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

red_bairn

arctan wrote: »

speaking of vectoring.... a number of cabs have been upgraded, even before launch, it's basically a card swap in the DSLAM

Are KN networks doing more work for Eircom in the city centre? I was on Gardiner Street this morning in my hungover state and noticed the lads working in the middle of the road.

Solair

arctan wrote: »

speaking of vectoring.... a number of cabs have been upgraded, even before launch, it's basically a card swap in the DSLAM

It's a pity they haven't gotten some of these really micro DSLAMs though for low-density housing areas.

There are DSLAMs that can be just dropped into a manhole / screwed to a pole - takes the fibre even closer to homes in small housing estates etc.

Sponge Bob

Not sure if Huawei make them Solair, eircom tend to go with one supplier on the access network where possible, ericsson for POTS( there were a few exceptions but not that many), then Alcatel for ADSL and Huawei for VDSL. I think a lot of these 'biscuit tin' 24 port solutions are from relatively small suppliers who may not be around in a few years.

CraigSmith_IO

Kind of related and unrelated at the same time, but has anybody else's speed dropped significantly lately?

red_bairn

CraigSmith_IO wrote: »

Kind of related and unrelated at the same time, but has anybody else's speed dropped significantly lately?

I was out for the Stag Night last night and the Whitethorn park fellow told me the speed went down from the original 1.8 to 1.25?

arctan

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Not sure if Huawei make them Solair, eircom tend to go with one supplier on the access network where possible, ericsson for POTS( there were a few exceptions but not that many), then Alcatel for ADSL and Huawei for VDSL. I think a lot of these 'biscuit tin' 24 port solutions are from relatively small suppliers who may not be around in a few years.

Alcatel and Ericsson have a bit of a 50/50 for POTS

Solair

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Not sure if Huawei make them Solair, eircom tend to go with one supplier on the access network where possible, ericsson for POTS( there were a few exceptions but not that many), then Alcatel for ADSL and Huawei for VDSL. I think a lot of these 'biscuit tin' 24 port solutions are from relatively small suppliers who may not be around in a few years.

They've actually had two suppliers for POTS for decades. About 50:50 split between Ericsson (AXE) and Alcatel (E10) switches and it's been that way since the early 80s. They have always stuck to just those two though.

ECI, the crowd down those miniCABs are supplying a large percentage of BT / OpenReach's cabs in the UK. They're not unheard of.

Sponge Bob

arctan wrote: »

Alcatel and Ericsson have a bit of a 50/50 for POTS

Only a few tandems ( less than 10) and none of the RSUs are Alcatel .....that I know of.

I thought ECI did 96 port units for BT UK ( unlike Huawei with 192 or higher) but not smaller than that.

Solair

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Only a few tandems ( less than 10) and none of the RSUs are Alcatel .....that I know of.

Somewhat OT But:

It's actually roughly something like 40:60 (Alcatel:Ericsson) for general exchanges anyway and some exclusively Alcatel E10 areas e.g. the entire 074 / 071 area covering the Northwest, all of Co. Kerry, much of West Cork (except 022) and some exclusively Ericsson AXE areas like Cork's 021 and Galway 091.

I looked at a list of nodes there on an eircom wholesale document and in Dublin Alcatel E10 cover pretty key places like Dun Laoghaire, Clontarf, Palmerstown, Tallaght, Blanchardstown, Phibsborough, Rathmines, Coolock and quite a few other spots too.

They also cover Dundalk, Drogheda, most of Wicklow (including Bray), Wexford, Kilkenny. In the midlands it's a bit of both.
AFAIK, Limerick City has both.

So, very much depending on where you are in the country you could be seeing a lot more of one type than the other.

---

Much like every other major telco in Europe, Telecom Eireann / Eircom had two key switching suppliers. They were spending vast amounts of money on rapid digital rollout in the 1980s and into the 90s so, they needed to be able to play suppliers off each other for good deals.

France Telecom used Alcatel E10 and Ericsson AXE too. BT used GPT System X and Ericsson AXE. Other countries used Alcatel's other system S12, or Siemens gear etc etc.. but they almost always had two (or more) suppliers.

---

The Ericsson digital AXE switches tended to directly replace large and relatively modern Ericsson crossbar exchanges, which means that you'll find a lot more of them in big urban areas. P&T also used Ericsson ARM crossbar tandems for some of the original key tandem nodes, so naturally enough they mostly became Ericsson AXE.

