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

jca

bk wrote: »

Actually in rural areas, it may make sense to connect even people up to 5km away to a cabinet.

Beyond 1.6km VDSL2 acts like ADSL2+, but many people in rural areas aren't connected to any BB or only ADSL broadband, so even ADSL2+ speeds would be a big improvement for them.

4mb stable at 5km would be a big improvement over sub 1mb/s and unreliable ADSL.

You're right those customers should really be looked after first. Fibre to wireless base would probably be the best solution. Realistically me going on a 50 meg profile next Monday when I have a perfectly stable 8-12 meg (with a decent provider) available to me is a bit of a luxury.

Johnboy1951

jca wrote: »

I think its a bit more than stringing fibre along a few electrical cables. Running the fibre between pylons is the easy bit. What happens next? Fibre comes down the pylon to a single house trying to squeeze in by a fat esb cable tightly enclosed in a steel duct up by the meter, into the hall, into the router. I wonder how much that would cost? The logistics involved are frightening.

I will make the assumption you mean poles and not pylons, as the electricity distribution in done over poles (for the most part) to the locality.
HT is distributed nationwide on pylons, some of which already have fibre on them.

Nowhere did I mention FTTH ...... although that could be an option for those prepared to pay for it.
[For instance I have an 'ESB' pole on my premises (yes inside my boundary) and it would be quite cost efficient for me to arrange a fibre cable to be drawn into my home from the pole. I would not have to even ask a neighbour about access, not to mention getting planning permission etc]

I did say fibre to the transformer.
From there, there are multiple choices for getting BB into the premises ...... including wireless and FTTH etc.

So to distribute BB it is simply a matter of getting the fibre to the local distribution point.
LT Transformers are reasonably close to the premises they serve and their location could easily be used for BB distribution.

IMO that is where the gov should have put their efforts ...... developing a proper distributed fibre network and then charge ISPs for its use.

With the network in public hands, and its use open to all ISPs the customers would have a choice of providers of the services, and be well served particularly in relation to price and services offered.

ED E

Municipally supplied fibre is exactly what should be done, but this is ireland. Politicians arent nearly tech aware enough to understand the benefit nor would I trust councils/a state body to run the system. Misters love to rant about the "Smart Economy" and so on but in reality eastern European nations like Estonia who are building the infrastructure to be tech leaders in the years to come.

bk

Obviously municipally supplied fibre would be the ideal. Really Eircom should never have been privatised the way it was. Instead it should have been separated into two separate companies, retail and network and only the retail arm privatised, with the network arm staying under government ownership.

This network arm, debt free, could have built a superb FTTH network to almost the entire country by now

Having said that, things really aren't looking so bad in urban and semi-urban areas. It seems like in the next two years, everyone in these areas will be covered by either UPC high speed cable (pretty much just as good as fibre) or ESB FTTH.

That just then leaves rural areas to solve.

ED E

FTTC rollout is going pretty well, as youve said yourself previously, but my worry is that Eircom Wholesale will sit on its laurels afterwards and people will be stuck with FTTC for the next decade. Has any info been released on how much extra backhaul is available per cab with the current set up. If its 190xports per cab and they're all close for arguments sake that's about 40Mb each, so thats 7.6Gb. Presumably then busy VDSL cabs would be on 10Gb links. Fine for now, but they'll need 100Gb to expand to FTTH from an FTTC cab. Is that being done though? Im skeptical .

jca

I think it makes more sense to keep improving the existing telecoms network as eircom and kn are doing now rather than some other company starting another infrastructure. Most people would be happy with decent reliable 10 meg bb. The obvious thing to do after that standard is reached is to keep investing. Will that hapoen? Who knows?

SpaceTime

In areas where UPC are based, if eircom sit on their laurels they won't have any laurels to sit on for very long as UPC already massively outclasses VDSL2 on speed offering 200mbit/s in many areas in Cork, Dublin etc etc and can quite easily go beyond those speeds too.

In non-cable towns and cities ESB fibre access network's showing some promise.

...

On another issue, are eircom possibly doing FTTH in some areas?
I notice that in Cork City centre they've been doing a hell of a lot of work on fibre in existing ducts in recent weeks and there are no cabinets on the central island at all really.

