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

Praetorian

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

How many of the 1.4m are now services?

Two of the three years have passed since this thread started ...... do they have nearly 1m services by now?

It is no where near that 1.4m figure of course, but the rollout really couldn't have been achieved much faster. Thousands of people are switching to vdsl products every week.

The amount of fibre that has been run is astonishing, the amount of civil work that had to be done was significant. A significant amount of cabinets were quickly installed country wide, with more to come. The cabs are well future proofed being able accommodate FTTH in the future.

The only problem of note was not having a solution in place for vdsl equipment in the exchanges for the exchange fed customers. But it isn't the end of the world as that will also happen and a lot of these customers had good adsl2+ speeds anyway.

OneEightSeven

yomamasflavour wrote: »

Annoying how they keep calling vdsl fibre.
That press release reads as if they're doing a mass ftth rollout.

They'll regret calling it fibre when they're rolling out FTTH because the majority of broadband users are naive to how broadband works. Most VDSL users in Ireland now think they have fibre broadband, so what's going to happen what Eircom start upgrading to FTTH? How are they going to market it? What's it going to be called? They can't call it fibre because they've already called VDSL fibre.

Terrible decision from a terrible company, regardless of how well the rollout is doing.

dxhound2005

OneEightSeven wrote: »

They'll regret calling it fibre when they're rolling out FTTH because the majority of broadband users are naive to how broadband works. Most VDSL users in Ireland now think they have fibre broadband, so what's going to happen what Eircom start upgrading to FTTH? How are they going to market it? What's it going to be called? They can't call it fibre because they've already called VDSL fibre.

Terrible decision from a terrible company, regardless of how well the rollout is doing.

BT in the UK are going to have the same problem. Mind you I would never have thought of this as a problem. They are describing their packages as Fibre Optic Broadband and the ones over 40 down 10 up are called Superfast Broadband. What comes after Superfast?

OneEightSeven

dxhound2005 wrote: »

BT in the UK are going to have the same problem. Mind you I would never have thought of this as a problem. They are describing their packages as Fibre Optic Broadband and the ones over 40 down 10 up are called Superfast Broadband. What comes after Superfast?

They call theirs Infinity: http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband/packages

dxhound2005

OneEightSeven wrote: »

They call theirs Infinity: http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband/packages

What is beyond Infinity?

OneEightSeven

dxhound2005 wrote: »

What is beyond Infinity?

There is no beyond but at least it isn't falsely marketed, well, sort of, I noticed some of the packages say fiber optics, but they're not actually called "fibre" like Eircom have done. BT also have the option to offer customers FTTH for extra, the customers have to pay for the fiber optic cables provided by BT and the installation.

Eircom will dig themselves into a deeper hole than BT.

MBSnr

dxhound2005 wrote: »

What is beyond Infinity?

Not sure but I think Buzz Lightyear is there....

yomamasflavour

BT seem to call all their services infinity.
Their fttp on demand service is called 'Ultra fast broadband infinity'.

Seems daft to have such a messy naming system, especially considering most of their customers wouldn't know the difference between the types of service anyway.

Manc Red

Praetorian wrote: »

The only problem of note was not having a solution in place for vdsl equipment in the exchanges for the exchange fed customers. But it isn't the end of the world as that will also happen and a lot of these customers had good adsl2+ speeds anyway.

What solutions is there?

What can they do with customers that are connected via the exchange that are sometimes 2km away and over?

They can't just connect them to the closest VDSL cabinet can they? Would they have to install separate cabinets? Or will these cabinets only be next to the exchange... thus no fibre for customers over 2km away.

Anyone know what have they done with customers connected via the exchange in Britain?

Nonoperational

Manc Red wrote: »

What solutions is there?

What can they do with customers that are connected via the exchange that are sometimes 2km away and over?

They can't just connect them to the closest VDSL cabinet can they? Would they have to install separate cabinets? Or will these cabinets only be next to the exchange... thus no fibre for customers over 2km away.

