Eircom eFibre VDSL/FTTC rollout – plans to reach 1.6m premises by mid 2016

Praetorian

Mickalus wrote: »

So when Eircom launch Phase 1 , can other companies (such as Digiweb) piggy back off of it like they do with the copper infrastructure? or can eircom hog these Fibre lines and keep it all for themselves?

So far Magnet are offering services based on Eircom's network. I'm sure the others will eventually, but considering there is only a couple of exchange areas completed, it's early days yet!

liamg67

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Probably, it'll be a while though. Even if we had that now it would be pretty pointless. Your local network and computer would bottleneck it. No point having 1Tbps internet connection if your router only has 1Gb ethernet ports and your computers storage maxes out at 500MBps write speed.

LOL you say that now but in a few years it will be the norm. I recall the days when people laughed at the thought of wanting more than 64K of memory operating on a 1mHz clock rate - and it took half an hour to load a program - the good old days eh?

The future would evidentally allow for higher data transfer rates / greater numbe rof cpu cores / memory and storage. However not sure why this would be required - but guess Cloud connection will be focus more.

AlmightyCushion

liamg67 wrote: »

LOL you say that now but in a few years it will be the norm. I recall the days when people laughed at the thought of wanting more than 64K of memory operating on a 1mHz clock rate - and it took half an hour to load a program - the good old days eh?

The future would evidentally allow for higher data transfer rates / greater numbe rof cpu cores / memory and storage. However not sure why this would be required - but guess Cloud connection will be focus more.

That's why I said that right now it's pointless, I wouldn't rule it out in the future although I'd say decades rather than years.

Oceans12

i was talking to a friend today, who had been talking to eircom HQ and he was told that the Dec 2012 Phase II rollout dates are provisional network build dates, and not actual public availability of the high speed services.

due to regulation they have to make it available to all operators at the same time, ie vodafone, digiweb, smart, etc so based on that, i reckon we wont see a lot of phase II for public use until 2013:(

PeadarB

Oceans12 wrote: »

i was talking to a friend today, who had been talking to eircom HQ and he was told that the Dec 2012 Phase II rollout dates are provisional network build dates, and not actual public availability of the high speed services.

due to regulation they have to make it available to all operators at the same time, ie vodafone, digiweb, smart, etc so based on that, i reckon we wont see a lot of phase II for public use until 2013:(

As Letterkenny was part of the Phase I fibre roll-out I had been keeping a keen eye on progress, cabinet placement and the feverish work between them and the local exchange. Tested my number on the eircom "availability" widget and got confirmation that my line was ready for fibre. Quickly moving back to eircom, I signed up for the 50Mb plan and got the order confirmation by email within a few minutes.

I followed up the order, it was on their system ok but marked rejected - just the way I feel at the moment. Typical. So much for my impatience but the excitement was powerfull for a few hours

Sponge Bob

Eircom also have an incomplete DSL rollout programme from April 2007 and they seemingly can't give dates for those ones because they don't know so it could even mean 2019 for Drogheda Oceans .

Oceans12

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Eircom also have an incomplete DSL rollout programme from April 2007 and they seemingly can't give dates for those ones because they don't know so it could even mean 2019 for Drogheda Oceans .

yes i guess that much, and those advertised dates are just a PR exercise..
i have now seen the communication from eircom HQ, and it clearly states that the Dec 2012 Phase II dates, are provisional network build dates, and not service availability dates.

also, as they have to offer this service to all resellers at the same time, when you see vodafone, and other DSL resellers offering the new higher speeds, then you know it is not far off, but until then, is anyones guess, i would say mid 2013 at the earliest, before its available.

i recall seeing a post on here, that someone in wexford was waiting over 3 months for a fiber connection, and that town is supposedly already enabled with the new ftth/fttc products!!

time to switch to a cheaper provider me thinks.

Psygnosis

Just an update for anyone in Rush. Eircom by the looks of it have started the fibre progress back to the exchange.
K&N Networks have all the eircom man holes up on the road the whole way back to the exchange so at a guess I reckon that this is what they are up to.

PeadarB

Psygnosis wrote: »

K&N Networks have all the eircom man holes up on the road the whole way back to the exchange.

They did all that work in Letterkenny over the past seven or eight weeks. Nothing else since from what I can see.
At the rate they are going up here Phase 2 of the fibre roll-out will be half finished elsewhere before they even start it here in Phase 1 land.:mad:

iMuse

PeadarB wrote: »

They did all that work in Letterkenny over the past seven or eight weeks. Nothing else since from what I can see.
At the rate they are going up here Phase 2 of the fibre roll-out will be half finished elsewhere before they even start it here in Phase 1 land.:mad:

In fairness they did say that the speeds would be available in autumn 2012 so if nov / dec passes and it isn't live then we can start to worry!

Sponge Bob

PeadarB wrote: »

They did all that work in Letterkenny over the past seven or eight weeks. Nothing else since from what I can see.

Thing to remember is that they are doing nothing across most of the exchange area. They will not upgrade the rural part of the Letterkenny exchange area which is MOST OF IT. Only the more urban core will be upgraded.

PeadarB

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Thing to remember is that they are doing nothing across most of the exchange area. They will not upgrade the rural part of the Letterkenny exchange area which is MOST OF IT. Only the more urban core will be upgraded.

