Anyone hear about BT Infinity coming to Donegal?

NIMAN

Heard it mentioned recently that BT Infinity (up to 50meg) broadband may be coming to Donegal soon.

Anyone else hear anything about this?

homer simpson

NIMAN wrote: »

Heard it mentioned recently that BT Infinity (up to 50meg) broadband may be coming to Donegal soon.

Anyone else hear anything about this?

Not heard anything but the 50mb speed I very much doubt anyone here could get, most lines aren't able to handle 5 never mind 50 in rural areas and 8 is the fastest I've seen in Letterkenny.

Duster

Had it confirmed that Eircom residential customers in Letterkenny (and probably buncrana) will be getting up to 50mb broadband around the start of april.

NIMAN

Where did you see that Duster, cos I heard the Bridgend, Burnfoot, Buncrana area mentioned and this might tie in?

danniemcq

homer simpson wrote: »

Not heard anything but the 50mb speed I very much doubt anyone here could get, most lines aren't able to handle 5 never mind 50 in rural areas and 8 is the fastest I've seen in Letterkenny.

smart currently have "up to 24mb" i'm get 16 where i am at the bottom of town.

I know there was fiber rolled out down the mainstreet over the last few months too (asked one of the guys working on it to be sure)

Solair

Letterkenny is getting eircom's equivalent product, which seems to be just called Fibre Superfast Broadband. It provides up to 100mbit/s depending on how close you are to the street cabinet.

Other companies like vodafone, sky, utv, digiweb etc etc will also be able to use the new networks too so you'll have a range of providers.

BT infinity is BT's Fibre to Cabinet service in the UK. It's a very similar product to this. Eircom and BT are both using Huawei street cabinets. However eircom is also deploying vectoring, this counteracts crosstalk and allows even higher speeds.

I think there are several other Donegal towns on the rollout too.

They basically install fibre cabinets that contain a DSLAM all over the town and your VDSL2 service comes from there over a very short run of phone line. This allows much higher speeds.

Check the broadband forum on boards for all the info about it.

It's due to launch on 21 May. Eircom wanted to go earlier, but other operators needed more time to test how they'd use the service and asked ComReg to hold it until may

danniemcq

Solair wrote: »

Letterkenny is getting eircom's equivalent product, which seems to be just called Fibre Superfast Broadband. It provides up to 100mbit/s depending on how close you are to the street cabinet.

one just newly installed outside the library

Solair

homer simpson wrote: »

Not heard anything but the 50mb speed I very much doubt anyone here could get, most lines aren't able to handle 5 never mind 50 in rural areas and 8 is the fastest I've seen in Letterkenny.

The lines are probably fine, just very long. The signal degrades over long lines. tgats just the nature of DSL as telephone lines are just copper cables without RF shielding.

VDSL2 effectively moves the exchange closer to your house, so those issues will improve. For rural areas, VDSL makes little difference though. The only technology that can cope with single one off houses out on their own is probably wireless. There's exactly the same issues with BT Infinity in rural parts of NI and Scotland.

The cabinets do however potentially mean really good speeds in outlying housing estates, small villages etc etc

If you're far away from the cabinets though, not much can be done with this kind of technology. That's largely a consequence of poor planning decisions making houses inaccessible to services.

Low density housing is really difficult to provide broadband to. However, the trade off is you've big gardens, plenty of space etc.

Similar problems in low density parts of the US too.

Donegal should be lobbying for really cutting edge wireless technologies and "fibre to tower" rollout. VDSL will be a massive improvement in towns and villages tho!

homer simpson

Right on queue, I got a call from Vodafone this morning. Saying my contract was up for renewal, telling me if I stayed they'd knock a whopping €2 off my bill and then mentioned I'd be due to get better speeds in a few months. Then skipped past it to something else.

I questioned him on the broadband and he said I'll check for you. The maximum I can / will ever get is 4mb it's the capacity of my line, even though I never see anywhere close to that, and that will get less depending on how many people are online and said that I will however see the benefit of un-congested when its rolled out.

He said that Letterkenny will have up to 50mb speeds but said not many will get the 50 but everyone will see hugely improved speeds. Great news if it comes to fruition.

danniemcq wrote: »

smart currently have "up to 24mb" i'm get 16 where i am at the bottom of town.

I know there was fiber rolled out down the mainstreet over the last few months too (asked one of the guys working on it to be sure)

I can only dream of speeds like that, 1.6mb at best up where I am

Solair wrote: »

The lines are probably fine, just very long. The signal degrades over long lines. tgats just the nature of DSL as telephone lines are just copper cables without RF shielding.

VDSL2 effectively moves the exchange closer to your house, so those issues will improve. For rural areas, VDSL makes little difference though. The only technology that can cope with single one off houses out on their own is probably wireless. There's exactly the same issues with BT Infinity in rural parts of NI and Scotland.