Just wondering if the Cork Central exchange area and possibly Crown Alley in Dublin will go full FTTH to avoid cabinets as it looks like planning permission might be a major problem in the city core areas. Telephone line local distribution in those areas is largely done in vaults under the street.

....

The one thing to remember though with the technology that eircom's using for VDSL2 is that it supports bonded pairs.
Most Irish homes have at least 2 pairs coming in and in most cases where there's 1 pair only, another line could be added without much difficulty just by pulling a new wire in from a pole or a vault outside.

If eircom were to provide you with VDSL2 vectored and bonded on two pairs they'd be looking at more like 160-200Mbit/s service. In most homes that wouldn't really require any wiring at all other than a bit of a modification to the NTU socket and a new modem.

They also wouldn't require lines back to the exchange, just to the cabinet, so there may be plenty of copper resources (especially with a lot of customers now gone to other services like cable and even mobile). There shouldn't really be any shortage of copper pairs in most areas anymore.

Vectoring will bring the VDSL2 service up to closer to 100Mbit/s and that technology's already built into all modems supplied by eircom and other VDSL providers and it's pretty much a minor tweak at each cabinet to implement it.

mailsanchu

SpaceTime wrote: »

In areas where UPC are based, if eircom sit on their laurels they won't have any laurels to sit on for very long as UPC already massively outclasses VDSL2 on speed offering 200mbit/s in many areas in Cork, Dublin etc etc and can quite easily go beyond those speeds too.

In non-cable towns and cities ESB fibre access network's showing some promise.

...

On another issue, are eircom possibly doing FTTH in some areas?
I notice that in Cork City centre they've been doing a hell of a lot of work on fibre in existing ducts in recent weeks and there are no cabinets on the central island at all really.

Just wondering if the Cork Central exchange area and possibly Crown Alley in Dublin will go full FTTH to avoid cabinets as it looks like planning permission might be a major problem in the city core areas. Telephone line local distribution in those areas is largely done in vaults under the street.

....

The one thing to remember though with the technology that eircom's using for VDSL2 is that it supports bonded pairs.
Most Irish homes have at least 2 pairs coming in and in most cases where there's 1 pair only, another line could be added without much difficulty just by pulling a new wire in from a pole or a vault outside.

If eircom were to provide you with VDSL2 vectored and bonded on two pairs they'd be looking at more like 160-200Mbit/s service. In most homes that wouldn't really require any wiring at all other than a bit of a modification to the NTU socket and a new modem.

They also wouldn't require lines back to the exchange, just to the cabinet, so there may be plenty of copper resources (especially with a lot of customers now gone to other services like cable and even mobile). There shouldn't really be any shortage of copper pairs in most areas anymore.

Vectoring will bring the VDSL2 service up to closer to 100Mbit/s and that technology's already built into all modems supplied by eircom and other VDSL providers and it's pretty much a minor tweak at each cabinet to implement it.

Regarding FTTH in some areas I felt so .. eircom was doing the same thing in our estate and there are no cabinets in our estate as we are very close to the exchange and i am not sure .

bk

ED E wrote: »

FTTC rollout is going pretty well, as youve said yourself previously, but my worry is that Eircom Wholesale will sit on its laurels afterwards and people will be stuck with FTTC for the next decade.

Eircom can't rest on the laurels, they would be destroyed by UPC and possibly the ESB.

UPC already blow them out of the water with 200mb/s and this can be increased to 400mb/s with existing DOCSIS 3.0 and modems, no new hardware needed.

UPC will also likely do DOCSIS 3.1, with its 1Gb/s speeds in the next 5 years.

Then you have the ESB looking to do FTTH in urban and semi-urban areas not served by UPC.

Competition is really hotting up.

ED E wrote: »

Has any info been released on how much extra backhaul is available per cab with the current set up.

From the rumours I've heard, they have laid enough fibre strands to each cabinet, to support upgrading to FTTH from the cabs in future.