I see the KN lads in their wee tent at the cabinet near the Letterkenny Town Park entrance today. The cabinet serving Ashbrook where I live is only about 250 metres from my house. There has been sporadic work around the town in the last few weeks but no one has any info whatever about projected roll-out under Phase 1. I see a Huawei cabinet up at the top end of Lisnennan which is outside the town boundary. Even the local eircom engineers are being kept in the "darK."

Sponge Bob

PeadarB wrote: »

Even the local eircom engineers are being kept in the "darK."

That is because the entire rollout is designed by a team of Chinese engineers from Huawei ...temporarily based in Dublin.

Praetorian

I saw the KN guys in and around the Belcamp exchange doing bits and pieces. Has the phase 2 rollout actually started or is it postponed?

PeadarB

Praetorian wrote: »

I saw the KN guys in and around the Belcamp exchange doing bits and pieces. Has the phase 2 rollout actually started or is it postponed?

Phase 2 !!! Where is the Phase 1 roll-out?:mad:

Technique

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Thing to remember is that they are doing nothing across most of the exchange area. They will not upgrade the rural part of the Letterkenny exchange area which is MOST OF IT. Only the more urban core will be upgraded.

FFS. :mad:

I think 4G will be my only hope of half decent speeds.

bealtine

Technique wrote: »

I think 4G will be my only hope of half decent speeds.

Only in your dreams...

Comreg have mandated a 70% population coverage which is around 10% geographic coverage. So if you are not in a populated area you have no chance of getting LTE.

Great isn't it?

Technique

bealtine wrote: »

Only in your dreams...

Comreg have mandated a 70% population coverage which is around 10% geographic coverage. So if you are not in a populated area you have no chance of getting LTE.

Great isn't it?

What about line of sight to a phone mast?

Is there a limited range for 4G signals?

(sorry for derailing the thread!)

daffy_duc

Technique wrote: »

What about line of sight to a phone mast?

Is there a limited range for 4G signals?

(sorry for derailing the thread!)

The correct question would be "When will 4G actually exist?"
Since there isn't anything deployed in this country that comes close to meeting the minimum requirements defined by the ITU for 4G

2moreMinutes

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2007464540.png

Just after reading this thread so did the speed test. This good, bad or indifferent? (Edit: Just seeing the sticky on these tests so I'll figure out just how poor it is on my own!)

Over the last 6-8 weeks, theres been one of those green cabinets put at the bottom of my road as well as another one at the top of the hill entering my estate in Glencar (Letterkenny).

bealtine

2moreMinutes wrote: »

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2007464540.png

Just after reading this thread so did the speed test. This good, bad or indifferent?

It's about normal for Ireland

PeadarB

I had an "update" call from an Eircom rep today. Fibre may be available in Letterkenny by July, though more likely September. Not long now.........

Solair

Is actual fibre available on this setup or is it just VDSL ?

Sponge Bob

VDSL. Nobody has reported any actual fibre to the premises rollout in Letterkenny...or Mervue come to think of it.

iMuse

Sponge Bob wrote: »

VDSL. Nobody has reported any actual fibre to the premises rollout in Letterkenny...or Mervue come to think of it.

An eircom slide show posted in this thread had FTTC & FFTH beside Letterkenny but that was prob a typo.

Solair

So basically in areas like Douglas they'll be offering 'up to 50 mbit/s' while UPC can easily offer 100mbit/s (actually at that speed) and probably beyond if they felt like it.

While VDSL's an improvement over what eircom have at the moment, it's still a vastly inferior product to UPC's fibre-to-cabinet+coax-to-home setup.

UPC field trialled 1Gbit/s in Vienna. (Reached 1.3Gbit/s) over the same infrastructure they have in place here.

http://www.rapidtvnews.com/index.php/2011090614884/upc-austria-reaches-13-gbits.html

To me it looks like that other than in a handful of areas, Eircom are still a good 10 years behind UPC and are rapidly heading for 15-20 years in non fibre-to-kerb areas.

That's pretty disappointing!

bealtine

Solair wrote: »

To me it looks like that other than in a handful of areas, Eircom are still a good 10 years behind UPC and are rapidly heading for 15-20 years in non fibre-to-kerb areas.

My understanding of this rollout is that it will be VDSL in the main with small amounts of fibre around the local exchange, if it's not "hard" to run in the fibre.
So some city/town centre deployments of fibre but not reaching very far into the hinterland of the exchange just fibre to the cabinet.

liamg67

Had this reply from Smart today regarding their plans for Fibre broadband through Eircom wholesale.

We have nothing on our build plan at present to offer any services like this however this could change over time. If we ever plan to offer services like this we will notify our customers in advance of it becoming available.

Are other ISPs going to offer VDSL through Eircom wholesale - like UTV?

smellslikeshoes

I'd assume all of the current bitstream resellers will, they just haven't put anything concrete into it because of how limited the areas it's in currently are and the sketchiness of Eircom's upgrade plans.

Gonzo

stuck on Eircom 6meg here for past 3 years, since then UPC have upgraded their customers about 3 or 4 times and have gone from 10meg to now 100meg. There are still no plans from Eircom to upgrade anyone except those in the largest of towns/urban centres where UPC is already available. In about 3 years time UPC will propably be on 1gb internet and we will still be left on 3-8meg by Eircom, and by then internet patchs/updates etc will be so large that our adsl1 broadband will be the new dialup. We are getting left behind quicker than we can think.