The cabinets do however potentially mean really good speeds in outlying housing estates, small villages etc etc

If you're far away from the cabinets though, not much can be done with this kind of technology. That's largely a consequence of poor planning decisions making houses inaccessible to services.

Low density housing is really difficult to provide broadband to. However, the trade off is you've big gardens, plenty of space etc.

Similar problems in low density parts of the US too.

Donegal should be lobbying for really cutting edge wireless technologies and "fibre to tower" rollout. VDSL will be a massive improvement in towns and villages tho!

Yeah I've been told that time and time again anytime I have a problem they just try and fob me off saying I'm too far from the exchange, but it always gets fixed when I persist. I am actually on a line that connects to a bigger line and my line is a total of 6.4KM long according to the Eircom guy's. I'm lucky to get anything at all I guess.

The thing that bothers me personally is I'm only 2km from the exchange in Newtown but connected to the exchange in Manor! Anyway Here's hoping I get the 4mb when these upgrades are implemented, I'll not hold my breath though .

danniemcq

homer simpson wrote: »

Right on queue, I got a call from Vodafone this morning. Saying my contract was up for renewal, telling me if I stayed they'd knock a whopping €2 off my bill and then mentioned I'd be due to get better speeds in a few months. Then skipped past it to something else.

I questioned him on the broadband and he said I'll check for you. The maximum I can / will ever get is 4mb it's the capacity of my line, even though I never see anywhere close to that, and that will get less depending on how many people are online and said that I will however see the benefit of un-congested when its rolled out.

He said that Letterkenny will have up to 50mb speeds but said not many will get the 50 but everyone will see hugely improved speeds. Great news if it comes to fruition.

I can only dream of speeds like that, 1.6mb at best up where I am

what about using digiweb satellite? its cheaper than i thought it was and its 10mb. granted its not gonna be great for gaming but streaming etc should be fine

EDIT never mind its still very expensive!

unless you can deal with only a 10gb cap!

Solair

Well, that's the initial rollout map as it's happening : https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/attachments/19162/244832.png ...

(that's a visuallisation of the areas being covered right now, the people on the broadband forum are actually mapping it by using Google maps and asking people to mark any new VDSL cabinets)

Keep an eye on this thread and chip in any info you might have too when new cabinets appear:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=83644126

CastorTroy

I'm on 24mb Smart, living in Killyclug and get less than 3mb. Would love to see an improvement.

Got a call from Vodafone yesterday and think by the time the guy finished talking to me, I had convinced him to sign up with Smart.

Solair

There's the link if you want to pre-register your interest in it : http://www.eircom.net/efibre/

NIMAN

Interesting replies, so it looks like it isn't a rumour after all then.

I know that I won't see these type of speeds anytime soon, and then again the big issue is going to be the price and if people are willing to pay for it. I would guess that if they are going to offer you anything from 24meg - 50meg, you'll be asked to pay a big premium for it. I know many will, but for me it would not be worth it as I do not game or stream and only really do general surfing at present.

Solair

They can't really charge a big premium for it as they're being slaughtered by UPC in major urban centres like Dublin and Cork.

UPC already offer 150 Mbit/s for €59.00 / month (no line rental as it's over UPC cable no eircom lines involved at all)

Their technology's also fibre-to-cabinet, but it uses coaxial cable to your house instead of a phone line, so when they say 150mbit/s that's what you get.

I don't think eircom (or any of the other companies using their network) will be allowed to have different pricing in urban vs rural markets, so you'll find they'll have to compete with UPC on price so I wouldn't imagine the cost will be that high.

It's a *way* more competitive market than it was a decade or so ago when eircom started doing broadband first. They're not the only show in most big towns / cities anymore and their technology's still playing catch-up.

http://www.upc.ie/broadband/hundredfifty/

UPC also have pretty widespread deployment of this already. So it's not some new fangled thing they're only starting to launch or something. It's available to hundreds of thousands of homes.

And ... they've tested it up to 1Gbit/s on the same infrastructure that's already in place.

Eircom's only way to compete with that on speed is actual fibre to premises. They may have to do that in cabled areas if they've any hope of keeping up.

They are laying sufficient fibre to be able to do fibre-to-premises, although it would probably mean needing a second cabinet, but it's relatively minor stuff once the fibre's actually in the ground.

Don't get me wrong, VDSL2's a major step forward, but it's still an intermediate technology and I still don't really see how it's going to be anything other than a cheaper, slower alternative to UPC for urban customers. So, it's going to have to be mostly about price.

Duster

NIMAN wrote: »

Where did you see that Duster, cos I heard the Bridgend, Burnfoot, Buncrana area mentioned and this might tie in?

Heard it from an eircom sales man who I was dealing with - he said it was unfortunate that I was not in Letterkenny or Buncrana as I would be getting 50MB download speeds if I was one of their customers living there.