Having said that, it doesn't mean that all those fibre strands are currently active and being used for the VDSL2+ product. It would have been crazy for them to have laid all that cable for the VDSL cabs and not laid extra fibre for future FTTH upgrades. Fibre cable itself is relatively cheap, it is the labour and civil costs, that make it expensive.

From what I've seen, it looks like the entire FFTC network has been designed with FTTH upgrades in mind from the start and that is really good news.

SpaceTime wrote:

The one thing to remember though with the technology that eircom's using for VDSL2 is that it supports bonded pairs.
Most Irish homes have at least 2 pairs coming in and in most cases where there's 1 pair only, another line could be added without much difficulty just by pulling a new wire in from a pole or a vault outside.

They could do it, but the evidence on the ground indicates that they won't be doing this.

During VDSL installs, it seems engineers are only connecting one pair in the NTU. That means you would need another customer engineer visit to connect the second pair.

That extra cost makes no sense, if they had future plans to do bonding, they would have had the engineers connect both pairs in the NTU first time around.

I guess that the thinking at Eircom goes like so:

- 100mb/s Vectored VDSL2 should be fast enough for most people and can compete with UPC's higher speeds on lower price.

- Bonded VDSL2 costs a lot to do (double ports in the DSLAM), while still being slower (about 200mb/s) then UPC (400mb/s in future) and ESB FTTH, so not worth the expensive.

- They know that they need to go to FTTH in the long term in order to compete with UPC and ESB FTTH.

SpaceTime

bk wrote: »

They could do it, but the evidence on the ground indicates that they won't be doing this.

During VDSL installs, it seems engineers are only connecting one pair in the NTU. That means you would need another customer engineer visit to connect the second pair.

That extra cost makes no sense, if they had future plans to do bonding, they would have had the engineers connect both pairs in the NTU first time around.

I guess that the thinking at Eircom goes like so:

- 100mb/s Vectored VDSL2 should be fast enough for most people and can compete with UPC's higher speeds on lower price.

- Bonded VDSL2 costs a lot to do (double ports in the DSLAM), while still being slower (about 200mb/s) then UPC (400mb/s in future) and ESB FTTH, so not worth the expensive.

- They know that they need to go to FTTH in the long term in order to compete with UPC and ESB FTTH.

I wouldn't be so sure that they wouldn't go with bonding first. They seem to have picked a DSLAM that specifically supports pair-bonding so, I guess it keeps their options open.

If I were them, I would launch the current product, see what the demand's like then look at faster products like bonded services.

The vast majority of homes in Ireland which had their phone service installed or modernised in the 1970s or 1980s would generally have 2-pairs coming in anyway. So, from eircom's perspective connecting up a second pair's not really that big a deal.

You'd need a new type of NTU or a new faceplate at least to handle the 4-wire service.

You also wouldn't necessarily have enough spare pairs on the street to connect 2 to every home in some areas, so you might want to have 1 pair going to houses that didn't want the extra speed and 2 to ones that did.

The VDSL2 installation didn't require any work on poles / in vaults as it generally just used the existing phone line. So, I guess if you were going for bonding you'd want a higher value service and maybe an install charge to cover it.

Lots of reasons why they wouldn't have done this in the current rollout by default. But, in most cases the complicated bits are already in place - i.e. the phone lines into your house. It would just be a matter of making the correct connections on the pole / box / vault outside.

ED E

I know its a far more trivial matter but this whole thing might be slowed by consumers. I was speaking to a UPC tech on tuesday and they're having huge problems with people who dont understand the limits of wifi. Same thing is happening with 70Mb VDSL to a lesser extent too no doubt. If customers arent seeing their 200Mb at their client devices now there's no way they'll chose to upgrade to 400 or higher. And who knows how long it'll take for real world 200Mbps+ client devices to become prevalent. IMO for the next wile it'll be more a price war than a speed one. This is where good fourplay deals are going to be where its at for a while.

bk

SpaceTime wrote: »

I wouldn't be so sure that they wouldn't go with bonding first. They seem to have picked a DSLAM that specifically supports pair-bonding so, I guess it keeps their options open.

I wouldn't take that as much of an indicator. The cab they are using is pretty much an exchange in a box and supports almost every standard in the telco industry. Hell you can even put ADSL2+, ADSL and even ISDN cards in there!!!!!!

