E/FIBRE - life Changing - What does it mean to you

bealtine

red_bairn wrote: »

ADSL will come down in price. The topology most likely doesn't suit in many rural areas but there are places that this wouldn't be the problem but the houses are dispersed in some exchanges.

I'd be happy to see much cheaper prices and excellent coverage in Ireland but there are many factors that come in to being for networks. I'll hopefully get into that area myself in the future but I just can't see the telecommunications industry get close to 100% coverage with fibre optics due to topology and non-nuclear settlements.

Well that's an analysis that's often trotted out and is, well, not particularly true...

Finland and Estonia, for instance are similar in some ways to Ireland and perhaps even harder to do, yet they have managed to dig in fibre above the Arctic Circle. Finland is the eight largest country in the EU and they drove fibre close to every citizen of that country.

It can be done if we WANT it done

red_bairn

bealtine wrote: »

Well that's an analysis that's often trotted out and is, well, not particularly true...

Finland and Estonia, for instance are similar in some ways to Ireland and perhaps even harder to do, yet they have managed to dig in fibre above the Arctic Circle. Finland is the eight largest country in the EU and they drove fibre close to every citizen of that country.

It can be done if we WANT it done

So why won't they work on all of Ireland?

bealtine

red_bairn wrote: »

So why won't they work on all of Ireland?

Well 2 main reasons:

Nobody makes them do it (eircom), for instance Finland enacted laws that forced the telcos to deliver real broadband across the country and with that broadband of at least 100Mbs to within a fixed distance of every citizen(2km)
Finland operates under the same EU regulations as we do and they made broadband a legal right, our lot (Comreg) gave us 28.8k dialup as a legal right and a "best effort" regime

They believe the Irish dispersal pattern myth as nobody really questions the myth (the facts however are pretty clear)

10belowzero

Why should Eircom do it - look up above at previous post's - UPC could fit Eircom in it's toenail - What about BT - what about Vodapone and the rest - look at the SKY.

bealtine

10belowzero wrote: »

Why should Eircom do it - look up above at previous post's - UPC could fit Eircom in it's toenail - What about BT - what about Vodapone and the rest - look at the SKY.

Well, eircom have been designated as having Significant Market Power (SMP) aka a new name for incumbent.
But yes indeed why should eircom do it? That's the 64million dollah question.

Nobody is going to do it without gap funding that's for sure but there's an ideological blockage in the DECNR, they believe as you seem to do that satellite is broadband and is in the running as delivering anything like DSL or cable For that matter 3G/4G is barely broadband too (if the moon is in the third quarter and the wind comes from the east) so I don't think there's salvation there...most of what we hear about 4G is marketing driven wishful thinking.

BT have done nothing of worth in Ireland except for a trial of SLU/FTTC in Dun Laoghaire and UPC are happy to milk their city bases for every cent.

So between the National Broadband Plan and a mixture of eircom and BT it can be done it just needs government will and support

Solair

VDSL2 / FTTC can and is being rolled out in small towns and even villages. It's a very scalable technology as you can litterally just throw in a single cabinet to serve a village or a remote housing estate.

The problem with all of these wireline and cable technologies is that they are not practical in one-off-houses in the middle of the countryside or even on the outskirts of towns and cites. They need a density of at least a 40+ homes before they make any sense.

Ireland's very unusual in Europe in so far as we have a lot of very scattered housing due to choices we made about planning. I'm not going to call it 'poor planning' as that's what people opted to do and that's how they voted. It's a cultural / social choice.

The trade off is you get a huge garden, lots of space but your broadband's quite likely to be pretty poor and you'll have to provide your own well and septic tank in most cases and forget about public transport.

For houses in remote areas and in very low density bungalow-blitz type areas, we need to look at cutting-edge wireless (FWA) services. DSL, FTTC and cable will never be able to serve these areas. So, while you might have 100Mbit/s FTTC in the local village, if you've a big house out in the middle of the countryside, you're not going to benefit from these technologies.

With proper FWA, we should be easily able to deliver 50mbit/s + in rural areas using an antenna on your roof and masts connected directly to fibre infrastructure.

"FTTT" (Fibre To The Tower) might be the way forward i.e. provide transmission sites on mountains / high sites and state-fund unlit fibre that providers can use.

red_bairn

bealtine wrote: »

Well 2 main reasons:
our lot (Comreg) gave us 28.8k dialup as a legal right and a "best effort" regime

So what don't we scream and shout at ComReg? Why are people going ballistic over Eircom when ComReg are the ones to make up the rules?

10belowzero

B you know as I do - sat ain't broadband I'm sorry but the day being in it - I am sick to my back teeth of people bad mouthing Eircom - the company I am so rightly proud of today and Not the corporate comeallya's that latch on to an pr photo shoot.It's an acheivment that tech's I work with every day and KN Service's and the sub contractor's that need to take the bow.
This is the biggest communication's breakthru in 20 year's - TODAY - I'M PROUD TO BE AN EIRCOM TECHNICIAN.

