Fibre and Telecommunications Infrastructure

dubhthach

Sponge Bob wrote: »

I addressed this on page one. The NRA is not what was promised, namely a ONE STOP shop state owned ducts.

The NRA is only a one stop shop for National roads/motorways (and possibly) for Regional Roads too). This is good because you get all the consents from one source and the NRA have lots of staff doing feck all now the roads design and build budget has largely disappeared.

HOWEVER it does not get anybody access to other state owned ducts and it leaves L Roads ( most of the network by far) with councils....possibly.

The other big problem is the lack of ducts near the Motorway network in Dublin and the Pale, this does nothing to address that either. See the map linked above.

Sponge Bob I didn't say that this news was about a one-stop-shop. However it's an important step in the right direction for the reason as you state that at least ye only have to get all the consents from one source.

Sponge Bob

Sponge Bob wrote: »

vital in Dublin , read up on the Corpos traffic light /camera system as it serves 1000 locations around the city ...not all fibred I know.

A third significant state owned system in Dublin belongs to the RPA and runs along the Luas lines, see .

The last and most significant state owned fibre network in Dublin belongs to the ESB . I say most significant as the ESB are by far the easiest and most professional state owned outfit to deal with .

Astoundingly and (after 4 years without one) Aurora ( Bord Gáis) have a website now and their Dublin Duct map is on it. They also have ducts outside Dublin but they are empty. One runs Dublin - Craughwell - Ennis and with a branch to Bellinaboy in Mayo.

Here is their Dublin Network map.

The ESB and Bord Gáis and Traffic light networks are the nearest thing Dublin has to a MAN. Absent such a MAN teh One Stop Shop is vital and needless to say the NRA have no ducts anywhere in County Dublin.

Sponge Bob

As a follow on from the last pair of maps it appears that ESB and Aurora all have a fibre wandering around the M50 connecting data centres. In actual fact it belongs to neither of them

It is called the T50 fibre and probably belongs to Digiweb since they bought Smart ( as far as I know anyway) . EU Networks who also offer Dark Fibre gave us a nice map of it ...that looks suspiciuosly like both the ESB and Aurora fibre maps owing to cross selling

spacetweek

Sponge Bob wrote: »

The ESB and Bord Gáis and Traffic light networks are the nearest thing Dublin has to a MAN. Absent such a MAN teh One Stop Shop is vital and needless to say the NRA have no ducts anywhere in County Dublin.

Surely ducting is being installed as part of the M50 upgrade? Presumably so, since it seems to be standard practice on all the other motorways.

Sponge Bob

Not that I know of. No. you could email them about it.

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/1783EF91-0836-4C5F-BA94-E57F6FEB40DA/0/NRAnetworkmap.pdf

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

D'Peoples Voice

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Gaining access to the ducts is a complete pain in the hole because the state does not have a One Stop Shop for access to all of these assets.

Actually when you think of it,
for electricity we have ESB Networks looking after maintenance of power lines in the country, and then residents can choose which of the three electricity companies Airtricity, Bord Gais and ESB Customer Supply they wish to receive power from.

for natural gas, we have Bord Gais Networks looking after maintenance of natural gas pipelines in the country, and then residents can choose which of the two natural gas companies, Bord Gais Energy and Flogas that they wish to receive Natural Gas from (probably should include Airtricity as I believe they are now marketing themselves as an alternative)

for Digital Terrestrial Television, I'm led to believe that RTÉNL are responsible for the infrastructure, and then residents can rent set-top boxes from the various providers.

for Leinster's main airport in Collinstown, the Government requested the DAA to maintain the infrastructure, and let residents/travellers choose which airline they wished to fly with.

We can say the same about Dublin Port, the Dublin Port Company maintains the infrastructure, and importers/exporters can choose which ferry company they wish to transport their goods.