Anyone know what have they done with customers connected via the exchange in Britain?

Few options...

Use them to start a more widespread FTTH installation program.
Put VDSL equipment in the exchange and people up to 1KM away will still get a decent improvement.
If the lines go to an underground mini-cabinet then put a fibre cabinet over that.
If the lines are accessible in a bundle to the exchange, put a cabinet in a suitable location intercepting the bundle.

Not sure of the situation in the UK now, but they had/have the same issue http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/06/bt-preps-new-uk-superfast-broadband-cabinets-for-exchange-only-lines.html


I think the initial Eircom plan may be VDSL in the exchange as mentioned in the Jan 2014 product roadmap...

"NGA Network Rollout Plan
The NGA network continues to roll out across the country, with a commitment to connect over 1.4 million homes and businesses to superfast fibre broadband. The rollout will also cater for Direct Fed lines through Exchange Launched VDSL."

bk

Nonoperational wrote: »

Our VDSL rollout appears to be better than the uk. Still no large scale vectoring over there. This is going well so far.

Actually, surprisingly, we have jumped way ahead of the UK.

- Even without vectoring our VDSL was up to 70mb/s versus just 40mb/s in the UK.
- Mass rollout of vectoring, no sign of mass vectoring in the UK yet
- UPC gives 200mb/s versus a max of 150mb/s from Virgin Media in the UK
- ESB about to start the mass rollout of FTTH, no sign of anything like this in the UK.

The one and only area where we are behind the UK now is in terms of rural broadband. For the last year now, the UK government has been subsidising the rollout of VDSL and FTTH to rural areas in the UK.

We will likely eventually need something similar here, however I don't think we will see any movement on this for at least another year, when Eircom finishes it's planned VDSL rollout of 1.4 million homes, leaving another 600,000 or so to do.

OneEightSeven wrote: »

They'll regret calling it fibre when they're rolling out FTTH because the majority of broadband users are naive to how broadband works. Most VDSL users in Ireland now think they have fibre broadband, so what's going to happen what Eircom start upgrading to FTTH? How are they going to market it? What's it going to be called? They can't call it fibre because they've already called VDSL fibre.

They will call it fibre to the home, but more importantly they will advertise it as 1GB/s fibre. It is the high speed that they will advertise as being 10 times faster then eFibre.

Rumour has it that is exactly what the ESB will do with their FTTH network, sell is as 1GB/s broadband.

yomamasflavour

Terabyte/s ? That's like 100,000 times better than Efibre.

Why would they advertise that?

bk

Impetus wrote: »

But look at the urban market share trend which is moving in the UPC direction relentlessly. Ireland will end up like dumb America. Are you happy with a bi-nopoly anyway?

The urban market has been moving towards UPC (about 40% now in the areas they serve), but that was before Eircom invested 500 million in their VDSL network. Now that Eircom has a competitive network, I fully expect the bleeding to stop and for UPC's market share to stabilise at roughly 40 to 50%

There is no monopoly here, actually it is pretty much the ideal competitive scenario.

Also the word you are looking for is duopoly.

But we don't have an American style duopoly here. While we have only two wired networks like in the US, unlike the US, Eircoms VDSL network is completely open at multiple levels by other companies to use and compete with Eircom and UPC on.

And that is how we have Vodafone, Sky, etc. using and competing on Eircoms network. No such situation exists in the US.

Here we have almost the ideal situation in urban and semi-urban areas. We have two private companies building networks and aggressively competing with one another to win customers.

UPC spent 500 million rebuilding their network in order to aggressively win 40% of the market from Eircom. And now you have Eircom spending 500 million in order to compete and stop the bleed of customers to UPC.

This is great, this is exactly how competition works.

And now to add the cherry on top, we have the ESB planning to rollout their own FTTH network. The news literally couldn't get better.

The US situation is completely different, it is due purely to very poor regulation and the big telcos/cablcos basically buying off politicians. The regulators and market in the US is totally anti consumer and pro business.

