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

Solair

irishgeo wrote: »

its another month at least and thats for the places that are ready, if your only putting ducting in you might have to wait till the end of the year.

It went in about 2 weeks after the subducts went in around here.

They're moving *very* fast on this stuff and appear to be way ahead of schedule. KN Networks really seem to have it down to a fine art.

Also, from what I've read it seems that eircom have contracted it out to Huawei and Huawei are actually implementing the rollout on their behalf. So, KN's actually working for Huawei.

http://www.knnetworkservices.com/news/2012/02/huawei-technologies-contract/

So, I would assume eircom just get this network handed over to them as a turn-key project.

lucernarian

I noticed that there's one cabinet in Drogheda at least which serves a total of 6 to 10 lines less than 900 metres away from it. It has been VDSL2 enabled. Why?! This seems like complete incompetence. In later years, a retail park was built which has its own cabinet and is closer to the hinterland served. It also has a VDSL 2 cabinet. Not only could it serve the same 10 lines by using the existing cable, it's a lot closer to other premises as well as the retail park that was built.

There are other dubious examples of VDSL2 cab placement I've seen, but none that is completely unjustifed like this one. There's literally nothing else that could be served by this cabinet except a couple of houses, a recycling centre and some fields.

The two cabinets are on the R168, one that has been in place for at least 20 years on the edge of the contiguous urban area of Drogheda and the other was installed when the M1 retail park and the N51 link road was built near Waterunder.

Solair

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

I noticed that there's one cabinet in Drogheda at least which serves a total of 6 to 10 lines less than 900 metres away from it. It has been VDSL2 enabled. Why?! This seems like complete incompetence. In later years, a retail park was built which has its own cabinet and is closer to the hinterland served. It also has a VDSL 2 cabinet. Not only could it serve the same 10 lines by using the existing cable, it's a lot closer to other premises as well as the retail park that was built.

There are other dubious examples of VDSL2 cab placement I've seen, but none that is completely unjustifed like this one. There's literally nothing else that could be served by this cabinet except a couple of houses, a recycling centre and some fields.

The two cabinets are on the R168, one that has been in place for at least 20 years on the edge of the contiguous urban area of Drogheda and the other was installed when the M1 retail park and the N51 link road was built near Waterunder.

They could also be areas that were planned / zoned for development in future years.

briany

irishgeo wrote: »

its another month at least and thats for the places that are ready, if your only putting ducting in you might have to wait till the end of the year.

I wonder are such lengths of time imposed by technical matters or is it bureaucracy? I'd imagine that Eircom are keen to get as much of the network up and running as fast as possible to get on par with UPC in the NGA areas.

lucernarian

They could also be areas that were planned / zoned for development in future years.

This is a cabinet placed at least 20 years ago, with all the nearest estates served with their own cabinets and half of the land area surrounding it consisting of disused quarry. The remaining area is zoned as light commercial use and "new economy" stuff. No plans to develop or build anything on it yet. I would say this is laudable future-proofing but for the fact that nothing will be built there within the next 3 years minimum, while plenty of densely-populated village centres will make do with no VDSL if eircom's rollout schedule is to be believed.

The Real B-man

KN Lads from the North is Seems Running some "Orange Yumminess" up my way last Week Kilcoole Co. Wicklow awaits new Cab!

Mickalus

briany wrote: »

I wonder are such lengths of time imposed by technical matters or is it bureaucracy? I'd imagine that Eircom are keen to get as much of the network up and running as fast as possible to get on par with UPC in the NGA areas.

to answer your q, Its Comreg:

Solair wrote: »

The other operators wanted time to make sure their networks, sales and other IT systems are working correctly with this new wholesale product as otherwise they think it will give eircom retail an unfair advantage

irishgeo

eircom will going with a huge advertising campaign , i spotted a 2 page ad in the daily mirror today.

Sponge Bob

Fibre Rollout Activity Tracker Here. Check and see what has happened so far in your area.

swoofer

is that your chart spongebob?

Sponge Bob

GBCULLEN wrote: »

is that your chart spongebob?

Yes, I'll share it with a few others who can help maintain it and update it.

There are 5 activity categories

None
Planning Notices
Fibre and Duct Install
Cabinet Plith Installs
Cabinets.

red_bairn

My mate who lives in Whitethorn park, Cross lane, Drogheda said there were 8 ninjas putting in the cabinet and the electricity box in only last week. Completed in one day perhaps?