I'm sure the list goes on and on

So yes Sponge Bob, the question we should ask ourselves is why don't CNet run the whole broadband infrastructure system, and let all the providers lease it off them and sell to residents. Now I know people will use the example of how the Bank Clearing System is not run by an independent company but by AIB, Ulster Bank and BOI the main cheque clearing companies on behalf of the whole banking industry in Ireland. But this is far from ideal and should not be used as a perfect example of the private sector running a service.

dubhthach

D'Peoples Voice wrote: »

Actually when you think of it,
for electricity we have ESB Networks looking after maintenance of power lines in the country, and then residents can choose which of the three electricity companies Airtricity, Bord Gais and ESB Customer Supply they wish to receive power from.

for natural gas, we have Bord Gais Networks looking after maintenance of natural gas pipelines in the country, and then residents can choose which of the two natural gas companies, Bord Gais Energy and Flogas that they wish to receive Natural Gas from (probably should include Airtricity as I believe they are now marketing themselves as an alternative)

for Digital Terrestrial Television, I'm led to believe that RTÉNL are responsible for the infrastructure, and then residents can rent set-top boxes from the various providers.

for Leinster's main airport in Collinstown, the Government requested the DAA to maintain the infrastructure, and let residents/travellers choose which airline they wished to fly with.

We can say the same about Dublin Port, the Dublin Port Company maintains the infrastructure, and importers/exporters can choose which ferry company they wish to transport their goods.

I'm sure the list goes on and on

So yes Sponge Bob, the question we should ask ourselves is why don't CNet run the whole broadband infrastructure system, and let all the providers lease it off them and sell to residents. Now I know people will use the example of how the Bank Clearing System is not run by an independent company but by AIB, Ulster Bank and BOI the main cheque clearing companies on behalf of the whole banking industry in Ireland. But this is far from ideal and should not be used as a perfect example of the private sector running a service.

TBH when Telecom Éireann was been privatised they should have split it into two companies, a infrastructure/network company say lets call it Eirnet (which government would have maintain control of) and Eircom which would then consist of all the phone accounts existing at the time etc.

But by privatising the whole lot the government basically gave a private company all the telecoms infrastructure it has built over previous 20years for free without any guarantees that they would spend to improve it etc. Heck how long was ADSL been trialled here by Eircom before they launched it? I think it was like 2years after it was introduced in UK that Eircom introduced it here.

The main reason for delay? Quite simple they weren't prepared to sacrifice the cash cow that was dial-up internet where customers were charged per minute connected.

Regarding E-Net running the whole state owned ducting etc, I would think this would be a good idea of course the reason why it hasn't happened let is that each semi-state is keen to maintain it's own little empire.

Sponge Bob

Communications Delivery On The Access Network In Ireland.

A Very Short Primer. ( I may revisit aspects of this over time)

Ireland has very roughly

4000 Mobile Cells ( serving up to 5m devices)
1200 Telephone Exchanges ( serving up to 1.7m lines)
1000 Cable Broadband Nodes or CMTS ( serving up to 150,000 BB customers)
1000 Misc Wireless Base Stations other than mobile ones ( serving up to 50000 premises)

Most premises in ireland are served by at least two of these, eg you have a Mobile phone and an ADSL connection for example. The most significant expansion is underway in Cable and the mobile sector is also expanding albeit relatively more slowly. Telephone based nodes are expanding at a glacial pace as is Fibre to The Home

Every telephone , dialup modem, ADSL modem, cable modem , Mobile phone or 3g service is DELIVERED from one of these to the customer.

Each of those service points has a big pipe out the back towards HQ in Dublin , it may be wireless or fibre or even copper (leased line) and only the cable nodes are all fibre today along with most telephone exchanges and some masts.

The biggest factors that affect service are

1. Distance from the node that serves you.
2. Congestion/Contention how many other users share the cell/cable node or the backhaul from the exchange/cell/cable node.
3. Overselling. Many operators have deliverately overloaded part or all of their networks and do not admit this to their customers.
4. Interconnects to other both operators here and abroad.

Only 6000-7000 homes in Ireland have a fibre service, this is negligble and undeserving of its own section.

dubhthach

I see there is a very short article about the Celtixconnect cable from Dublin to Wales. It lands in East-Point business park (near my new office).

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/commercialproperty/2010/0210/1224264098969.html

http://www.celtixconnect.com/

Here's some maps taken from their site:





I recall hearing something about a possible second cross irish sea fibre cable been built, have you heard anything about this Sponge-Bob?

Of course we really need a cable that bypasses London/UK completely for traffic to Europe, awh well.

dubhthach

I might as well add in this map as well as it happens to show some of the other cables in the Irish Sea.

Sponge Bob

The Definitive maps is maintained by Kisca/Kingfisher, see below.