Fortunately for us the EU regulators are totally the opposite and a US style scenario would never be allowed to arise here.

Impetus wrote: »

Why is it too late now if there is a pooling of existing fibre resources - and anything else that is technology long term appropriate to put into the pool. Taking UPC and eircom VDSL2 as a given (which is a leap), you still have the last km, or few hundred meters which can fiberised on a common platform basis. Not been done yet in 99% of homes, so it is a green field. You just pool the relevant backhaul fibre on a shared basis (in the same way as banks share their ATM networks - ie they charge a large fee to each other for each transaction to each other, but this does not get billed to the end user. It simply stops a newbie getting a free lunch without making a reasonable contribution in terms of ATM installed base). You can also involve the ESB fibre network on the same basis.

And this is where your plan totally falls apart.

Why would UPC/Eircom/ESB just hand their networks over to a new company? These are very valuable capital assets of these companies and if forced to turn them over, they would expect that those assets be paid for.

I can tell you now, UPC would never turn their network over to such a venture. UPC is the largest cable company in the world. Their whole business model is based on actually owning the network they run on.

Why would UPC turn over their network to a third company, just so others like Sky, Vodafone, etc. could start using UPC's own network to compete against them?!!

UPC's network is pretty much already almost a FTTH network. In my apartment building it is a defacto FTTB network. In the next two years UPC will upgrade to DOCSIS 3.1 and they will then be able to sell speeds of 1GB/s to people.

UPC has nothing to fear from FTTH, they are almost already there. This is why the ESB don't plan on competing with UPC.

Why would UPC give up this valuable position, just to become another non capital owning ISP. Madness!

Eircom two years ago might have been interested in this. But now that they have sorted their debt issues and are investing in their network again and have stabilised their subscriber numbers, things are looking good for them and they also wouldn't be interested in giving up their network, for pretty much the same reasons as UPC above.

Then you have the ESB, they would have no interest in this either. Their interest is in building their own network, on their own electricity poles and ducts, and becoming the UPC of non-UPC urban areas, taking 40% of the market share. They gain nothing by being just another ISP.

The real power in the market is in owning the fibre assets. No one is going to want to give up their power.

So yes, I'd rather have three fibre networks aggressively competing with one another, then going back to having just one network, owned by one monopoly company (even if it was semi-state).

Impetus wrote: »

Please read my posting again - I am not suggesting a large investment from Gov. Private Equity companies like KKR and their friends don't use (much) KKR own funding to get the show on the road - they create a big picture platform and sell it to individual investors. In the same way as gov.ie should have a big picture vision for Ireland's real next generation network for the next two decades plus.

No private equity company is going to invest in building FTTH in rural Ireland.

They are quiet willing to do it in urban and semi-urban areas, which they have been doing via UPC and Eircom. Where do you think they get the money to build their networks from?

There is absolutely nothing stopping any private company from coming in and starting to rollout FTTH in rural Ireland. So why haven't they done so already?

No, the only way your plan would work, was if the government took out a 2 to 3 billion worth of national debt, to roll out fibre to every home in Ireland. And that just isn't going to happen.

I'm sorry, your plan just isn't realistic.

Again it might have been possible when Eircom was first privatised (by splitting out the network as a semi-state company) or again about 6 years ago before UPC started rebuilding their network.

But now it is too late, UPC/Eircom have spent too much on their networks now and just aren't going to give them up.

bk

yomamasflavour wrote: »

Terabit?
Could be a while yet before that starts rolling out.

Haha, yeah sorry, gigabit obviously!!

Capt'n Midnight

dxhound2005 wrote: »

What is beyond Infinity?

This

http://www.people.vcu.edu/~elhaij/GEB/Notes/Unit1/InfiniteHotel.html

... So there I was, my gold brick, resignation letter, and Dylan ticket in hand, staring at the clock, counting down to my new-found freedom, when all of a sudden--oh no, how could this be--a caravan of buses pulled in, an infinite number of buses, and on each bus, an infinite number of people! An infinite number of infinities! ....