But you are correct, it does give them options and maybe I'm wrong. But I jsut don't see too much point in it. In the scenario you outline, with people who want faster speeds getting two pairs and thus happy with slower speeds staying with one pair, well I just don't see it working out that way.

Those who want and are willing to pay for faster speeds will just go with UPC/ESB. They are the faster option.

KIERAN1

While having faster download speeds with UPC is great. I think Eircom Efibre is better for me, the upload speeds are almost twice as fast as UPC.

For gaming and uploading videos, streaming video content on the web, hosting online multiplayer matches, the better the upload speeds, the better experience you'll have.

200meg download speeds with only 10 upload speed isn't great. Streaming in HD uses around 5 meg upload.

SpaceTime

UPC could sort that out easily enough by just clicking a few mouse buttons.

EuroDOCSIS 3.0 which is what they're using can easily support speeds of over 100Mbit/s up without any fuss at all.

I wouldn't be surprised if they start to notice that eircom's upstream capacity is a selling point and just suddenly offer twice eircom's speed. That's kind of how they tend to play ball.

The big issue here is that eircom's the one that's pushing copper to the edge of its bandwidth limitations where as UPC can still squeeze a lot more out of their hybrid fibre-coax network.

Having high quality coax instead of twisted pair over the last bit of the network is a *huge* differentiating factor between the two technologies.

VDSL2 is all about minimising capital expenditure (CAPEX) and squeezing more time out of the exiting infrastructure. It makes sense from a business perspective as the VDSL2 cabinets and the ducting feeding them will ultimately be reusable as the basis of a FTTH network. That's what's happening elsewhere.

I was reading some material in France, and Orange/France Telecom had decided not to use FTTC and to exclusively use FTTH technologies. However, because France has a lot of suburban areas with low density housing, much like most housing in Ireland, the costs were prohibitive and it's now beginning to use VDSL2 as well.

They were quoting figures of VDSL2 being 15 times cheaper to install than fibre to home in suburban areas.

Ireland's actually in a very unique situation in a European context as we've the lowest number of apartments / high density housing as a % of our housing stock. The differences are really stark when you see the graphs from EuroStat.



Eurostat public data. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home/

This is part of the reason why you're seeing rapid rollout of ultra fast broadband in the ex Eastern Bloc countries - huge % of the population lives in apartments. So, you put a node in the basement and voila - you've blazingly fast broadband.

In Ireland however, it involves vast amounts of wiring to low density housing.

There has been a lot of foot dragging here in the recent past and a distorted market due to under-investment by previous cable companies and eircom not being compelled to compete. However, there housing stock type and density has a huge impact on it too and I think we tend to totally underestimate just how dramatically different it is to most of Europe and Asia. It's far more like the United States, Australia, NZ and Canada.

KIERAN1

Eircom, is hoping to pass 700, 0000 homes by the end of December. That leaves 500,000 to be done (1.2 million homes) A year and half, to get it achieved, maybe less time than that (2014-early 2015)

They announced this week an additional 524 communities to be done and be finished by December 2016.

Those extra 200,000 homes should see a much faster rollout, they're areas with not lot of people, and those areas likely only need 1 cab, 2 at most.

SpaceTime

You could do some of it with some very small cabinets that serve a handful of lines from a pole mounted device or something like that.

However, I think there's still going to be a good % of Irish homes that are pretty much off grid for wired services unless there's an absolutely huge subsidy or people are willing to pay for fibres to be rolled out to their homes along ESB lines or something like that.

Really good wireless services with fixed point antennas are probably the best solution for one-off rural housing. I don't see wireline technology as being a particularly practical or cost effective solution.

What's been done to date isn't good enough. We need something like 'fibre to mast' projects that allow decent backhaul from a radio site and use appropriate protocols and allocate enough spectrum to ensure there's proper bandwidth available to end users.

3G mobile technology's not good enough.

High-bandwidth installations using LTE back hauled over fibre would be ideal though.
Even using EuroDOCSIS 3.0 over microwave links works extremely well and would work fantastically with enough bandwidth.