It is a resource for Fishermen seeing as they are responsible for about 2/3 of all subsea fibre outages. That looks like the exact same map so no, there is no other working fibre there right now.

They are basically following a BT Fibre installed in the late 1980s ( marked in blue in the PDF below) seeing as it is already charted on the map below.

This was the OLDEST fibre still in service out of the UK, every other 1980s fibre has been retired. Trust eircom to sweat an asset

But Kisca show it as retired ( blue) so it looks like CelticConnect are following it like a limpet.

Note the following comment by CelticConnect. This is blatantly untrue

Diane Hodnett, Commercial Director, CeltixConnect, said ‘’No new Irish sub-sea cable system has been built since 2000 and currently most of the existing sub-sea cable systems face near technical obsolescence and natural end of life. As such, until now Ireland risked facing the possibility of becoming a marooned digital island. CeltixConnect’s pioneering sub-sea dark fibre business model, where each fibre is capable of carrying up to 960 Gigabits per second (Gbps), the equivalent of 480 hours of video per second, will offer customers increased reliability, security, scalability and technical longevity at a competitive price.”

UK-Ireland 1 (Updated 8 August 2000)
In-Service: 1988
Holyhead, UK - Portmarnock, Ireland - 126 km at 6 x 140 Mb/s
Maintenance Authorities: British Telecom, Eircom


http://www.kisca.org.uk/charts.htm
http://www.kisca.org.uk/Charts/Web_IrishSea.pdf

also see our half arsed version

http://www.safetyonthewater.ie/upload/general/9540-0.PDF

Showing UK Ireland 1 as a live cable in 2007 , GAHH!! and also showing PTAT into Cork which has been defunct for years when that map was published. PTAT 1 was shut down in 2004

dubhthach

Just watching the INEX videos from their meeting back in December. It would seem that Eirgrid are actually gonna lay a fibre cable along with the Interconnector (won't be live until 2012 though), also seems to be another cable going from Portmarnock to Anglesey promised for delivery this year.

Sponge Bob

There is a large missing link in the ducting network along the Motorways near Dublin .....older Motorways had no ducting installed but Dubhthach found that a company has closed much of it by following the canals.

I resized their map to the correct size for Boards. The company is called Inland Fibre. They close much or all of the gap to the M4/M6 ducts from the T50 and also close the Dublin - Naas gap

Original

http://www.inlandfibre.ie/company.htm

Phase ll plans included for extension of the network from Naas back to the T-50 along the Grand Canal.

dubhthach

I had recalled hearing about this project 18months ago. I believe that the fibre connection that Carton House (100mbit/s) got put in for Real Madrid was off this network. However I completely forgot about it until eoinm1 made a post about canal maintenance.

When you think about it shows a nice way that Waterways Ireland could turn a buck, after all the Grand Canal and the Royal Canal both terminate in the docklands -- Royal in Spencer Dock and GC in the Grand Canal Dock.

KevR

Meanwhile, across the Irish Sea:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100225/tuk-virgin-media-plans-100mb-broadband-6323e80.html

Press Association wrote:

Virgin Media plans 100Mb broadband


Britons will have access to ultrafast broadband speeds by the end of 2011 after cable giant Virgin Media announced the launch of the UK's first 100Mb service.
Virgin will roll out the new service nationwide at the end of 2010 and throughout next year, while it also said it was expanding its 200Mb pilot as part of the push to become a "broadband nation".
News of the launch comes as Virgin Media said it connected 28,600 households on a net basis - those joining the group, less those leaving - in the fourth quarter of 2009 as its superfast connections attracted new business.
The group, which is 4% owned by Sir Richard Branson, now has a total of 4.77 million cable customers.
Its operating cash flow - or underlying earnings - rose 15.3% to £366 million in the quarter, with the group putting the rise down to its high-speed offering. It said more than 55% of its customers have 20Mb speeds and above, which is 45% up on a year earlier.
The new 100Mb service will help the UK catch up with other markets that are pushing ahead with broadband, such as Japan and Korea, which are rolling out 1Gb broadband.
It is able to take advantage of its fibre optic cable network to offer the speeds that other ADSL providers struggle with.
Neil Berkett, chief executive of Virgin Media, said: "The launch of Virgin Media's 100Mb service will be a historic moment and will mean the UK will be comparable to other leading broadband nations."
Virgin Media claimed the service will allow web surfers to download a music album in as little as five seconds, an hour long TV show in 31 seconds and an high definition movie in less than eight minutes.
Its 200Mb pilot, which began in Kent last May, is also set to be extended to Coventry.