BobMc

My local cab due to go live very soon, available to order on Eircom but not on vodafone yet, how long before vodafone can offer it? do eircom have it exclusively for a while ??

MBSnr

Nonoperational wrote: »

I think the initial Eircom plan may be VDSL in the exchange as mentioned in the Jan 2014 product roadmap...

"NGA Network Rollout Plan
The NGA network continues to roll out across the country, with a commitment to connect over 1.4 million homes and businesses to superfast fibre broadband. The rollout will also cater for Direct Fed lines through Exchange Launched VDSL."

I asked a rep on the Eircom forum this. Not sure if the reply is a generic one or whether there is going to be some plan for direct exchange connections announced. http://www.boards.ie/ttfpost/89930184

channelsurfer2

BobMc wrote: »

My local cab due to go live very soon, available to order on Eircom but not on vodafone yet, how long before vodafone can offer it? do eircom have it exclusively for a while ??

usually a couple of weeks in my experience. Vodafone's system will not allow you to order it until it is live or near abouts live. The eircom system for some reason allows you to pre-order up to a month before it goes live.

gimmick

Fibre is coming online around the Shanakiel/Hollyhill area in Cork 14/05/2014. Got a call earlier confirming. I'm told my line will have 50mbps up and 20mbps down.

LFCFan

gimmick wrote: »

I'm told my line will have 50mbps up and 20mbps down.

Other way round

gimmick

Ya, thats what i meant.

jca

gimmick wrote: »

Ya, thats what i meant.

You getting excited? Don't know whether you're coming or going:D. It's some step up from DSL I love it...

gimmick

Ya, I get 3.75mbps on a very very good day at the moment, so looking forward to seeing what real internet looks like.

AlanS181824

I chose Fibre over UPC 200Mb why? Because of the upload speed. It is a real killer in my opinion and if they increased it, it'd really be a game changer IMO.

FastFullBack

AlanS181824 wrote: »

I chose Fibre over UPC 200Mb why? Because of the upload speed. It is a real killer in my opinion and if they increased it, it'd really be a game changer IMO.

Just curious why you say a faster upload speed is a game changer?

Doublelime

BobMc wrote: »

My local cab due to go live very soon, available to order on Eircom but not on vodafone yet, how long before vodafone can offer it? do eircom have it exclusively for a while ??

Wait about a month then call Vodafone. From 3 down to a stable 45-49 down and. 5 up to a blazing fast 22 up is amazing

AlanS181824

FastFullBack wrote: »

Just curious why you say a faster upload speed is a game changer?

Just my opinion I suppose. Given that a lot of people are on ADSL with a Max upload of 1 and people on UPC with a 10 upload. 20Mb is a massive increase, 20 times in some cases. What with cloud storage and people working at home the upload speed is becoming increasingly important.

OneEightSeven

Vodafone's upload speed is exactly 35.71428571428571 times faster than my current upload speed and I'm a heavy P2P user, so I'm dying for faster upload speeds.

MBSnr

AlanS181824 wrote: »

Just my opinion I suppose. Given that a lot of people are on ADSL with a Max upload of 1 and people on UPC with a 10 upload. 20Mb is a massive increase, 20 times I'm some cases. What with cloud storage and people working at home more the upload speed is becoming increasingly important.

Exactly - I've a Dropbox account and I moved to another PC resulting in sync issues on the account. Took 3 days for the 9Gb or so that was the problem to upload over a 384k link.... Even 1Mb up would be over double the speed..... imagine.....??

Also I find sending Skype video to be a problem for the far end caller. Again probably due to the upload speed. We're more like snapshots as opposed to video.

Praetorian

I uploaded some 4k red footage recently, 250 gigs of it. It was easy with 20m/bit up

I agree fast upload speeds like this are a game changer.