Cheerful Spring

10belowzero wrote: »

Why should Eircom do it - look up above at previous post's - UPC could fit Eircom in it's toenail - What about BT - what about Vodapone and the rest - look at the SKY.

Eircom foundations are in Ireland. Most of the other telcos came in from abroad.

So the Irish people naturally expect better from Eircom.

The arrival of outsiders like UPC is one of the main reasons to why the broadband situation changed in Ireland. Eircom was not doing much before that. And still it took years for Eircom to get with the programme and introduce fibre to the Irish consumer. I don't hate on UPC , because we may not be where we are today without them.

Solair

10belowzero wrote: »

B you know as I do - sat ain't broadband I'm sorry but the day being in it - I am sick to my back teeth of people bad mouthing Eircom - the company I am so rightly proud of today and Not the corporate comeallya's that latch on to an pr photo shoot.It's an acheivment that tech's I work with every day and KN Service's and the sub contractor's that need to take the bow.
This is the biggest communication's breakthru in 20 year's - TODAY - I'M PROUD TO BE AN EIRCOM TECHNICIAN.

I don't think it's eircom of today that people are annoyed about though. Unfortunately, due to a period of lack of investment, asset sweating and high prices, a lot of people have serious axes to grind with eircom.

I'm delighted to see that it's turned over a new leaf under new ownership and that it finally has some investors who seem to want to run it as a serious telecommunications business again.

I think much like UPC has turned around the rather battered image that the cable industry had here in the recent past, eircom's now going to have to prove it can actually be a cutting edge broadband provider.

The seem to be finally off to a good start and I'm seeing a lot of positives with the NGN build-out and now the NGA/E-Fibre rollout. So, fingers crossed it all keeps going onwards and upwards!

---

I do however still think a lot of very rural / one off housing dwellers will just have to accept the technological limitations of both VDSL2 and DOCSIS (Cable TV) technologies and lobby harder for good wireless FWA services instead.

Cheerful Spring

10belowzero wrote: »

B you know as I do - sat ain't broadband I'm sorry but the day being in it - I am sick to my back teeth of people bad mouthing Eircom - the company I am so rightly proud of today and Not the corporate comeallya's that latch on to an pr photo shoot.It's an acheivment that tech's I work with every day and KN Service's and the sub contractor's that need to take the bow.
This is the biggest communication's breakthru in 20 year's - TODAY - I'M PROUD TO BE AN EIRCOM TECHNICIAN.

Eircom is the company who filed for bankruptcy last year. You're proud of that achievement?

Overcharges people for a broadband service that has been around since since the 90's.

How are you proud?

Solair

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

Eircom is the company who filed for bankruptcy last year.

It went into examinership, not bankruptcy.

Cheerful Spring

Solair wrote: »

VDSL2 / FTTC can and is being rolled out in small towns and even villages. It's a very scalable technology as you can litterally just throw in a single cabinet to serve a village or a remote housing estate.

The problem with all of these wireline and cable technologies is that they are not practical in one-off-houses in the middle of the countryside or even on the outskirts of towns and cites. They need a density of at least a 40+ homes before they make any sense.

Ireland's very unusual in Europe in so far as we have a lot of very scattered housing due to choices we made about planning. I'm not going to call it 'poor planning' as that's what people opted to do and that's how they voted. It's a cultural / social choice.

The trade off is you get a huge garden, lots of space but your broadband's quite likely to be pretty poor and you'll have to provide your own well and septic tank in most cases and forget about public transport.

For houses in remote areas and in very low density bungalow-blitz type areas, we need to look at cutting-edge wireless (FWA) services. DSL, FTTC and cable will never be able to serve these areas. So, while you might have 100Mbit/s FTTC in the local village, if you've a big house out in the middle of the countryside, you're not going to benefit from these technologies.

With proper FWA, we should be easily able to deliver 50mbit/s + in rural areas using an antenna on your roof and masts connected directly to fibre infrastructure.

"FTTT" (Fibre To The Tower) might be the way forward i.e. provide transmission sites on mountains / high sites and state-fund unlit fibre that providers can use.

Someone with a plan (thank god) there i was thinking our country lacked critical thinking people. Then this post appeared . Well done sir.

Solair

<< is available for election

Interested parties please PM :D

Cheerful Spring

Solair wrote: »

It went into examinership, not bankruptcy.

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/eircom-emerges-from-historic-bankruptcy-26863700.html

Solair

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/eircom-emerges-from-historic-bankruptcy-26863700.html

They're taking poetic license with the headline. Examinership is not bankruptcy. You could call it 'near bankruptcy' perhaps.

Examinership is effectively protection from insolvency / wind up and liquidation. The business is restructured and hopefully put back as a going concern.