Solair

I'd a bit of a drive around our area today and the one thing that I'd comment on is that there are a lot of fairly high density housing developments from various eras that are missing cabinets entirely. Most of these are well served by UPC up to 150mbit/s already. Those very large green UPC cabinets (seem different in Cork to other parts of the country). They're like an eircom green cross connect cabinet but at least 50% bigger. (Definitely UPC as they've UPC / CATV covers in the ground next to them). The UPC cabinets I've seen in Dublin, Sligo, Galway etc are smaller whitish/grey things.

(A rather badly stuck with posters one in the city centre : http://url.ie/h9dc ) They're similar looking to an eircom cross connect cabinet, but just significantly bigger.

I'd say eircom will have to come back around and install cabinets in those areas as there are a *lot* of homes that would be missing out on VDSL2 otherwise.

It looks like most of those estates were done with underground splits. There are lots of places where there are big 4-cover eircom vaults in the pavement, but no cabinet in sight at all.

I'd say it might have been done that way originally to avoid street furniture entirely. Cork city centre's the same, there are 4 and 6 cover underground vaults and no cross-connect cabinets in sight at all.

I'm guessing KN Networks are doing the easier sites first and are going to have to do a second lot of fresh cabinet installations if they are going to achieve proper coverage. Otherwise, it's going to be quite hit and miss.

Mc Love

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Fibre Rollout Activity Tracker Here. Check and see what has happened so far in your area.

That dooradoyle entry - does that consist of all the cabs in the area?

Sponge Bob

Mc Love wrote: »

That dooradoyle entry - does that consist of all the cabs in the area?

All the mapped cabs yes. There should be a lot more IMO in the Dooradoyle area.

Crann na Beatha

This post has been deleted.

ctlsleh

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Fibre Rollout Activity Tracker Here. Check and see what has happened so far in your area.

Hi Spongebob,
This is great.........it shows that my cabinet (ROK) is deployed and is traffic lighted as green, however it is only planned to be switched on in 2014 according to the spreadsheet........however if they have invested early I would expect they would want to start getting some revenue, do you think (or know) if we will be switched on install with everyone else that is ready or will I really have to wait until 2014.....?
Cheers......

Solair

Phoenix wrote: »

Any ideas what packages will be available?

All we know is they're mentioning 50mbit/s packages in their 'free upgrade' promos.

Other than that, no idea.

On a single line, the technology maxes out at about 70mbit/s though (and 100mbit/s when vectoring is enabled)

Sponge Bob

ctlsleh wrote: »

will I really have to wait until 2014.....?
Cheers......

Thats an interesting question. 5 small exchanges may also be complete in Ennis

Rockmount
Ballyalla
Ballymacahill Cross
Clarecastle
Whitepark


would you have a look out the Tulla Road for me if :

1. I told you where exactly
2. You checked the yellow stickers in the cabs for a code ( eg is there a sticker on the VDSL cabinet in ROK or nearer you that says ENS anywhere)

If they are coded ENS they can launch next month _I think_ and no reason to assume they cannot launch in 2013 some time unless eircom are completely disorganised.

Ballymacahill Cross BAX http://maps.google.ie/?ll=52.85703,-8.949556&spn=0.000892,0.002556&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=52.85703,-8.949556&panoid=sT2imCts7VSun6mTcQtgAQ&cbp=12,12.48,,0,0

Whitepark WPK https://maps.google.ie/?ll=52.85418,-8.96538&spn=0.007191,0.020449&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=52.854138,-8.965328&panoid=6leoDEQNC0uNbCMV_1NTuQ&cbp=12,225,,0,0

and anything else you spot as well obviosly, we have nowt from N and E Ennis only S and W ( and Clarecastle)

Solair

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Thats an interesting question. 5 small exchanges may also be complete in Ennis

A lot of those small exchanges aren't much more than a cabinet themselves, so it would make sense to complete whatever's on them (maybe 2 or 3 cabinets or so).

You could probably replace them with a slightly larger Huawei box entirely that would handle both POTS and VDSL2 if they were interested in getting rid of the older gear / minimising maintenance.

Sponge Bob

Solair wrote: »

A lot of those small exchanges aren't much more than a cabinet themselves, so it would make sense to complete whatever's on them (maybe 2 or 3 cabinets or so)

Exactly, Ennis has more of them than any other exhange area does too.

Solair

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Exactly, Ennis has more of them than any other exhange area does too.

