrade exchanges, its how cost effective it is to do so. The original aim of the broadband plan was to finance the roll out in areas its not cost effective for ISP's to do so.

Hank Scorpio

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Not true at all. In 2006 northern Ireland announced 100% broadband availability NOT 100% DSL availability. There is a big big difference between those two figures. Fact is BT were given money to make broadband available which made upgrading some of the more rural exchanges cost effective. With Eircom it is not a question of being "bothered" to upgrade exchanges, its how cost effective it is to do so. The original aim of the broadband plan was to finance the roll out in areas its not cost effective for ISP's to do so.

ok, point taken. 100% is a bit of a exaggeration, but the point is BT examined northern ireland as a whole, upgraded any exchanges they could to DSL, and then offered solutions with handouts ETC to people who not avail of DSL purely because of there line.

Now what have eircom done, they gave towns and the odd large village DSL, then instead of speading out the service even more, they felt threatened by NTL/UPC so they tryed to push more bandwidth thru there copper cabling and ended up slowing down more connections overall because of it.......

i see your point tho

smellslikeshoes

nuxxx wrote: »

ok, point taken. 100% is a bit of a exaggeration, but the point is BT examined northern ireland as a whole, upgraded any exchanges they could to DSL, and then offered solutions with handouts ETC to people who not avail of DSL purely because of there line.

Now what have eircom done, they gave towns and the odd large village DSL, then instead of speading out the service even more, they felt threatened by NTL/UPC so they tryed to push more bandwidth thru there copper cabling and ended up slowing down more connections overall because of it.......

i see your point tho

BT were paid to do that, In Northern Ireland BT were given money to provide broadband to people who couldn't get it in a similar tender process as the NBS here. The only difference is there was actually some thought put into it and not just given to the cheapest option sacrificing the original terms to save money.

Marlow

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

BT were paid to do that, In Northern Ireland BT were given money to provide broadband to people who couldn't get it in a similar tender process as the NBS here. The only difference is there was actually some thought put into it and not just given to the cheapest option sacrificing the original terms to save money.

Correct. And it's not 3 at fault in this case, but the irish government for wasting tax money.

The same applies to the MANs.

The one core aspect, that the government has failed to see, that there are business out there that will be providing the rural areas. But the reason, that the cost they are doing it at is slightly higher than the competition in the cities, is down to the lack on properly priced backbone being available.

I can buy a fiber trunk from Dublin to London or Frankfurt at less than 1/3 than what it costs me to buy the same bandwidth from Galway to Dublin or at around the same price as what it costs me to get 2 km of fiber on the MAN.

The money allocated would have been better spend investing in connecting the MANs that still have no second uplink or no uplink at all. Because even though 3 in being funded to get the broadband coverage out to every corner of Ireland, the backhaul is still not in place and it will not magically appear.

If the backhaul was put in place, there would be more businesses taking the challenge and there would be more competition.

/Martin

lucernarian

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Not true at all. In 2006 northern Ireland announced 100% broadband availability NOT 100% DSL availability. There is a big big difference between those two figures. Fact is BT were given money to make broadband available which made upgrading some of the more rural exchanges cost effective. With Eircom it is not a question of being "bothered" to upgrade exchanges, its how cost effective it is to do so. The original aim of the broadband plan was to finance the roll out in areas its not cost effective for ISP's to do so.

As a matter of fact it is far more truth than false. I was told figures of less than a thousand BT connections were not able to be supplied with DSL in Northern Ireland, and FWA was used for most of these.

It took me a good while to find the info on the Web as someone directly told me the figures, and they seemed to be confidential, but here's a link to the numbers as mentioned by Nigel Dodds, MLA (DUP)

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ni/?gid=2008-02-11.7.17

For the record, 99% of of the broadband supplied under the BT contract was with DSL.

Marlow

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

As a matter of fact it is far more truth than false. I was told figures of less than a thousand BT connections were not able to be supplied with DSL in Northern Ireland, and FWA was used for most of these.

The article you linked to mentions satelite, not FWA !! But matter of fact, Eircom has all the facilities to do this, including satelite, a national FWA license, telephone lines and fiber.

Satelite is not great for broadband, but the pricing was quite ok, at what people at least got the product delivered at.

/M

watty

Up to 8% of the NBS is allowed to be Satellite. I don't believe eircom was going to use much of their own FWA, or DSL or Fibre.

thebman

watty wrote: »

Up to 8% of the NBS is allowed to be Satellite. I don't believe eircom was going to use much of their own FWA, or DSL or Fibre.

Well there were originally supposed to be conditions on the service that was provided such as suitable for VPN, VOIP and gaming etc...

This conditions if actually used in the tender process would have forced them to use those services.

Of course the government just want to do this on the cheap and hope it goes away because they don't know or care about the issue.