Failure to emerge from the examinership process would have left it in dire trouble. That's not the case though it successfully restructured billions of debts and burnt creditors in the process. The company's actually now in a far better situation than it has been for quite some time as a result.

It also shed quite a bit of baggage, including the ESOT.

Bankruptcy in Irish law also only applies to individuals, not corporations / companies / corporate entities and it's a hell of a lot more onerous than US bankruptcy.

----

I'm not arguing that it wasn't a ridiculous position to be in though for what should have been a very profitable company.

Cheerful Spring

Solair wrote: »

They're taking poetic license with the headline. Examinership is not bankruptcy. You could call it 'near bankruptcy' perhaps.

Examinership is effectively protection from insolvency / wind up and liquidation. The business is restructured and hopefully put back as a going concern.

Failure to emerge from the examinership process would have left it bankrupt. That's not the case though it successfully restructured billions of debts and burnt creditors in the process. The company's actually now in a far better situation than it has been for quite some time as a result.

It also shed quite a bit of baggage, including the ESOT.

Bankruptcy also only applies to individuals, not corporations / companies / corporate entities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy has a definition. Can't just ignore the fact the Eircom business ended up this way. But i understand your thought process on it.

Solair

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Bankruptcy has a definition. Can't just ignore the fact the Eircom business ended up this way. But i understand your thought process on it.

I'm not defending the fact that it was a crazy situation for eircom to end up in. I'm just saying the consequences of it are actually largely positive as it was able to lose a *lot* of baggage.

It shouldn't have been in that position in the first place though.

In American terminology, it would be reorganiation under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code.

bealtine

10belowzero wrote: »

Not the corporate comeallya's that latch on to an pr photo shoot.It's an acheivment that tech's I work with every day and KN Service's and the sub contractor's that need to take the bow.
This is the biggest communication's breakthru in 20 year's - TODAY - I'M PROUD TO BE AN EIRCOM TECHNICIAN.

Right...and spot on the work done on this project was trojan, even IrelandOffline acknowledged that (those long time fans of eircom corporate):
http://irelandoffline.org/2013/05/vdsl-rollout-efibre/

Now that VDSL product is almost launched we do need to think about what's best for the rest of Ireland and the rest of the country...and how we can achieve good speeds for all

dub45

It is disappointing to read that Eircom are seeking 18 month contracts foe the new products.

With so many people now being mobile and so many others living with uncertainty in respect of their financial circumstances an 18 month contract is extremely onerous.

Also with all of the bb companies now obsessed with locking customers into new contracts (and not always honestly as we can read here on boards) surely Comreg should be looking at these practises.

I suggest the maximum for any initial contract should be twelve months and any further contract extensions necessary to avail of product upgrades should be limited to an absolute max of six months.

Also a robust and honest process needs to be put in place to ensure that customers are fully aware of entering into a contract extension.

bealtine

dub45 wrote: »

Also with all of the bb companies now obsessed with locking customers into new contracts (and not always honestly as we can read here on boards) surely Comreg should be looking at these practises.

hahahahaha Comreg, the old chocolate teapot regulator? For as long as Comreg make their income from telco turnover they won't be "regulating" on anything that's good for consumers any time soon that would decrease their income, so it's in their interest to NOT regulate about things like that

Solair

dub45 wrote: »

It is disappointing to read that Eircom are seeking 18 month contracts foe the new products.

With so many people now being mobile and so many others living with uncertainty in respect of their financial circumstances an 18 month contract is extremely onerous.

Also with all of the bb companies now obsessed with locking customers into new contracts (and not always honestly as we can read here on boards) surely Comreg should be looking at these practises.

I suggest the maximum for any initial contract should be twelve months and any further contract extensions necessary to avail of product upgrades should be limited to an absolute max of six months.

Also a robust and honest process needs to be put in place to ensure that customers are fully aware of entering into a contract extension.

Magnet are offering FTTC without a contract. Could be some catch like an upfront fee but, worth checking out. Same eircom wholesale access product.

dub45

bealtine wrote: »

hahahahaha Comreg, the old chocolate teapot regulator? For as long as Comreg make their income from telco turnover they won't be "regulating" on anything that's good for consumers any time soon that would decrease their income, so it's in their interest to NOT regulate about things like that

Well with a defeatist attitude like that nothing will ever happen.

Reamer Fanny

Means fcuk all to me if the cabling infrastructure is not in the area.

10belowzero

Holy Moley - this was supposed to be a nice happy thread , you know like where's the internet going - will I die by Saturday because I don't have a tablet - if I go to Harvey's or Power City tonight , what should I buy to make my internet experience better.
There is a button up above on the main page for those who want to make a living out of slagging Eircom - it's called create a new thread - for those who want to moan , pls for the love of all silicon loving chip's use it.

red_bairn

10belowzero wrote: »

Holy Moley - this was supposed to be a nice happy thread , you know like where's the internet going - will I die by Saturday because I don't have a tablet - if I go to Harvey's or Power City tonight , what should I buy to make my internet experience better.
There is a button up above on the main page for those who want to make a living out of slagging Eircom - it's called create a new thread - for those who want to moan , pls for the love of all silicon loving chip's use it.