Meanwhile areas that had absolutely ancient technology like step-by-step switching (very old automatic tech) or were entirely manual (operator only) were upgradable to any new form of switching as they had to be completely ripped out. So more of those got Alcatel than Ericsson simply because the Ericsson part of the projects were more focused on upgrading existing Ericsson areas.

----

There are definitely plenty of Alcatel RSUs around. I think they've used Alcatel-Lucent Litespan or something similar which gives you cabinetised RSUs too. Ericsson has a very similar product for AXE.

Google showing an Eircom E10 switch : http://www.flickr.com/photos/75277750@N04/6768396581/in/photostream

Same site : Ericsson AXE : http://www.flickr.com/photos/75277750@N04/6768390701/in/photostream/

---

Both of those systems should allow for the gradual migration of voice to NGN too as they both have upgrade paths to IP networks without having to entirely rip them out. Ericsson AXE is the world's most popular switching system by miles and is used all over the place. Alcatel E10/S12 is also widespread and Alcatel became Alcatel-Lucent making them fairly robust into the future.

I'd say it'll be another decade or so before those PSTN / POTS switches eventually bite the dust. So far, it seems very few telcos have chucked them on the skip, despite the plans to do so when NGN replaced everything.

The same's not true in the UK where BT ended up lumbered with System X which was a British-developed switch produced by Marconi (GPT). That company no longer exists and BT were the only customer for their System X product. So, they're kinda stuck with huge legacy network that's exclusive to them and made by a company that no longer exists.

At least eircom picked large suppliers!

I don't see Huawei disappearing. They're rapidly becoming the world's largest supplier of this kind of gear. So, they'll have good support for the cabs and all that gear into the future too.

It looks like typically that kind of expensive kit has to get about 30-40 years service before it gets killed off though.

Crossbars that went in in the 60s/70s lasted into the 90s.
Digital switches from the early-mid 1980s still going strong into the 2010s.

Wonder how long the VDSL2+ will last

lucernarian

I remember hearing shocking stories about the Alcatel switch in the main Drogheda exchange particularly of one problem which has been there for a very long time... It concerns one of the management and control access computers, which could be described as temperamental when the keyboard was used. I won't describe it exactly given that this bug could apparently could knock the whole exchange off!

Given the next generation ethernet upgrades eircom have been investing in over the last 3 years, I expect there's some sort of software controlled switch now handling PTSN more like how a VoIP provider would, over ethernet/IP links. With some AXE/E10/E12 PTSN switching gear kept to look after smaller tertiary exchanges.

Solair

Seems more like the POTS network will just be adapted for IP networks bit by bit. Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson both have solutions for solving those kinds of migrations.

I suspect a lot of the tandem exchanges get swapped for some kind of VoIP softswitch solution that can still talk to and manage the local exchanges and probably connect to them over the NGN IP network. From a customer perspective, the local exchanges would just continue to behave as normal for anyone who still needs a dial tone or ISDN other than connecting back over IP to the outside world.

You're going to end up with a mix of people using voice over IP from their home much like UPC's services and a lot of legacy dial tone lines too.

That being said, landlines are rapidly becoming fairly pointless, especially as mobiles become much cheaper to use.

Could see POTS dying out over the next decade or so and maybe not being fully replaced at all. Other than businesses, not many individuals really need landlines anymore.

It's going to hang around longer than I think many of us had predicted though, but you'd wonder how many would go for VDSL2 without a POTS service at all.
I know I couldn't be bothered using a landline anymore.

bk

Yes, with 48months offering unlimited calls to any mobile network any time, unlimited texts to any network at any time and 3GB of internet for just €20, yes you really have to wonder why anyone would bother paying €25 for just a land line anymore.

If it wasn't for the need of a landline for DSL, I think most landlines would be dead and buried by now. In fact a few of my friends that I know who have DSL, don't even have a phone plugged into their landline or even know their number!

Solair

Yup! Tesco, eMobile and possibly some others do monthly contract billpay for under 35/month and effectively gives you unlimited everything.

I'm getting 10,000 mins, 10,000 texts, 1 cent a min to most of the developed world's landlines (and US mobiles) and 15GB / month of data.

