EU rules to speed up next-gen networks

bealtine

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0917/breaking33.htm

New European Union rules on public funding for high-speed broadband networks will help speed up the roll-out of infrastructure in areas currently lacking such services, the European Commission said today.

The guidelines contain provisions on the deployment of Next Generation Access (NGA) networks, allowing public support to foster investment in this strategic sector without creating undue distortions of competition, a Commission statement said. It said €200-€300 billion would be needed in coming years for building NGA networks, with the private sector looking to governments for financial support.

The EU's executive Commission has pledged to make high-speed Internet a key element of its economic recovery plan to drive growth in the region. It aims to achieve 100 per cent broadband coverage for the region by 2010.

Reuters

Sponge Bob

On a per capita basis €300bn would translate into around €700m of investment here. Naturally Tommy McCabe of IBEC will try to grab that as soon as he can for eircom ,maybe even today ???

€700m is a lot more than the government has spent on national fibre in this decade, €170m to date in MAN phases 1 and 2 and maybe another €30m on the likes of the ESB fibre etc .

My short term plan is

Roll Out Backbone fibre along the Roads and Gaspipelines owned by the state and where ducts exist already , empty Bring state owned backbone fibre to within 50km of every citizen by end 2011 and to within 30km by end 2012. Then stop because you have finished the backbone .

Join up the Aggregation Networks they have ( around 85 MANS nationally ) with National Backbones

Take over the Castlebar Cable network that never serviced anyone and where Chorus defrauded the state early in the decade .

Put a MAN into Ennis Tuam and Shannon

Obviously connect these towns to National Backbone fibre .

Put soem 'smart ' traffic lights into Dublin with fibre ducts to within 1.5km of each citizen and terminating at TRAFFIC lights .

You have spent €40m-€50m doing all that but have

1. COMPLETED the National Backbone and

2. COMPLETED The National Aggregation networks where it is feasible to have an aggregation network.

Then focus entirely on the Access network which simply requires the GOVERNMENT to PROPERLY implement the report IT WROTE IN 2002 Itself .

That report was called New Connections , it is the definitive report on Irish Broadband policy and what a knowledge economy should be lloking at , just like the EU with NGN.

http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/attached_files/Pdf%20files/NewConnectionsMarch2002.pdf

They use to review progress once , certainly not on Ryans watch

Here is a 2003 review of New Connections

http://www.epractice.eu/files/media/media_604.pdf

Here is a 2004 review of New Connections

http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/attached_files/Pdf%20files/New%20Connections,%202nd%20Progress%20Report.pdf

Bit of an oul Policy Document from 2004 based on a review/

http://www.dcmnr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/837DB370-0B9F-4A29-9A2A-1EC9FE2A143B/0/BroadbandStrategy.doc

Reviews of reviews .

http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/committees29thdail/committeereport2006/sixth__report_consultantcy.doc

From that last one !

Joined up Government

The Joint Committee in its report of spring 2004 made three central recommendations which might be described as focussed on the macro policy perspective.
§ Develop a National Broadband Infrastructure Plan in 2004.
§ Appoint a single Minister of State with cross department responsibility for the rollout of a national broadband infrastructure and the development of e-Government services.
§ Encourage closer co-operation between the Government, the telecoms industry and the end-users of broadband services.


The last two years has not been a rich period for innovation in terms of Broadband policy. Indeed, in contrast to the 2 years prior to the Joint Committee’s report it appears that Broadband rollout slipped down the policy agenda. This may be due to a sense that a plan was now in place and the important thing is to proceed with implementation. At any rate we have relatively little to draw to the Joint Committee’s attention with respect to this cluster of recommendations.


It is our understanding that no new national broadband infrastructure plan was developed during 2004. Both the Cabinet sub committee on infrastructure and the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources are relying primarily on the 2003 document ‘Broadband Strategy’.

In addition to acting as a standalone document which outlines Ireland’s Broadband strategy, it has also provided the guiding term of Broadband Infrastructure policy as described in ‘New Connections’ the government’s overarching policy document on the vision of Ireland as a knowledge economy.

The minute Dempsey saw "joined up government" mentioned that was the end of any policy of any sort ....ever since and Ryan is far too clueless and too unprincipled to countervail that .

Ryan would rather spend the money on wood pellets and other green frippery , as indeed he has .

His vision of a knowledge economy was highlighted in that message he sent to Japan where he described the "Internet of Things" and how his communications policies ( 3g ) would make smart electricity metering possible .

Jesus Wept

bk

By my estimates €700 million should be enough to do either:

- Fibre To The Curb for almost every home in Ireland
- Fibre To The Home of almost every home in the 5 cities.