I reckon they skipped the part where it says "life changing". :rolleyes:

siblers

red_bairn wrote: »

I reckon they skipped the part where it says "life changing". :rolleyes:

Life changing for some, but if you are in a situation where you have to depend on 3G Midband and have to put up the nonsense that is the NBS, it gets incredibly frustrating

bealtine

dub45 wrote: »

Well with a defeatist attitude like that nothing will ever happen.

Well fair enough, point taken but what have Comreg done for consumers ever?

bealtine

10belowzero wrote: »

Holy Moley - this was supposed to be a nice happy thread ,

The "internet" doesn't do happy:-)

dub45

bealtine wrote: »

Well fair enough, point taken but what have Comreg done for consumers ever?

Well we don't know what goes on in the background do we?

Comreg do at least have some sort of complaints system in place that helps customers with ip issues

And also it was pressure via boards that caused or at least contributed to Comreg actually taking on UPC where they failed to comply with basic requirements in respect of notification to customers in respect of a price increase.

I have no wish to defend Comreg but you tend to dismiss them every time they are mentioned in any context.

If we dont get ideas out there and get them discussed how can they ever even get to Comreg's attention never mind get them to to take any action on it.

ISP's obsession with getting customers into new contracts on virtually any pretext should be of concern to us all and we really should be trying to get something done about it.

I remember in the early days of dsl when Eircom speed upgrades were routinely applied to every customer by all isps until UTV started asking customers to enter into new contracts to obtain them. I tried to get people interested then but failed now if you sneeze and isp wants you in a new contract.

cuana

Boots234 wrote: »

A guy just called to the door offering us the efibre option but as we don't have a landline it's only the internet that we are interested in. We are living in Cork city and are the least technical people that he is going to meet. At the moment we have the Metro Express package with Digiweb but have had a few difficulties with their internet service. We have 30Mb download speed, 1Mb upload speed and 100Gb monthly data allowance. He kept mentioning 50Mb download uncongested but didn't mention the upload speed or data allowance, but as none of this means anything to us I am wondering is it worthwhile changing over? We are paying €45 a month with Digiweb and this would cost us €40

I may have this wrong! but from what I gather your upload speed jumps from 1mb to 20mb, you would get an unlimited data download and upload for the €40!

bealtine

dub45 wrote: »

I have no wish to defend Comreg but you tend to dismiss them every time they are mentioned in any context.

If we dont get ideas out there and get them discussed how can they ever even get to Comreg's attention never mind get them to to take any action on it.

Sure I dismiss Comreg all the time, the day when I see them do something positive for consumers I'll change my tune, until then I reserve my right to laugh and poke fun at them:)

Having said all that your point is very valid though, this contract thing is getting out of hand, users are tied down to rather one-sided "contracts" with little or no comeback.

I've complained formally to Comreg at the highest levels and got absolutely nowhere with this issue (contracts) on at least 2 separate occasions

dub45

bealtine wrote: »

Sure I dismiss Comreg all the time, the day when I see them do something positive for consumers I'll change my tune, until then I reserve my right to laugh and poke fun at them:)

Having said all that your point is very valid though, this contract thing is getting out of hand, users are tied down to rather one-sided "contracts" with little or no comeback.

I've complained formally to Comreg at the highest levels and got absolutely nowhere with this issue (contracts) on at least 2 separate occasions

Persistence is a virtue and all the more reason to make it an issue and get people interested in it so that they have to take notice.

bealtine

dub45 wrote: »

Persistence is a virtue and all the more reason to make it an issue and get people interested in it so that they have to take notice.

I'm "down" with that and open to suggestions as to what to do:)

dub45

Well we could start a separate thread on the Contracts issue in the bb forum drawing peoples attention to the issue and asking for views on contract lengths etc. and bad experiences.

There are several complaints on the UPC forum about people not being told they were entering a new contract when they upgraded - I doubt if they are the only company with such issues.

Whatever about locking people into longish contracts in respect of mobile products where at least the product is not totally dependent on location - we should be resisting lengthy contracts in respect of fixed locations for the reasons in my earlier post.

I am appalled at the 18 month Eircom requirement for efibre (if in fact that is the length of the required contract)

Epicness

jmcc wrote: »

Are you that Rob fellow from Emobile?

Regards...jmcc

haha, my sides!