Makes landlines rather useless. VoIP is also way cheaper than paying line rental on PSTN / ISDN if you do need a landline.
I'd say you'll start to see more providers offering landline numbers on your mobile too for incoming calls.

Without VDSL, eircom was toast anyway !

bealtine

bk wrote: »

If it wasn't for the need of a landline for DSL, I think most landlines would be dead and buried by now. In fact a few of my friends that I know who have DSL, don't even have a phone plugged into their landline or even know their number!

This was predicted years ago:)

I remember IoffL writing about it and calling eircom a broadband company not a phoneline company...

jmcc

bealtine wrote: »

This was predicted years ago:)

I remember IoffL writing about it and calling eircom a broadband company not a phoneline company...

But was IoffL just being sarcastic back then? Eircom does seemed to have been lumbered with poor management decisions and idiotic political decisions. Not sure that even this new move will be enough to save it in UPC areas.

Regards...jmcc

Solair

It's a similarly dramatic transition for UPC too though. It's predecessors were cable television companies dabbling in broadband. UPC's shifting to being a broadband company that also does Imteractive media and television.

Eircom needs to become a broadband & mobile company that also does landlines, not a landline company that also does mobile and broadband.

The POTS system should just be an application on their network.

Narrowband technology is basically dead, including for mobile platforms.

jmcc

Solair wrote: »

It's a similarly dramatic transition for UPC too though. It's predecessors were cable television companies dabbling in broadband. UPC's shifting to being a broadband company that also does Imteractive media and television.

Not exactly. I was at the Cablelink demo of cable broadband in 1998 and it was quite impressive for the time. It must have really scared the management of Telecom Eireann because it was far ahead of anything that TE was doing at the time. TE was also trialing ADSL to a chosen few. However Cablelink didn't have the money to invest and it was owned by Telecom Eireann and RTE (I thing). The Cablelink network quality was poor in many areas but when UPC took over, Eircom was living on borrowed time. TE/Eircom was also spoofing about IPTV back then but it really didn't understand the mechanisms of content delivery or conditional access systems. The non-tech idiots in the Irish "technology" press swallowed the press releases and asked for more - they hadn't a clue and most of them still don't! The decision to privatise TE effectively put Eircom almost ten years behind its competitors. That is the uncomfortable reality for Eircom management and this is a very belated attempt to compete. UPC has already ripped the heart out of Eircom in the urban markets and there is a massive reluctance to change in the Irish market. The triple play (tv/broadband/phone) makes a UPC subscription far stickier than a simple phone line subscription. UPC is, to extrapolate your analogy, is becoming a data delivery company.

Regards...jmcc

Solair

Chorus trialled and rolled out broadband in Cork too but it was a half hearted attempt.

I don't really think until UPC arrived on the scene either major cable company had much of a focus on broadband or the finances to roll it out. They were still surviving on TV income because they had exclusive access to UK terrestrial TV. What caused the big wake up call for the cable TV companies was Sky Digital signing up BBC and later Channel 4. That saw cable companies (particularly chorus) to lose lots of customers.

In most other EU countries cable companies have been mostly about broadband for much longer than in Ireland. In the UK for example, many cable networks were only built in the 90s with a major emphasis on broadband and phone.

The fact the cable companies in Ireland were so technologically weak and TV dependent was probably one of the main factors that allowed eircom to just sit sweating its assets and offering such poor products. In other markets telcos had to compete head on with cable cos just like the Irish market since UPC.

There was absolutely no competition incentive driving eircom to invest before that.

It's also worth remembering that Telecom Eireann and RTE were joint owners of Cablelink... Hardly an incentive there to aggressively compete !

jmcc

Solair wrote: »

Chorus trialled and rolled out broadband in Cork too but it was a half hearted attempt.

Chorus had deeper problems and the rebeam TV operations really hit some of these operations.

I don't really think until UPC arrived on the scene either major cable company had much of a focus on broadband or the finances to roll it out.

It did require significant investment.

In most other EU countries cable companies have been mostly about broadband for much longer than in Ireland. In the UK for example, many cable networks were only built in the 90s with a major emphasis on broadband and phone.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Dublin cablenet was one of the largest in Europe. The UK cable franchises only became available in the early 1980s from what I remember. However at that time, the web did not exist and modem speeds on dialups were often struggling to break 2kb/s.