There are solutions for rural Ireland but they're not going to necessarily be VDSL2 and fibre.

We need to get FTTC and cable technologies out to more communities though where it does work. There's absolutely no reason why even small housing estates and every village and town in the country shouldn't have access to an FTTC cab at the very least.

Gonzo

what about areas similar to where I live, for instance im just outside a town boundary, 2km from what will be the nearest cab, all the roads leading out of Dunshaughlin have plenty of houses on either side, I think it's called ribbon development. ( theres about 30/40 houses in my area) There are many roads like this all over Meath, Kildare, Wicklow etc. It aint a town or village environment, but theres alot more than just the odd house at the side of the road. Add all the houses up along the sides of the roads and im sure thats quite a few people. Is it realistic thinking that Eircom or esb will one day provide cabs to areas like these?

NextYearIthink

Eircom have released a new look and feel to their website, I wish they would invest as much time into their fibre rollout out

bk

SpaceTime wrote: »

UPC could sort that out easily enough by just clicking a few mouse buttons.

Unfortunately it isn't quiet that easy. Otherwise they would have already dome it.

I believe the issue is that upload uses a different lower frequency the upload. The wider frequencies needed for faster upload speeds are cut off by older network gear, like amplifiers, splitters, etc. So this physical gear needs to be replaced.

But you can be certain that UPC is aware that this is a competitive disadvantage and are working hard to fix this and that when they do fix it, they will blow Eircoms upload speeds out if the water,

Btw the rest of your post is absolutely spot on and it is very informative of the challenges faced here in Ireland. We are very lucky to have UPC pushing things forward and hopefully ESB soon too.

It is actually amazing how far ahead of the UK Ireland's urban areas are. In the UK cable currently maxes out at 100mb/s and VDSL at 40mb/s!!

bk

Gonzo wrote: »

what about areas similar to where I live, for instance im just outside a town boundary, 2km from what will be the nearest cab, all the roads leading out of Dunshaughlin have plenty of houses on either side, I think it's called ribbon development. ( theres about 30/40 houses in my area) There are many roads like this all over Meath, Kildare, Wicklow etc. It aint a town or village environment, but theres alot more than just the odd house at the side of the road. Add all the houses up along the sides of the roads and im sure thats quite a few people. Is it realistic thinking that Eircom or esb will one day provide cabs to areas like these?

Ribbon development is the touch of death for broadband. It makes it very difficult to affordably survive as most BB is dependent on distance.

At 2km, you aren't that far out and if you were connected to a VDSL cab you would get a good solid 10mb connection. Certainly not high speed, but not too bad. The long term solution to this is FTTH, but it will be very expensive to do in rural areas like this, so don't hold your breath. In the meantime wireless technologies like 4G LTE and even better fixed wireless will fill the gap until FTTH arrives.

HellboundIRL

What determines your speed once the engineer sets everything up for you? Is it a profile already preset by Eircom or is it set on whatever your line is capable of whenever it's connected? How does Eircom know the general speed you'll get before connecting you to the cab?

Dempsey

SpaceTime wrote: »

UPC could sort that out easily enough by just clicking a few mouse buttons.

EuroDOCSIS 3.0 which is what they're using can easily support speeds of over 100Mbit/s up without any fuss at all.

I wouldn't be surprised if they start to notice that eircom's upstream capacity is a selling point and just suddenly offer twice eircom's speed. That's kind of how they tend to play ball.

The big issue here is that eircom's the one that's pushing copper to the edge of its bandwidth limitations where as UPC can still squeeze a lot more out of their hybrid fibre-coax network.

Having high quality coax instead of twisted pair over the last bit of the network is a *huge* differentiating factor between the two technologies.

VDSL2 is all about minimising capital expenditure (CAPEX) and squeezing more time out of the exiting infrastructure. It makes sense from a business perspective as the VDSL2 cabinets and the ducting feeding them will ultimately be reusable as the basis of a FTTH network. That's what's happening elsewhere.

I was reading some material in France, and Orange/France Telecom had decided not to use FTTC and to exclusively use FTTH technologies. However, because France has a lot of suburban areas with low density housing, much like most housing in Ireland, the costs were prohibitive and it's now beginning to use VDSL2 as well.