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

dubhthach

KevR wrote: »

Meanwhile, across the Irish Sea:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100225/tuk-virgin-media-plans-100mb-broadband-6323e80.html

Reminds me of back in 2006 when I got the fibre connection in the office in Galway. I was able to benchmark about 90mbit/s by doing simultaneous downloads of Linux ISO files from Heanet. Of course the company was only paying for 10Mbit/s symmetrical, but you could burst above that for 5-10% of time and not get charged.

I believe fastest home speed you see in Ireland at the moment is 50mbits/s from Magnet but you need to be living in one of those 10k houses built near the end of boom that had FTTH (Fibre to the home) installed in them.

dubhthach

I see the government has past the legislation to allow the NRA open up access to the Ducts it has put in all the new motorways to multiple Telco's etc.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15618/comms/govt-passes-legislation-to-open-motorway-ducts-for-broadband

Here's a good article on Ars Technica about the Open Access fibre Network that's been built in Amsterdam, Fibre to the Barge anyone?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-open-access-fiber.ars

dubhthach

I hear on the radio this morning (Morning Ireland) that Eircom are going to be trialling FTTH (Fibre to the Home) in Sandyford and in Wexford town.


The location isn't really that surprising there's a fair bit of Fibre in both locations already, in case of Sandyford to service the estate. Wexford has it's own MAN (see pic below) so it's considerably cheaper to use that then to build completely from scratch in a smaller town.



The original map from when the MAN was constructed, it has since been extended somewhat which can be seen in the maps page on e-net site: http://www.e-net.ie/man-maps.html

Sponge Bob

eircom have trialled VDSL ( or Fibre to the Curb / FTTC ) in south Dublin for years. At least 5. They trialled in it Ennis between c 2001/2002 and 2005. Then they turned it off.

No deployments anywhere of course. They have Trialled iPTV in South Dublin too. Therefore a trial means absolutely nothing.

Frankly they should do all of Wexford Town and commit to not turning it off in some typical regulatory hissy fit with Comreg ...but they most likely won't. There is no UPC there.

dubhthach

Indeed, here's the article on siliconrepublic

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/16593/comms/eircom-to-trial-fibre-to-the-home-speeds-up-to-150mbps

To be honest I'm not happy with the idea of Eircom owning the last-mile of Fibre. They are claiming that they'll provide open access (unbundling?) but given their past history it will probably end up in Court with Comreg :rolleyes:

Sponge Bob

dubhthach wrote: »

To be honest I'm not happy with the idea of Eircom owning the last-mile of Fibre. They are claiming that they'll provide open access (unbundling?) but given their past history it will probably end up in Court with Comreg :rolleyes:

Physically unbundling fibre is pointless, they can unbundle in the Sandyford and Wexford exchanges roughly on the VLAN level instead. Course that means only BT can 'take' the unbundle IIRC.

dubhthach

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Physically unbundling fibre is pointless, they can unbundle in the Sandyford and Wexford exchanges roughly on the VLAN level instead. Course that means only BT can 'take' the unbundle IIRC.

Well yeah you can use VLAN's but you still going to have to use Eircom's networking kit at some stage as a result. What is been built in Amsterdam in comparison is a completely open-access Fibre network. Each fibre pair is unbundled and any operator who has backhaul into the exchange can provide services over it using their own networking kit. Of course in Amsterdam case each one will have about 10,000 "home" connections going into it.

How Amsterdam was wired for open access fiber

Sponge Bob

dubhthach wrote: »

. Of course in Amsterdam case each one will have about 10,000 "home" connections going into it.

Eircom will on their holes provide an exclusive fibre pair like a phone line to each premises, they will roll out a shared network like TV cable instead.

It is called GEPON ....maybe 10GEPON if we are lucky. Every premises on a loop shares 1gbit or 10gbits which ain't too shabby

whyulittle

dubhthach wrote: »

The location isn't really that surprising there's a fair bit of Fibre in both locations already, in case of Sandyford to service the estate. Wexford has it's own MAN (see pic below) so it's considerably cheaper to use that then to build completely from scratch in a smaller town.