I wonder if that had something to do with the "information age town" period?
They may have rolled out some cabinetised ADSL and Alcatel remote concentrators to improve speeds around Ennis when they did new build houses.

The mini-exchanges are basically the same concept as the current VDSL2 rollout, just with older technology. It's just a remote concentrator (Voice/ISDN) / DSLAM for ADSL2 on the end of a fibre hosted by the local exchange.

I'm guessing that the cost of the cabinetised RCU+DSLAM must have been less than a long run of thick copper cables from the main exchange or the locations were too far from the main exchange to get decent speeds for ADSL so they went with that approach from some point onwards.

There are quite a lot more 'cabinet exchanges' than I'd realised.

....

That being said, even in the 1980s they were using a setup that involved putting a full remote-hosted local digital exchange into an air-conditioned container. You'll still see some of these around the place. Kinda the 1980s version of the remote cabinet.

hallo dare

is there a list of where this rollout will take place throughout the country?

red_bairn

hallo dare wrote: »

is there a list of where this rollout will take place throughout the country?

HERE and check out where Boardsies have mapped cabinets (FTTC) around the country via this thread.

petersburg2002

Eircom had a two page advert in the newspapers today promising customers a free fibre upgrade after May 20. I found a cabinet about 400m from my house. But I won't get too excited just yet.

chriss745

Solair wrote: »

All we know is they're mentioning 50mbit/s packages in their 'free upgrade' promos.

Other than that, no idea.

On a single line, the technology maxes out at about 70mbit/s though (and 100mbit/s when vectoring is enabled)

Magnet sales told me up to 70Mbit depending on the distance from the cab, 55 EUR per month without phone, contract and download cap free

chriss745

Just found on twitter under Magnet's #fatpipe:

https://twitter.com/daniel_b_nelson/status/321987425503162368/photo/1

55Mbit down, 28Mbit up on speedtest.net, looks promising.

Richard Dower

chriss745 wrote: »

Just found on twitter under Magnet's #fatpipe:

https://twitter.com/daniel_b_nelson/status/321987425503162368/photo/1

55Mbit down, 28Mbit up on speedtest.net, looks promising.

I very much doubt we'll see 28mb up anytime soon, considering UPC is 10mb max now. I think Eircom at most on the max package will have 5mb and then 4mb on the 60mb package and 3mb on the 50mb etc.

Personally i cannot see 70mb being offered in the initial round, they will stretch this fibre stuff out over 3 years imo.

50mb year 1, max speed/package
60mb year 2
70mb year 3

We'll have cheaper packages ranging from 30mb-50mb in year one. Caps between 300-500GB with add-ons at extra cost. I registered my interest with Vodaphone....i want to be upgraded right away.

I have tolerated sh*tty BB for 10 feckin years now.....:mad:

Mylow

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Fibre Rollout Activity Tracker Here. Check and see what has happened so far in your area.

Colpe Cross has 2 cabinets installed and labelled (only one shown in spreadsheet), a 3rd cabinet in Deepforde but not labelled.

CLX1 001A
CLX1 002A

ctlsleh

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Thats an interesting question. 5 small exchanges may also be complete in Ennis

Rockmount
Ballyalla
Ballymacahill Cross
Clarecastle
Whitepark


would you have a look out the Tulla Road for me if :

1. I told you where exactly
2. You checked the yellow stickers in the cabs for a code ( eg is there a sticker on the VDSL cabinet in ROK or nearer you that says ENS anywhere)

If they are coded ENS they can launch next month _I think_ and no reason to assume they cannot launch in 2013 some time unless eircom are completely disorganised.

Ballymacahill Cross BAX http://maps.google.ie/?ll=52.85703,-8.949556&spn=0.000892,0.002556&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=52.85703,-8.949556&panoid=sT2imCts7VSun6mTcQtgAQ&cbp=12,12.48,,0,0

Whitepark WPK https://maps.google.ie/?ll=52.85418,-8.96538&spn=0.007191,0.020449&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=52.854138,-8.965328&panoid=6leoDEQNC0uNbCMV_1NTuQ&cbp=12,225,,0,0

and anything else you spot as well obviosly, we have nowt from N and E Ennis only S and W ( and Clarecastle)

No problem, ill check them out tomorrow.....can you send me the link on how to but the cabinets up on google maps? I tried to do that from my iPhone yesterday, but couldn't do it....
Cheers
Eoin