Of course that is assuming they set up a dedicated company to do it, transfer all existing fibre assets to this company and give it the full €700 million, allowing for economies of scale. Rather then splitting it up between different phases and different smaller companies.

Sponge Bob

bk wrote: »

Rather then splitting it up between different phases and different smaller companies.

I would phase it TBH. A lot of legal work needs doing on the access network ( Planning Acts ) where they can crack on with the Backbone and Aggregation very simply .

They could nearly finish all that by early 2011 if fingers were pulled out including Dublin aggregation to traffic lights ...much of which is already in place . Dublin does not have a MAN , nor will it.

Sub Loop Unbundling also needs to be sorted PDQ and Comreg have done nothing there either as you would expect from that shower of wasters . The permaconsult loop will not even start in 2009 ....and will not end in my lifetime I should think .

So most complex issues to my mind concern the Access Network and the utter failure of anybody to address neutral ducting since 2002 .

Tom Young

Tommy needs to be very careful at the moment. He's teetering on the brink of self destruction. Last weeks industry CEO dinner was another attempt to get incumbent consensus which failed flatly.

The Department has begun the OSS policy and legal drafting. It was due to US and FDI company pressure over the very P&D Acts you mention above! It does need to be watched in order to ensure the approach is correct. The question remains over local government control and that is something which also needs to be literally targeted and locally budgeted.

Tom

Sponge Bob

What is OSS in this context Tom , I always thought it meant operational support and DCENR is decnr inoperable by any criterium I can think of ??

As for the P&D acts and Access network I feel that the GBS shall have to be reborn ...by whatever pompous acronym they choose to describe it

I naturally have a few ideas on it , seeing as I invented GBS first time round .

The local authorities don't have a feckin clue , not a notion , by and large . Otherwise they would have moved unilaterally on providing ducting to some extent ....eg on long footpath renewal or regional water schemes .

They seem to add ducting to significant ( National / Regional scale ) road schemes . Obviously they must do so because of some Dept of Transport and/or NRA guideline ...not because they are self starters or clued in or anything

Tom Young

Sorry - OSS - One Stop Shop, access to state assets. Yes, another goddam telecom acronym.

Sponge Bob

Potted History of the guidelines here ( from the EU Commission)

http://www.apritel.org/fotos/editor2/Philip%20Lowe.pdf


The same 'white' 'grey' 'black' geographic rules apply as they did to the NBS ...until the DCENR and Mason LIED to the EU that is ....I have the proof

Therefore it seems rather obvious that the state can only simply aid NGA deployment OUTSIDE the Gateway towns rather than IN the Gateway towns and most certainly discounting the MAN towns .

It would further strike me that the state is allowed to finish what it started on the Backbone and Aggregation side with National Fibre and Man Fibres in certain areas .

The Access issue is a nationwide one and rather complex .

I would push ahead quickly with finishing the aggregation and backbone where we have the indulgence of the EU in the form of past dispensations and would confer widely ONLY on the Access network . It pains my hole to listen to all these self important pompous idiots and their interminable conferences where we are forced to listen to oxmoronic 'smart' 'green' drivel in pointless opening speeches . Just tell the EU we are doing it and DO it FFS

I did say before that the four remaining Gateway Towns should get a MAN . These are Castlebar ( defrauded by Chorus under its old regime, nationalise the ducts now ) and Ennis ( swindled by eircom under Infrmation age) and Tuam ( fobbed off with Powerline trials) and Shannon which was simply ignored .

Furthermore the original Man towns did not get a micro NOC, make it so now that land is 1/10th the cost it was a few years ago and you only need 100m sq anyway . Make sure you put the Cork one in the http://www.cix.ie/ CIX and make Adam happy .

Other than that I would not add any further aggregation networks in the state outside Dublin where the traffic light network can be improved. I would connect them to 2 backbone networks in all cases .

Then there is the completion of the Backbone network as required using the 50km and 30km criteria I have long espoused and drop to a NOC in every case ....build one if there is no MAN

The EU will allow all that, no problem .

But then comes the fun and expensive bit, the access network . We down even have SLU in this country and the chair of Comreg will be AWOL in Brussels until 2011 as we know . A ministerial directive is in order !!!

Sponge Bob

The full guidelines are below , a very important qualification is the 'colour coding explained thus

http://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/legislation/guidelines_broadband_en.pdf

section 40

The Commission has consistently made a
distinction between areas where no broadband infrastructure exists or is unlikely to be developed in the near term (white areas), areas where only one broadband network operator is present (grey areas) and areas where at least two or more broadband network providers are present (black areas).

