US broadband to be supplied to North West

lisbon_lions

Good times ahead for broadband availability in the North West:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0106/broadband.html

Hi-tech cable to link US with Ireland
Tuesday, 6 January 2009 07:43

Ireland is to get its first direct telecommunications link to North America under a multi-million scheme to provide faster and cheaper broadband connections.

Project Kelvin is a cross-border venture which involves the laying of an undersea cable that will come ashore near Portrush in Co Antrim.

The €30m submarine cable is to be completed by March of next year.

It will ensure direct international connectivity to the US for towns in Northern Ireland and locations including Letterkenny, Dundalk and Monaghan in the Republic.

The venture is being co-financed under the EU's Interreg scheme in a partnership involving government departments in Belfast and Dublin.

I may get back to Donegal for an IT job yet :-)

babaloushka

VERY interesting! When I read the title of this post I was sure I'd skipped a few months and it was April 1st I assume it's March 2010? Can't wait!

Senna

good story lisbon_lions, tried to google a bit more info, but it just hurt my head. Very technical stuff. Lets just hope this goes ahead, i hate when they talk about these things but there still a year+ away and we all know Donegal gets everything its promised.

jimmycrackcorm

I'd question the link to Donegal though. Most of the current bb links are routed through dublin.

lisbon_lions

I dont know,this venture seems to be different in that it takes Dublin out of the equation altogether.

Thankfully it is EU endorsed and we will get no false promises from our current incumbent government, who as you know, promise so much for the region yet deliver nothing near what they promise.

Fingers crossed.

smashey

Read about it this evening. As the OP said, the cable will come in at Portrush and among the towns to be connected are Coleraine, Strabane, Derry and Letterkenny.

the bolt

lisbon_lions wrote: »

Good times ahead for broadband availability in the North West:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0106/broadband.html



I may get back to Donegal for an IT job yet :-)

seen this in the local papper last week when i was up home

Fracture

smashey wrote: »

Read about it this evening. As the OP said, the cable will come in at Portrush and among the towns to be connected are Coleraine, Strabane, Derry and Letterkenny.

If it is gonna be available in Letterkenny then it should be possible for the surrounding towns to avail of it? Towns like Buncrana, Donegal Town etc? I mean anything is better than Eircom.

smashey

Fracture wrote: »

If it is gonna be available in Letterkenny then it should be possible for the surrounding towns to avail of it? Towns like Buncrana, Donegal Town etc? I mean anything is better than Eircom.

They only pinpoint certain towns on their map. Looking at it, you can see two routes to Letterkenny, one via Bridgend and the other via Strabane.

byte

Would this not just be a fiber link or something, that'll be specifically aimed at businesses, as opposed to domestic homes?

Companies like Pramerica in Letterkenny for example might benefit from a quicker link to USA.

muffler

I thought I read somewhere that it would link up with the M.A.N system they have in a few of the towns around the county.

smashey

muffler wrote: »

I thought I read somewhere that it would link up with the M.A.N system they have in a few of the towns around the county.

You probably read that here.

muffler

That would be it smashey. The part or the words I dont like are in bold below.

The transatlantic connection will link directly with the Council’s Metropolitan Area Network in Letterkenny and potentially with all other Council networks in the County over time.

byte

Yea, "over time" is quite vague. By "time" the possibly mean "generations" :rolleyes:

Still, at least Letterkenny gets yet more broadband options.

ZombieNation

Please god, it will allow us poor unfortunates in certain parts of Donegal who have only the sole option of paying for NWE's lousy broadband service to avail of it.
(Believe it or not Eircom is 10 times better than North West Electronics bum service)

googlehead

what speed will it be 100mb/s?????

lisbon_lions

googlehead wrote: »

what speed will it be 100mb/s?????

You should see more than that I would say. When you look at the average broadband rates in the US it is closer to 500mb/s. And if this is taken from the eastern seaboard of the US then you should be seeing considerably better speeds than what you can avail of now.

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Images/commentarynews/broadbandspeedchart.jpg

Now all we need is to get a link in from Japan and we are laughing.

jimmycrackcorm

ZombieNation wrote: »

Please god, it will allow us poor unfortunates in certain parts of Donegal who have only the sole option of paying for NWE's lousy broadband service to avail of it.
(Believe it or not Eircom is 10 times better than North West Electronics bum service)

Even with the link in place, there is no guarantee that any of the DSL operators will have an interconnect in place locally for routing, so you may find that all your packets still go through Dublin.

telemakus

it all comes in at "uk" points though!! And also with eircoms recent news!!! Kind of a waste!!! who could afford it ?

Senna

telemakus wrote: »

it all comes in at "uk" points though!! And also with eircoms recent news!!! Kind of a waste!!! who could afford it ?

Do you mean downloading music? If you do, really how many people will be put off by that, 5% maybe. We'll have to wait till its in place before we'll know who'll benefit.

telemakus

Senna wrote: »

Do you mean downloading music? If you do, really how many people will be put off by that, 5% maybe. We'll have to wait till its in place before we'll know who'll benefit.

True, (didnt mean about downloading though, it was an older article i didnt check the date on, about business prices) Which i presume this line will be targetted to?

but isnt there the MAN already in lk? Im not sure of usage on that, but its pretty expensive from what i hear! 10K plus per year! So im not sure how thisll work! But any sort of pipeage is good i guess. Especially if Businesses can afford it