They were quoting figures of VDSL2 being 15 times cheaper to install than fibre to home in suburban areas.

Ireland's actually in a very unique situation in a European context as we've the lowest number of apartments / high density housing as a % of our housing stock. The differences are really stark when you see the graphs from EuroStat.



Eurostat public data. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home/

This is part of the reason why you're seeing rapid rollout of ultra fast broadband in the ex Eastern Bloc countries - huge % of the population lives in apartments. So, you put a node in the basement and voila - you've blazingly fast broadband.

In Ireland however, it involves vast amounts of wiring to low density housing.

There has been a lot of foot dragging here in the recent past and a distorted market due to under-investment by previous cable companies and eircom not being compelled to compete. However, there housing stock type and density has a huge impact on it too and I think we tend to totally underestimate just how dramatically different it is to most of Europe and Asia. It's far more like the United States, Australia, NZ and Canada.

I wonder is there EU statistics for 10 years ago, that would be interesting reading too

Capt'n Midnight

jca wrote: »

In fairness to Eircom its a huge undertaking on a fairly decrepid and rundown rats nest of ancient copper wire. I really can't see the ESB rolling out fttc to cabinets that aren't even built yet and even if they do,who's going to run the Internet end of things?? I hope in ain't going to be SKY because they haven't a clue. Leave the TV to the TV guys,electricity production/distribution to the Leccy experts and Telecoms to the Telecom guys. Vodafone should stick to the mobile phone market.:mad::mad:

In fairness the company has been asset stripped so many times it's a wonder the network hasn't collapsed already.

Had they split Eircom into wholesale and retail before the sell off then things could have been very different. Joined up thinking like having common ducting to houses during the boom might also have helped. efibre is the best they can do for now because they didn't spend the last 20 years installing fibre.

How much extra would it have cost to have rolled out fibre to every housing estate built during the boom ?

KIERAN1

In fairness to Eircom. This list http://pressroom.eircom.net/images/uploads/4453_Eircom%20Map%20Page%20FA4.pdf is largely made up of small villages or tiny towns of less than 2,000 people!

If successful, than 70 percent of Irish homes and businesses (urban and rural) by the end of 2016 can avail of fibre from Eircom or another provider!

The remaining 30 per cent likely live too far from local exchanges to get Fibre. Government intervening here is the only way it could ever happen.

ClonNGB

I see they have move a load of places back a month again. clonakilty was due march now it is april. I bet before we get to april it wll be december. A bit unfair we are paying same for a poor speed as 70 mb customers. I hope esb will gives us 150mb soon

jeffk

New fancy efibre site, same old problems

"Due to essential technical updates we are currently unable to check broadband availability at your home!

Please visit us again on Monday morning when we will be able to check for you and take your order. Alternatively register your interest for our eircom broadband bundle and we will contact you early next week to discuss the best available products for your home"

Red Nissan

jeffk wrote: »

New efibre site, same old problems we are currently unable to check broadband availability at ALL Please visit us again on Monday

So they've taken the weekend off seemingly. Bet that stretches into the Christmas Holidays and into the new year holidays.

jeffk

Red Nissan wrote: »

So they've taken the weekend off seemingly. Bet that stretches into the Christmas Holidays and into the new year holidays.

Sure the info you do get doesn't matter, well unless your in the lucky 40%,we where in July to September, here we are in December and some of my estate gets it and all I managed to get that the work here will finish this month.

Frank Garrett

jeffk wrote: »

Sure the info you do get doesn't matter, well unless your in the lucky 40%,we where in July to September, here we are in December and some of my estate gets it and all I managed to get that the work here will finish this month.

One house in my estate can get it, but when I check other addresses, nothing.

An Eircom rep called around yesterday and ask did I want to pre-order, but I can't even find the cabinet. We have an old copper cabinet alright, but no VDSL cabinet beside it.

jca

Happy days, got connected this morning by kn. I'm with Eircom on the 50 meg profile around 500m from the cabinet getting between 37 & 40 dl and 14 up. Delighted!!!