The fact the cable companies in Ireland were so technologically weak and TV dependent was probably one of the main factors that allowed eircom to just sit sweating its assets and offering such poor products.

It was more to do with finances and the actual market for broadband not developing quickly. Computer ownership and usage was also a factor.

In other markets telcos had to compete head on with cable cos just like the Irish market since UPC.

Some of those other markets had a scale that the Irish market did not have.

It's also worth remembering that Telecom Eireann and RTE were joint owners of Cablelink... Hardly an incentive there to aggressively compete !

I would think that they ran Cablelink into the ground because of its capability to compete.

Regards...jmcc

Mc Love

So is it known when Eircom will be able to offer their fibre products?

Sponge Bob

Both UPC and eircom had to become BB companies with bells and whistles, and have done so. Otherwise eircom customers would go to mobile (no line rental) and UPC customers to SKY or Freesat.

eircom is finally going to market VDSL cabinets they installed in Dundrum as early as 2007 and certainly no later than 5 years ago,

I think eircom wanted €150m out of the total €500m off the government around then to do major towns only with VDSL. That was not a business plan. That was holding Ireland and Irish Businesses to Ransom, lest anyone forget, and at the very beginning of the current long recession..

They pimped this to the local media in those towns EG this big town here.

As part of a 41-page submission to the Government, the company emphasised that it can provide half the population with internet speeds of up to 25 mps (megabits per second) within seven years should their plans be approved.

meaning that in 2008 eircom would enable Dublin, Cork, Limerick/Shannon, Galway, Waterford, Dundalk, Sligo, Letterkenny and the midland towns of Athlone/Tullamore/Mullingar ONLY with VDSL and spend €350m of their own money and €150m of taxpayer money doing so and by 2015.

So now eircom are spending €400m of their own money on a MORE EXTENSIVE rollout and delivering it on the same timescale simply in order to save their hides.

OK the tech is a lot cheaper ( per port) 5 years on, and so are civils, but I hear the cost of cabs is rising right now as demand is massive worldwide.

CraigSmith_IO

Mc Love wrote: »

So is it known when Eircom will be able to offer their fibre products?

No earlier than 20th May. :rolleyes:

Mc Love

CraigSmith_IO wrote: »

No earlier than 20th May. :rolleyes:

I guess I could wait that long

Solair

jmcc wrote: »

Chorus had deeper problems and the rebeam TV operations really hit some of these operations.

It did require significant investment.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Dublin cable network was one of the largest in Europe. The UK cable franchises only became available in the early 1980s from what I remember. However at that time, the web did not exist and modem speeds on dialups were often struggling to break 2kb/s.

It was more to do with finances and the actual market for broadband not developing quickly. Computer ownership and usage was also a factor.

Some of those other markets had a scale that the Irish market did not have.
I would think that they ran Cablelink into the ground because of its capability to compete.

Regards...jmcc

I think there were a whole range of factors that conspired to cause the Irish broadband market to flounder though, mostly a constant tendency to protect vested interests and the status quo at all costs.

Instead of encouraging competition, the Irish Government went off and sought all sorts of derogations from the EU to delay the opening of the telephony market even to carrier pre-select operators in the 1990s. We (along with Greece) were one of the last markets in the EU to fully open our telecommunications markets and it did no end of damage to consumer choice and we are still seeing the consequences of it today. I don't think there was any justification for all those delays other than vested interest protection. Ireland was a boyent and growing economy at that stage in the first throws of the early celtic tigre (pre-property bubble).

Telecom Eireann should not have been allowed to be the main shareholder in the largest cable company. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

There were a number of other factors at play too though, like just plain lack of investment by cable operators who seemed more than happy to continue to milk relatively basic cable TV networks that were still bringing in money based on the fact that they'd a near monopoly on access to BBC, ITV and Channel 4 in most areas. Sky threw the cat amongst the pigeons in 2001 by signing up BBC 1 and 2 Northern Ireland for their Irish platform and then subsequently launched channel 4. That really gave a seriously harsh dose or reality to the cable outfits and finished off a lot of MMDS operations and also took a lot of cable TV customers too.