Richard Dower

I am very excited for Monday!....a new age dawning, welcome 2 the digital garden!!

swoofer

dont get too excited yet, this could be a disaster, the trial in the UK was 8 months, the trial here?? no one knows. I have not seen a single posting by one trial user saying what the new system was like!! Not one!! Lack of information re prices etc. And worst of all the contracts tie in, 18 months for a system that could be dire!!

And the advertising blurb is just like the bad old days ,,, up to 70mb oh yeah and when hooked up you get 18mb. You cant really complain as its 6 times better than what you may have had.

Lets hope it works.

Reamer Fanny

Richard Dower wrote: »

I am very excited for Monday!....a new age dawning, welcome 2 the digital garden!!

Not really, fibre is nothing new UPC have been offering it for years. At least with UPC your not tied into an 18 month contract.

Now if fibre connections were made mandatory for every household in the country that would be something to be in awe of, unfortunately even the most affluent areas in Ireland are without fibre infrastructure.

Much of this country is still in the dark ages in regard to high speed Internet.

Solair

justryan wrote: »

Not really, fibre is nothing new UPC have been offering it for years. At least with UPC your not tied into an 18 month contract.

Now if fibre connections were made mandatory for every household in the country that would be something to be in awe of, unfortunately even the most affluent areas in Ireland are without fibre infrastructure.

Much of this country is still in the dark ages in regard to high speed Internet.

Actually neither offer 'fibre', they both offer 'fibre to curb' (FTTC). That's fibre serving your local cabinet and a coaxial cable (in the case of UPC) or a phone line (in the case of Eircom) to your house.

There's almost no use of FTTH (Fibre To The Home) in Ireland as yet other than a very small trial by eircom and a few apartment buildings by other providers.

That being said, UPC's infrastructure can deliver well over 150mbit/s and eircom should be able to deliver 50-70 mbit/s and up to 100Mbit/s when vectoring's switched on.

Eircom could also make use of an extra line to your house to double the speed. Most homes are served by 2 pairs and it only needs to be connected to the near-by cabinet not the whole way back to the exchange. The gear they've installed also supports 'pair bonding' so, it's possible they could offer speeds beyond 100mbit/s without going to the expense of rolling out Fibre to The Home (FTTH).

Eircom's likely to reach a lot of areas UPC doesn't as yet, so it is definitely a major improvement for a lot of end users.

red_bairn

FTTP in South Korea is offered by various Internet service providers including KT (formerly, Korea Telecom), Hanaro Telecom, and LG Powercom. The connection speed for both downloading and uploading is set to be 100 Mbit/s. Monthly subscription fee range between USD20 and USD30 depending on subscription period.

-Source

That's what I had at my apartment in Korea.

At entrance to the apartment block...

Solair

red_bairn wrote: »

-Source

That's what I had at my apartment in Korea.

At entrance to the apartment block...

Population density Ireland 64 people per sq km.

Population density South Korea 504 people per square km

Seoul has the has 25m people in its metropolitan area (about half the pop of South Korea) and about 17,288 people per sq km

County Dublin has 1.2m people giving the area an average population density if about 1302 per sq km.

Parts of rural Ireland eg Leitrim are some of the lowest population density areas in Europe! There are only 20 people per sq km

To make matters even worse (for broadband) is that we also tend to have ultra low density housing.

Even in urban centres we tend to do sprawling housing estates with gardens.

When you get into the fringes of cities it's one off housing, ribbon development along roads and really low densities.

Comparing Ireland and Korea is like comparing apples with oranges. They're both fruits but that's where the similarities end.

That's why our broadband isn't incredibly fast. It's actually comparable with similarly low density parts of the USA where broadband performance is also far from stellar.

Irish people make a choice to live in bigger houses, enjoy lots of space and that's a choice they make democratically by voting for parties and individuals who uphold that right.

So I'm not going to say its bad planning. It's a matter of choice.

Cramped, busy, urban density and fast, cheap broadband, metros etc etc

Or spread out, loads of space, green areas etc etc with slow broadband, no public transport etc etc

We always tend towards the second option.

Even in comparison to our European neighbours Ireland is ultra low density.

I've lived in rural France (similar issues to Ireland but more of a focus on villages than scatter development) and the broadband is similarly not wonderful - long lines and slow speeds in rural places and Ok speeds in villages. It's all DSL tho.

The only difference is that France Telecom has reached all exchanges with DSL though as far as I'm aware where as eircom skipped some very small ones.

That being said, a lot of eircom's small exchanges wouldn't be much bigger than the PABX in a medium office! You're talking about very small numbers of end users in some cases. They're tiny exchanges.

I think we need to be realistic about the Irish situation. VDSL2 is a decent solution for the environment we have.
The capital expenditure to get FTTH in would be too high outside of a few areas in cities and towns.