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/7E54D13A-FB52-442E-8DD7-2CFDE159FD17/0/Wexfordmap.png

The original map from when the MAN was constructed, it has since been extended somewhat which can be seen in the maps page on e-net site: http://www.e-net.ie/man-maps.html

Just out of curiosity, why is the Wexford MAN so extensive, compared to others on the list.

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Communications+Policy/Metropolitan+Area+Networks/MANs+Phase+I.htm

dubhthach

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Eircom will on their holes provide an exclusive fibre pair like a phone line to each premises, they will roll out a shared network like TV cable instead.

It is called GEPON ....maybe 10GEPON if we are lucky. Every premises on a loop shares 1gbit or 10gbits which ain't too shabby

Indeed and this is the problem, you can't take individual houses off a PON (passive optic network), it's a case that another company wants to offer service then they have to take to get every house connected to a PON segment to switch and take over that. Of course Eircom would love such a situation as it would make it lot harder for customers to switch ISP. They'd be guaranteed some money from reselling on their own services to other ISP's like what the currently do with dsl.

dubhthach

whyulittle wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, why is the Wexford MAN so extensive, compared to others on the list.

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Communications+Policy/Metropolitan+Area+Networks/MANs+Phase+I.htm

That's an interesting question that I'm afraid I don't know the answer to. Of course the MAN's have had some extensions added onto in the last 4years. The Wexford wan currently looks like the following:
http://www.e-net.ie/uploads/File/man_pdfs/Wexford.pdf
http://www.e-net.ie/uploads/File/man_pdfs/Wexford%20BP.pdf

Sponge Bob

dubhthach wrote: »

Indeed and this is the problem, you can't take individual houses off a PON (passive optic network), it's a case that another company wants to offer service then they have to take to get every house connected to a PON segment to switch and take over that.

They don't, in a place the size of Wexford all the PON switches would be in one room and the individual ports are tagged and handed over to eircom retail or BT or whoever in that one building. BT have already LLU'd the Wexford exchanges and can accept the traffic on the aggregate at those exchanges. The only missing asset in Wexford is dark fibre and BT will insist on lighting the thing.

An 8U 16 card "OLT" is what passes for a DSLAM and each card can handle 1-4 PON circuits which each handle up to 64 Customer Ports

Theoretically a high density 8u like that could ( and eventually will) handle 16x4x64 ports or 4096 premises but early gear will handle more like 512 ports. Wexford has maybe 8000 premises max and therefore you could fit the lot in 3 racks and then put all the backhaul gear in another.

Eventually you will fit the lot in 2 racks once the silicon and optic gear improves. Even being cautious about heat problems etc I cannot see how they would need more than 10 racks to run 10GEPON to all of Wexford town.

10GEPON divided by 64 drops amounts to around 150mbits max per premises ( you can mix residential and business at different bitrates) and thereafter you boot them off as you max a segment or need to upgrade the bitrates.

Don't forget 10GEPON also does all the mobile backhaul in town and that all the masts can be removed and replaced with dispersed sectors because of the RFoG component of the 10GEPON standard . You have a single Node B base station for the whole town in the same room as the OLT and that controls scads of sectors over the PON

If UPC show up looking interested you can even run Docsis over GEPON but not on a segment that carries native 10GEPON I suspect.

120 discrete runs of fibre from that building will do every single premises and mast and future sector in Wexford town , double up the fibre pairs at each drop for future resegmenting to lower contention per PON or maybe treble for running a docsis and native and rfog mix on a single street of 64 premises and feel free to come back to ole Sponge Bob for advice when the whole town is squealing about only having 500mbits each because there isn't enough fibre in the hood

dubhthach

Regarding Eircom's core "NGN" network, here's a presentation I last saw about 2 years ago:
http://www.ibec.ie/Sectors/TIF/TIF.nsf/vPages/Telecoms_Technology~Publications~next-generation-high-speed-ethernet-services-04-06-2008/$file/Presentation%20by%20Peter%20Maxwell,%20eircom.pdf

It has some details about their FTTH trial that they did in Stepside (over 100 apartments) back in 2008. The diagram of the trial FTTH system gives a good idea of what they will probably build out in wexford and Sandyford.