Compared to most European markets, the Irish cable internet market was totally backwards until UPC arrived. Cablelink and Cork Multichannel both trialled cable internet and telephony services in the late 90s / early 00s but never launched them properly due to lack of investment (and having Telecom Eireann as a major shareholder in the case of Cablelink)

In contrast, in healthier markets like the UK and France, cable internet services launched as early as 1996 on a widespread commercial basis in some cities. While cable telephone services (using wires laid along side coax runs) launched as early as 1990 and provided full-fledged competition for incumbent telephone companies like BT.

Sadly, Ireland has a legacy of the Government failing the people and putting vested interests ahead of the public good. We see that with telecoms, we see it with banking, we see it with property development etc etc.

Maybe things are finally changing, but I have little confidence in the 'system' here to do anything in the public interest. Almost everything you can think of is distorted by vested interests getting their way over and over again until EU competition law or some other outside influence eventually brings the government kicking and screaming into line with international norms.

As for lack of market demand and lack of PC penetration in the 90s and early 00s. It never made any sense to me as there was a young, well-educated, tech-savvy population with plenty of cash.

I would surmise that lack of broadband or affordable, working internet access actually drove down PC sales in the 90s/00s and probably prevented loads of Irish online businesses from ever developing because there was no market to serve.

Telecom Eireann in particular kept concluding that there was no demand for DSL and then justifying keeping dial-up etc etc.

It's a bit like arguing that there's no demand for cars in a country without roads.

I sincerely hope that Ireland's starting to wake up to the fact that regulation of industries has to be in the national interest and that the national interest is the people's interest, not the big corporate lobbies and other vested interests.

There are times I really feel that a good dose of the IMF might be the best thing that ever happened this country as it will force a major re-think of how things are done, smash up old cartels and actually maybe for once get things working properly.

You don't get low cost, high speed broadband, affordable housing, cheap groceries etc by creating monopolies/duopolies and protecting vested interests.

If we have to wait until May for the VDSL2+ product launch to be ironed out to ensure good competition, I think we should just wait and do it properly!
I'm glad to see ComReg doing all the negotiating and consultation in public. It's a far cry from the old days of various lobbyists having the ear of the minister and doing things behind closed doors.

bealtine

jmcc wrote: »

But was IoffL just being sarcastic back then? Eircom does seemed to have been lumbered with poor management decisions and idiotic political decisions. Not sure that even this new move will be enough to save it in UPC areas.

Regards...jmcc

Perhaps a touch sarcastic...but the essential message was correct:)

Sponge Bob

To be honest the history is neither here nor there the way technology works. We did have a lot of low grade cable as cable only needed to carry 6 channels when installed in the 1980s in Ireland but most UK cable was installed post 1990 once the baby bells piled in and they all piled out £1bn lighter in 1997 when C&W scopped up about 4 cable operations and created CWC which became NTL and another merged to become Telewest ....all now Virgin Media.

But they all had MUCH better quality cable than Ireland did....in the main.... and could offer broadband sooner and cheaper. The only decent cable in Ireland was the Suir/Nore and Dungarvan cable...all the rest needed huge amounts of work especially anything involving RTE.

The derogation had a lot to do with ericom debts form the 1980s and when the debt cleared ahead of schedule the derogation was dropped early ( before the 10 years were up) in around 1997 and then the debt free eircom was privatised.

Most of the utterly disastrous mistakes affecting eircom were made between 1998 and 2004...post privatisation and in the absence of sensible principles based regulation of a monopoly.

Basically the government was scared that the Indo would turn on them like they turned on Garrett in 1987 and therefore would not interfere with the asset stripping that occured.

No proper study was ever carried out in Irish Academia into this mess so I refer to a 2012 paper which is a refresh of an earlier 2009 paper from the Technical University of Delft ( commissioned by the DUTCH Government) for the following quotes.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2139347_code1781093.pdf?abstractid=2032222&mirid=3

Private Equity Leveraged Buyout and Public Values:
The bankruptcy of Eircom, Ireland
Wolter Lemstra* and John P.M. Groenewegen*

The outcome is predictable: financial engineering aimed at a major redistribution of
capital, totally contrary to the public interests and likely to end in bankruptcy.

and

Under PE-Fund ownership Eircom capital expenditures declined from €700 mln per
annum in 2001 to €300 mln in 2002 and €200 mln in 2003 and 2004. In 2001, before
the takeover, Eircom invested its internally generated capital from depreciation
allowances plus another €275 mln. Between 2002 and 2004, it reduced its investment
dramatically. Investment was more than €450 mln less than its internally generated
capital from depreciation allowances. This enabled payment of a special €446 mln cash
dividend to Valentia and ESOT.23 Net assets fell from €812 mln in March 2002 to €297
mln at the end of 2003.