I'd say FTTH will slowly happen in cities , towns and even villages / housing estates. There are more fibres being connected to those cabinets than they need for VDSL so FTTH is being future proofed already. You just need an aggregation point installed in the cabinet / next to it and push fibres down the ducts or run overhead to homes.

red_bairn

Solair wrote: »

Irish people make a choice to live in bigger houses, enjoy lots of space and that's a choice they make democratically by voting for parties and individuals who uphold that right.

So I'm not going to say its bad planning. It's a matter of choice.

Cramped, busy, urban density and fast, cheap broadband, metros etc etc

Or spread out, loads of space, green areas etc etc with slow broadband, no public transport etc etc

We always tend towards the second option.

Even in comparison to our European neighbours Ireland is ultra low density.

I've lived in rural France (similar issues to Ireland but more of a focus on villages than scatter development) and the broadband is similarly not wonderful - long lines and slow speeds in rural places and Ok speeds in villages. It's all DSL tho.

The only difference is that France Telecom has reached all exchanges with DSL though as far as I'm aware where as eircom skipped some very small ones.

I think we need to be realistic about the Irish situation. VDSL2 is a decent solution for the environment we have.
The capital expenditure to get FTTH in would be too high outside of a few areas in cities and towns.

I'd say FTTH will slowly happen in cities , towns and even villages / housing estates. There are more fibres being connected to those cabinets than they need for VDSL so FTTH is being future proofed already. You just need an aggregation point installed in the cabinet / next to it and push fibres down the ducts or run overhead to homes.

Yeah, i agree. I'd rather have the space and comfort over the cramped apartments of Asia. Even though we had free accommodation and a great lifestyle, I just felt mentally ill from the place.

bealtine

Solair wrote: »

Parts of rural Ireland eg Leitrim are some of the lowest population density areas in Europe! There are only 20 people per sq km


That's why our broadband isn't incredibly fast. It's actually comparable with similarly low density parts of the USA where broadband performance is also far from stellar.

Irish people make a choice to live in bigger houses, enjoy lots of space and that's a choice they make democratically by voting for parties and individuals who uphold that right.

Even in comparison to our European neighbours Ireland is ultra low density.

I'd say FTTH will slowly happen in cities , towns and even villages / housing estates. There are more fibres being connected to those cabinets than they need for VDSL so FTTH is being future proofed already. You just need an aggregation point installed in the cabinet / next to it and push fibres down the ducts or run overhead to homes.

While most of this polemic is probably correct I would disagree with some of the conclusions made here. These are the arguments blandly trotted out as truisms time and time again as an excuse to do nothing by the DECNR and eircom (and other telcos).

Let's examine them in a more realistic way:

Ireland is far from the most sparsely populated country in Europe.

Take Finland which has a population density of 17 people per sq. km
Finland has managed to rollout decent broadband of a 100Mb/s to within 2Kms of every citizen of that country with little reliance of 4g/3g.
Finland have also made broadband a legal right and telcos HAVE to comply...and make it happen even above the Arctic Circle

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/population-density-people-per-sq-km-wb-data.html

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ireland/population-density-people-per-sq-km-wb-data.html
Finland has a total area of 338,424 km2 with approx 5 million inhabitants They all have good broadband...

Similarly Estonia:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/estonia/population-density-people-per-sq-km-wb-data.html
They have population density of 30 per sq km and they have an extensive FTTH rollout too

Sweden also has reasonable broadband and a population density of 22 per sq km...

the list goes on.

In comparison Ireland is rather more densely populated. Ribbon development is indeed a factor in our poor performance in the broadband stakes but that's easily overcome if we even cared and weren't too busy playing the "it's not economically viable" card, that's simply another version of the Irish thing : "sure isn't it grand".

Basically it's pure laziness on our part and too much slavishly following the failed UK model.

I've lived in rural France too and the broadband is many times better than here..to be precise St Nicolas de Bourgeil in Tourraine a tiny village with lots of ribbon development and 10 years ago it had reasonable DSL out in the country, the area I lived in was 3 houses about 3 kms from the village. Of course if you had a really long line you couldn't get broadband but they put in "amplifiers" to get to those houses

Solair

I don't see why we shouldn't be en par with Northern Ireland, Scotland, Western France, etc all of which are comparable (although not completely).

However, I still think the comparison with South Korea (especially on price) isn't really very useful.

Ireland most definitely does have unusual low density though. Most of Finland's not populated at all, and where it is populated it's in clusters. Nordic countries tend to be organised, planned and have housing in villages/towns. We don't do that properly at all.

French, Scottish and Northern Irish planning requirements also tend to avoid rural sprawl. Ireland's specialised in that. So, there are most definitely planning issues which are more comparable to parts of the US than with Europe.

The kind of low density sprawl here is just not normal in Europe at all and it does make infrastructure lot more expensive to rollout. It's not just broadband, but also things like water, sewage, public transport, even road infrastructure.

Ireland's population is basically distributed totally chaotically once you get outside of the parts that were built before the 1950s.