The cities are BLACK because eircom and UPC can provide access . It is exceedingly difficult to formulate a policy in those cases and easier elsewhere . However the government has been forced to claim the entire country is now grey because of the NBS in the white areas . Mason will also claim the same thing as they are on a nice little earner form the DCENR on the NBS . We know this is ridiculous . There is a huge difference between Fixed Wireless and 3g and DSL , chalk and cheese almost

We must assume all of Ireland is GREY , on to section 44

"Grey areas”: need for a more detailed assessment
(44) The existence of a network operator in a given area does not necessarily imply that no market failure or cohesion problem exists. Monopoly provision may affect the quality of service or the price at which services are offered to the citizens. On the other hand, in areas where only one broadband network operator is present, by
definition, subsidies for the construction of an alternative network can distort market dynamics. Therefore state support for the deployment of broadband networks in 'grey' areas calls for a more detailed analysis and careful compatibility assessment.

Sections 45 and 46 will be denied by the government and especially by Comreg . We all know Comreg are useless but they must admit they are useless first . Abolishing Comreg may even be 'a good start'

This key observation is in note 35 to section 27

For example, an ADSL network should provide bitstream and full unbundling, whereas a NGA fibre-based network should provide at least access to dark fibre, bitstream, and if a FTTC network is being deployed, access to sub loop unbundling.

In other words as long as UPC and Eircom are no precluded from using a Fibre network we should be grand, if they choose not to then no worries .

We cannot have a FTTC network where we have no Sub Loop unbundling , like in Ireland , and we are years off a working system . The LLU situation is such a mess that as part of an NGA strategy we should take the Sub loops off eircom altogether and nationalise the last 1km to each property in Ireland ....not least because we wish to nationalise all inherite d easements and wayleaves , let eircom keep the rest of the copper of course , it shall remain theirs .

Sections 52 onward are the new ones, concerned with NGA as such.

Section 53 tells mobile operators to feck off ( see note 60 )

NGA networks are wired access networks which consist wholly or in part of optical elements and which are capable of delivering broadband access services with enhanced characteristics (such as higher throughput) as compared to those provided over existing copper networks.

60 At this stage of technological and market development, neither satellite nor mobile network technologies appear to be capable of providing very high speed symmetrical broadband services although in the future the situation may change especially with regard to mobile services (the next major step in mobile radio communications, 'Long Term Evolution' may theoretically reach, if and when adopted, increased peak data rates of 100Mbps downlink and 50Mbps uplink).

So we are left with Fibre and possibly Fibre and Copper Subloops .

The doc is 24 pages long and is eminently readable . T

he TIF plan appears stillborn as eirocm and upc have both indicated NGA delpoyments in the cities in the past and Comreg have mendaciously told the ERG that eircom are 'doing' 37 exchanges ....all large city exchanges of course where UPC are also present .

The TIF grand plan is doubtless to get eircom a subsidy to compete with UPC but not to have sub loop unbundling or anything eircom does not want . It will therefore be incompatibe with NGA rules .

lucernarian

Sub-loop unbundling needs to be sorted out, but not before plain old LLU.

Isn't a substantial number of paths served directly by the exchange and doesn't bother with cabinets? Particularly so in Dublin 1-9 and the smaller rural exchanges which were enabled in '07 and later. I think in Dublin, 20-40% of paths were connected straight to the MDF of the exchange. The exact number was in some sort of cost analysis of VDSL that eircom (I assume) did. The tiny exchanges with no cabs can be ignored for LLU stuff, but the Dublin City Council area?

Sponge Bob

LLU is over TBC, SLU is essentially the same battle but with shorter loops . Cabinets in Dublin are only a way to reduce LLUable lines and make LLU less viable.

lucernarian

Cabinets are a way to make LLU lines less LLU-able/viable?!? Could you clarify what you mean for me please?

I was talking about plain jane cabinets that exist on the street currently, which I assume would be the point where fibre-fed cabinets would make their appearance. In a lot of DCC's area, there are simply no cabinets serving a lot of lines, which I suspect would slow down the provision of fibre-fed ones there.

And yeah, the post was made with the fact that LLU is becoming irrelevant in mind. I suppose the principle is still valid, in that it's still dysfunctional currently and is relevant to the here and now.

Sponge Bob

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

Cabinets are a way to make LLU lines less LLU-able/viable?!? Could you clarify what you mean for me please?

If an exchange like Tallaght has 10000 lines and if eircom keep nibbling away at 1000 here ( to a cabinet in Knocklyon ) and 1000 there ( to a cabinet in Belgard) then the operator who unbundled and exchange with 10000 lines is left with 8000 potentials and with the same cost stack .

And yeah, the post was made with the fact that LLU is becoming irrelevant in mind. I suppose the principle is still valid, in that it's still dysfunctional currently and is relevant to the here and now.

Sub loop unbundling is now the key issue . We have not heard a sausage from anybody about it !