Read the rest yourselves. Mind you the outcome from being left with €2.35bn of debt AFTER restructuring is fairly predictable as well. Same Bat Channel c.2016 or 2017 latest I should think.

jmcc

Solair wrote: »

Telecom Eireann should not have been allowed to be the main shareholder in the largest cable company. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

You have to remember the particularly low quality intellects of Irish politicians.

Compared to most European markets, the Irish cable internet market was totally backwards until UPC arrived.

It was underfunded rather than backwards.

Cablelink and Cork Multichannel both trialled cable internet and telephony services in the late 90s / early 00s but never launched them properly due to lack of investment (and having Telecom Eireann as a major shareholder in the case of Cablelink)

And Casey in Dungarvan, County Waterford actually had an operational cable broadband system during all that time.

Telecom Eireann in particular kept concluding that there was no demand for DSL and then justifying keeping dial-up etc etc.

It didn't conclude that there was no demand - it just kept issuing press releases that claimed that there was no demand. Many of the "technology journalists" in the Irish press just kept running these as news because they hadn't a clue about the reality of the situation and they were just churnalists who recycled press releases as a profession. There was both regulatory capture and media capture. Any signs of a clue in the media and those valuable Eircom advertising contracts would evapourate. But the general quality of technological knowledge or knowledge of the business of technology in what laughably passed for the Irish tech press was very low. Thus when you don't have good journalists asking questions and writing articles, it is easy for companies to make unquestioned claims and effectively hold the market back.

Regards...jmcc

Solair

Lack of scale tends to mean there's never been much of a technology press here. Our financial journalism was pretty lacking during the Celtic Tigre too. Lots of journalists are generalists expected to cover everything. It's actually heading more and more that direction as media outlets have fewer resources!

Not really the individual journalists fault, it's just the market's relatively tiny. The UK has a lot more specialist journalism going on.

jmcc

Solair wrote: »

Lack of scale tends to mean there's never been much of a technology press here. Our financial journalism was pretty lacking during the Celtic Tigre too. Lots of journalists are generalists expected to cover everything. It's actually heading more and more that direction as media outlets have fewer resources!

It was far worse here. Basically most of the people who call themselves "technology journalists" have no real background in technology or the business of technology. It was even worse in a boom market because it was a dumping ground for Arts graduates and newbie journalists on their way to other sections of newspapers and there was a demand for the Phil Space/Polly Filler style of churnalism that was passed off as technology journalism. IoffL used to have to almost drill it into some churnalists that the lack of broadband was a real problem in Ireland.

Not really the individual journalists fault, it's just the market's relatively tiny. The UK has a lot more specialist journalism going on.

It is very much the fault of the individual journalists and their editors. Journalism is meant to enlighten and inform the reader rather than make them more stupid. The fact that many of these people hadn't a clue made it very easy for Eircom's PR people to play them like fiddles. It got to such a stage in the late 1990s that every time there was a bad story about to break about TE/Eircom, press releases would be recycled about how ADSL was coming real soon now. The gullible fools in the Irish "technology" press just recycled them and ADSL, not surprisingly, did not arrive quickly for most people. And some people are even still waiting for it. The UK also has the Phil Space/Polly Filler problem in tech journalism but not to quite the same extent as Ireland. But then things have probably changed now - haven't they?

Regards...jmcc

Sponge Bob

Ah Yes.

jmcc wrote: »

There was both regulatory capture and media capture. Any signs of a clue in the media and those valuable Eircom advertising contracts would evapourate.

Regulatory capture not so much between 1998 and 2000 but worsening rapidly thereafter. Once Valentia took over eircom they hired lots of people for 'counter' regulatory operations....employing more in that section than ODTR did for years.

Media capture and ultra low grade journalism and equally low editorial standards was a huge problem and still is in Ireland. The Irish Times is one of the worst offenders, they are very good on Science and simply dreadful on Technology....and have been for years.