The other big reason for lack of rollout here was that eircom was basically doing absolutely minimal investment until relatively recently.

That was driven by lack of competition and poor regulation allowing it to happen but also by eircom being bounced from one speculative investment entity to another. It suffered very badly from short-term speculation rather than being run as a normal telco until it was eventually landed in examinership!

There is a major issue with the current setup in Ireland in so far as it is not economically viable for a telco to reach all areas. It's not in France, it's not in Finland or anywhere else unless you subsidise it somehow.

That's where you have to look at some kind of state funding / cross funding by charging other operators public service levies to achieve it and that doesn't just mean handing money over to one company but tendering it out to anyone who's capable of providing it.

They shouldn't have ever have accepted UMTS/3G as being suitable technology for the National Broadband Scheme. There were perfectly good wireless technologies that should have been used instead and that are in use at many of the better FWA operators.

I agree too, they could have used DSL repeaters on longer lines, but didn't. That was due to lack of competition, lack of regulation (only requiring 28.8k functional internet access) and there was really no support given for rollout of services. Eircom was just left largely to its own devices.

---

Quite honestly, I think Ireland's ability to plan infrastructure is extremely poor.

We've had poor broadband.
Sewage getting into water in various places due to uncontrolled development in rural areas and no control of septic tanks.
Poor road infrastructure on rural roads as there are just vastly too many of them to maintain.
Really bad public transport as a lot of areas are too low density to serve.
We've no logic to hospitals and are being faced with having to rationalise a chaotic system that just 'evolved'
The school system is chaotic and there's no planning of what resources are needed where because it's just run by some kind of historical model where by charities were paid to run schools so, we've endless versions of schools and they're all spreading resources ridiculously thin.

It's not extreme low densities, it's this low density scatter development that causes the problem. Having really genuinely rural areas like Finland has with a few people is fine, but we have this tendency to just spread ourselves out at densities that just make everything awkward and damn expensive.

dxhound2005

bealtine wrote: »

While most of this polemic is probably correct I would disagree with some of the conclusions made here. These are the arguments blandly trotted out as truisms time and time again as an excuse to do nothing by the DECNR and eircom (and other telcos).

Let's examine them in a more realistic way:

Ireland is far from the most sparsely populated country in Europe.

Take Finland which has a population density of 17 people per sq. km
Finland has managed to rollout decent broadband of a 100Mb/s to within 2Kms of every citizen of that country with little reliance of 4g/3g.
Finland have also made broadband a legal right and telcos HAVE to comply...and make it happen even above the Arctic Circle

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/population-density-people-per-sq-km-wb-data.html

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ireland/population-density-people-per-sq-km-wb-data.html
Finland has a total area of 338,424 km2 with approx 5 million inhabitants They all have good broadband...

Similarly Estonia:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/estonia/population-density-people-per-sq-km-wb-data.html
They have population density of 30 per sq km and they have an extensive FTTH rollout too

Sweden also has reasonable broadband and a population density of 22 per sq km...

the list goes on.

In comparison Ireland is rather more densely populated. Ribbon development is indeed a factor in our poor performance in the broadband stakes but that's easily overcome if we even cared and weren't too busy playing the "it's not economically viable" card, that's simply another version of the Irish thing : "sure isn't it grand".

Basically it's pure laziness on our part and too much slavishly following the failed UK model.

I've lived in rural France too and the broadband is many times better than here..to be precise St Nicolas de Bourgeil in Tourraine a tiny village with lots of ribbon development and 10 years ago it had reasonable DSL out in the country, the area I lived in was 3 houses about 3 kms from the village. Of course if you had a really long line you couldn't get broadband but they put in "amplifiers" to get to those houses

I don't think Finland has managed that yet although it is planned. But there will still be 5% of the population in remote areas which commercial companies will not serve and will require a public subsidy to connect.

http://www.lvm.fi/web/en/broadband

Outside built-up areas telecom operators are expected to build fast data connections on market terms. This way, approximately 95 per cent coverage of the population will be achieved. Public funding is required to make fast connections available to some 130,000 households in sparsely populated areas, which will raise the population coverage to over 99 per cent.

red_bairn

Solair wrote: »

However, I still think the comparison with South Korea (especially on price) isn't really very useful.

I'm not comparing South Korea with Ireland. 50million to 4.5 million people and 100,210 km2 VS 70,273 km2...

The economy is completely different as well, that's why it's between 10-20$ per month on the internet subscription. You can have a package for 15$-30$.

I was just showing where you would get TRUE fibre. In my case though, I think it was FTTP/FTTB where the fibre ran all the way to that 'junction box' near the entrance and CAT6 cables were inside the walls to each living space(even though the little fibre box inside the metal opening says "FTTH").