Unfortuntely the speed on my exchange will remain around 3MB :mad:.

They also said there is no increase in monthly subscription with eircom for the 50MB broadband for existing customers.

Obviously customers of other carriers using eircom lines will not get the full speed or better contention rates but they will see an increase in speed.

Solair

Duster wrote: »

Heard it from an eircom sales man who I was dealing with - he said it was unfortunate that I was not in Letterkenny or Buncrana as I would be getting 50MB download speeds if I was one of their customers living there.

Unfortuntely the speed on my exchange will remain around 3MB :mad:.

They also said there is no increase in monthly subscription with eircom for the 50MB broadband for existing customers.

Obviously customers of other carriers using eircom lines will not get the full speed or better contention rates but they will see an increase in speed.

It's open to other carriers too. It's a wholesale product like their existing DSL. So you'll get Sky, Vodafone, uTV, digiweb etc etc using "fibre"

Technique

This map shows the location of fibre cabinets. The closer you are to the cabinet, the faster your speeds will be.

http://goo.gl/maps/U4Sai

I've added the ones that I know of in Letterkenny.

If anyone knows of any more, please add.

NIMAN

I'm about 30 miles from one of those boxes!

danniemcq

NIMAN wrote: »

I'm about 30 miles from one of those boxes!

20m for me yip thats meters!

and even if that one isn't actually located there i'm 100m from the other one near me!

Solair

danniemcq wrote: »

20m for me yip thats meters!

and even if that one isn't actually located there i'm 100m from the other one near me!

Really long extension lead from Woodies??

If you're 20 metres away you'll get 100 mbits

CastorTroy

I'm just across from Ard na Rí bar and saw a box outside The Grange so hopefully that's a good thing for me.

So from what's said here, even though I'm on Smart, I can expect an increase in speed around the end of May?

danniemcq

Solair wrote: »

Really long extension lead from Woodies??

If you're 20 metres away you'll get 100 mbits

imagine the por.........


ummmm my gaming i mean my gaming

homer simpson

danniemcq wrote: »

imagine the por.........


ummmm my gaming i mean my gaming

ha ha, stock up on the moisturiser now!

hootietootie

Looks to be one almost right outside my house!! We get good speeds already-but faster will be great

iMuse

CastorTroy wrote: »

I'm just across from Ard na Rí bar and saw a box outside The Grange so hopefully that's a good thing for me.

So from what's said here, even though I'm on Smart, I can expect an increase in speed around the end of May?

No you will need to change package and most likely change over to eircom as it will only be them offering the faster speeds when it launches with other providers getting access later on. It will only be in Letterkenny, be a few years before it reaches any of the other larger towns.
Heres what speeds you can expect depending on your distance from the Cabinet

Heres a pic of the new cabinets (the one on the right)

Solair

ComReg will not be allowing eircom retail to launch a product ahead of others. They can all launch together if they want to

Harps

Do UPC have no infrastructure in Letterkenny? A bit odd for a town of over 20,000 to be completely devoid of proper broadband, surely there's money to be made in it?

Solair

I think their predecessors skipped Letterkenny because their original main purpose was to provide BBC / ITV etc in the 70s & 80s. So nobody bothered wiring up Letterkenny because it had overspill from NI broadcasts anyway.

Cable broadband wasn't on the agenda until the 2000s in Ireland and only fit serious when UPC took over.

Prior to that NTL and Chorus only had quite limited broadband rollout in a few select bits of Dublin, Cork etc

There are a surprising number of large towns that weren't cabled though. As far as I know Killarney and Tralee aren't. Also some really large satellite suburbs like Carrigaline in Cork weren't cabled.

UPC should definitely wire these places up. It's a bit ridiculous they're off-grid practically !

Technique

homer simpson wrote: »

I questioned him on the broadband and he said I'll check for you. The maximum I can / will ever get is 4mb it's the capacity of my line, even though I never see anywhere close to that, and that will get less depending on how many people are online and said that I will however see the benefit of un-congested when its rolled out.

He said that Letterkenny will have up to 50mb speeds but said not many will get the 50 but everyone will see hugely improved speeds. Great news if it comes to fruition.


I can only dream of speeds like that, 1.6mb at best up where I am

I'm in the rural part of Letterkenny exchange, paying a fortune for 0.5mb from eircom. I'll never see fibre broadband where I live. My only hope will be 4G. It will be far from perfect, but it's gotta be better than what I have.

chris_ie

For those in rural areas, have you looked into wireless broadband? I was on Smart BB when I lived in the town. Bought a house out of the town then and was dreading getting Eircom, think the neighbour was getting a max of 2mb or something. Luckily though we could see the wireless mast so we got that. On (up to) 50MB package. Get around 15-25MB (sometimes more). Pings were poor at the start but they upgraded some hardware recently and pings are good now, issues the odd time on XBox but not alot. Actually better overall at times than Smart if I'm honest.