Top 10 FTTx operators around the world since the end of 2009 (in number of subscribers)

Rank # Operator / Main technology & architecture = FTTx Subscribers
1 # NTT (Japan) / FTTH/B GEPON = 12 779 000
2 # China Telecom(1) / FTTH - FTTx+LAN EPON LAN/DSL = 11 160 000
3 # China Netcom(2) / FTTH - FTTx+LAN EPON LAN/DSL = 5 590 000
4 # KT (South Korea) / FTTB EPON/GEPON = 4 630 000
5 # Verizon (USA) / FTTH BPON/GPON = 3 430 000
6 # SK Broadband (South Korea) / FTTB/LAN GEPON = 3 032 099
7 # ER Telecom (Russia) / FTTB = 2 140 000
8 # AT&T (USA) / FTTN VDSL2 = 2 100 000
9 # Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan) / FTTB GEPON = 1 639 824
10# LG Powercom (South Korea) / FTTH/B EPON/GEPON = 1 566 206

-Source

This video, in that same article linked above is good at describing the network that Eircom is setting up.

bealtine

Solair wrote: »

I don't see why we shouldn't be en par with Northern Ireland, Scotland, Western France, etc all of which are comparable (although not completely).


That was driven by lack of competition and poor regulation allowing it to happen but also by eircom being bounced from one speculative investment entity to another. It suffered very badly from short-term speculation rather than being run as a normal telco until it was eventually landed in examinership!

There is a major issue with the current setup in Ireland in so far as it is not economically viable for a telco to reach all areas. It's not in France, it's not in Finland or anywhere else unless you subsidise it somehow.

Well my point is simply that these arguments are used over and over as a reason for doing nothing, that is simply wrong.

I saw a similar type of sprawl in France (especially in the wine growing region of Indre-Loire and in Northern Ireland too. I haven't been in Northern Ireland for a few years but I took a virtual spin around Omagh on google maps and it looks very like Kildare. Both these regions have overcome these "issues" and just got on with it...

I agree the sprawl is not as bad as here but it does exist elsewhere and is dealt with.

The "not economically viable" is simple to deal with...make it a requirement that telcos must deliver broadband (not only eircom)...end of problem. If it's not economically viable to deliver to remote islands or valleys we should be thinking of how we can deliver not "woe is us". We tend to favour the Hayek model of economics and I'm no fan of Hayek, it's a model that belongs to the 1950s (and in my opinion to the Victorian era) not to a modern economy:)

Having said all that this is indeed a problem of bad regulation, political will and foresight and also a lack of investment. In NI gap funding was used to help rollout broadband to areas that were not economically viable (not sure what they did in France)

However here areas that are not "economically viable" are areas like Dublin city centre and regions around Dublin like Wicklow and Louth etc. None of these areas are hard to reach...I know of villages in Wicklow that have no DSL but do have fibre running to/through the village and so on. These are not Inisvickaulane or the Black Valley they are areas that are less than 50km from Dublin.

We need to stop wringing our hands and saying we made mistakes in the past, sure we did, now the question is how do we deliver infrastructure, in this instance broadband. Here proper planning would indeed help, a coherent plan to install proper ducting on motorways and roads, this doesn't have to be done in a "big bang" way it can be done piecemeal. This is now dawning on the various regional and local authorities that it can be done relatively easily and over a period of time.

bealtine

dxhound2005 wrote: »

I don't think Finland has managed that yet although it is planned. But there will still be 5% of the population in remote areas which commercial companies will not serve and will require a public subsidy to connect.

http://www.lvm.fi/web/en/broadband

Thanks for that.

Here is a report of the most recent public briefing on the progress in Finland:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/10/finland-plan-for-universal-100mbps-service-by-2015-on-track/

Solair

I think we allowed a policy vacuum to emerge after Telecom Eireann was sold off because all of the state's telecommunication policy to that point had come largely from TE itself as it had been the public body tasked with providing national telecommunications services.

When the market opened, it became a purely commercial entity and was then sold off,

However, we should have held on to the access networks and we should have created a state telecommunications agency that was tasked with continuing the public service aspect and policy driving aspects of TE.

We now have a very narrowly focused market regulator that's more about competition law than standards of service and that has no role in driving policies or infrastructure rollout.

Meanwhile we've a government department responsible for telecoms and a load of other stuff and umpteen other agencies, bodies etc all with bits of the puzzle.

I'd narrow comregs role to pure competition law (maybe even send tgat askect of it to the competition authority) and regulation and create a telecoms body that drives policy and could for example use public service levies and other tools to balance investments and avoid cherry picking of urban areas and ignoring small exchanges / towns etc.

It would also be tasked with things like managing numbering, frequency allocations, technical standard development and policing standards of service provision.

However, it would have to have a public policy role to drive investment and telecommunications network planning.

The current system seems to still assume that the operators, especially eircom, will operate in the national interest. They're private, for profit companies that have an obligation to deliver their shareholders profits and nothing else.