SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

Connrang

Vodafone 1 Gig BB.
Ordered it on 4 Aug last, still waiting to be installed. There was a delay in getting the fibre to the pole outside my house, that was done in September. Its still there, latest from them was a projected install date of 26 Dec, I kid you not. I did have a visit from an engineer who asked my wife to sign a waiver before they dug up our driveway.....you can only imagine how that went. Extremely disappointed with them. They will advise on dates and then cancel late that day or never, then they ring you to tell you there was an issue when they called, but no one called....think I'll stick with Virgin, at least they stick to their install date.

9726_9726

Connrang wrote: »

Vodafone 1 Gig BB.
Ordered it on 4 Aug last, still waiting to be installed. There was a delay in getting the fibre to the pole outside my house, that was done in September. Its still there, latest from them was a projected install date of 26 Dec, I kid you not. I did have a visit from an engineer who asked my wife to sign a waiver before they dug up our driveway.....you can only imagine how that went. Extremely disappointed with them. They will advise on dates and then cancel late that day or never, then they ring you to tell you there was an issue when they called, but no one called....think I'll stick with Virgin, at least they stick to their install date.

If your wife refused the installation, surely the install is just a fail and they are not coming back. Did they say they are coming back?

Marlow

If your wife refused the civils to be done, they may try other ways (like overhead), but you may not get connected at all.

How on earth did she think, they would bring a new cable into the home ? At least SIRO is covering the expenses for getting this job done.

/M

TheDriver

Spotted a good few overhead installs this week, very neat and box on front wall at eave board level. It's funny seeing street of houses with wires going to either eir pole or ESB pole.

Marlow

TheDriver wrote: »

Spotted a good few overhead installs this week, very neat and box on front wall at eave board level. It's funny seeing street of houses with wires going to either eir pole or ESB pole.

27k+ premises nationwide can avail SIRO and OpenEIR FTTH (at the same time). Even more then also VDSL.

I don't have figures on how many of SIROs premises are designated overhead, but from the figures I've seen, it's just under 30% .. so not a small number.

/M

Connrang

Hi, I asked for the overhead option day 1, no problems. But the sub-contractor said it was not possible, the later came and said there was a problem with the underground duct hence the dig (our drive is cobble lock stone). How many wife's would sign a waiver not knowing what it was about. Unreasonable to say the least. The fact they make arrangements to call when I was home and then don't shows a lack of professionalism. I'm not waiting on their next set of excuses. Getting it installed would be nice but I can live without it continues. Oh, my neighbour got his installed, overhead from the same pole as me without issue. My brother got his installed last week, after 3 cancellations at the last minute. That said the guy doing it was great and had no problem with routing through the attic.

EdgeCase

It would seem like if you're willing to accept an overhead connection, and there's no planning issues or anything like that, then I would save them a considerable amount of money relative to digging your driveway.

BArra

he said the installer advised overhead was not possible

cunnijo

A couple of things puzzles me. Firstly why can the fibre cable not be fed down the same pipe as the ESB cable from the pole saving the hassle of having your driveway dug up and how can the Actavo installers do an overhead install when they cannot go up the ESB pole anywhere near the overhead power lines.

Marlow

cunnijo wrote: »

A couple of things puzzles me. Firstly why can the fibre cable not be fed down the same pipe as the ESB cable from the pole saving the hassle of having your driveway dug up and how can the Actavo installers do an overhead install when they cannot go up the ESB pole.

The fibre is fed down the same pipe as the ESB cable, if there is space. But sometimes, the ESB cable is either direct buried cable (no pipe at all) or there is no space.

As for an overhead install, the Actavo lads only bring it into the house. The work on the ESB pole is done by ESB network technicians. The typical scenario:

- Actavo or SIRO engineers arrive at house and find, that the DP is outside of permissible work environment. An O-ring bolt gets fitted on the house, where the overhead fibre is to come to the house.

- A build pack with all information is handed to ESB Networks, who then sends an ESB certified engineer out to bring enough fibre from the pole to the O-ring and leaves it there. This can take up to a month.

- The provider is notified, that this work has been completed and asked to reschedule with the customer, for Actavo to complete the installation.

- Actavo completes the installation.

So the Actavo engineers never go near the power lines.

/M

cunnijo

Marlow wrote: »

The fibre is fed down the same pipe as the ESB cable, if there is space. But sometimes, the ESB cable is either direct buried cable (no pipe at all) or there is no space.

As for an overhead install, the Actavo lads only bring it into the house. The work on the ESB pole is done by ESB network technicians. The typical scenario:

- Actavo or SIRO engineers arrive at house and find, that the DP is outside of permissible work environment. An O-ring bolt gets fitted on the house, where the overhead fibre is to come to the house.

- A build pack with all information is handed to ESB Networks, who then sends an ESB certified engineer out to bring enough fibre from the pole to the O-ring and leaves it there. This can take up to a month.

- The provider is notified, that this work has been completed and asked to reschedule with the customer, for Actavo to complete the installation.

- Actavo completes the installation.

So the Actavo engineers never go near the power lines.

/M

Thanks Marlow. I asked as I am experiencing this very issue. In my case the ESB cable is fed through a pipe from the pole to my ESB meter box and should be able to accommodate the fibre cable as it is about 4.5cm (2" wide). So there should be space (when the house was built the ESB supplied the pipe, as the pole was on a footpath close to Naas town where I live). As you mention the Actavo crews do not go near the overhead power lines which means a line engineer from the ESB will have to feed the fibre into the box as the top of the pipe is close to the power lines. So potentially it could be 2019 before the install will happen if at all even though I ordered the service from Digiweb on October 1st.

Mr. TTime

The Actavo ground crew sorted out my duct today - a few weeks behind schedule but happy that it is sorted now waiting for the next crew to arrive and connect me up. There is a loop of cable waiting outside the meter box ready to be installed.

I have a quick question around router location. When we bought the house we did a bit of remodelling and I managed to get some Cat 5e cables (I asked for Cat6) around the downstairs (2 in kitchen; 2 in front room; 2 in living room). These all terminate under the stairs in the hall where I currently have my Asus RT-AC87U router.

So to the question - the fiber will come in to the house in the front room very close to where I have my sockets. Can I simply connect the ONT to the socket and then straight to the router under the stairs? I am working under the assumption that I can but just looking for a bit of reassurance or guidance if I am incorrect.

oscarBravo

Mr. TTime wrote: »

So to the question - the fiber will come in to the house in the front room very close to where I have my sockets. Can I simply connect the ONT to the socket and then straight to the router under the stairs?

Yes, that will work perfectly.

TheDriver

Anyone know when next database update is?

Marlow

TheDriver wrote: »

Anyone know when next database update is?

Just about the corner. Give it a day or two.

/M

BArra

long shot but does anybody think that SIRO will implement a mapping system like the eir fibre rollout map (that I know is now not updated anymore)

sticking in your eircode onto the Siro site is well and good, but would like to see a map of where their lines are going?

Marlow

They used to have maps with the outline of their rollout.

Those are now gone.

Mapping like the fibre rollout map is difficult in an urban scenario. So that detail wouldn't happen.

OpenEir also only provided similar outlines for their Urban VDSL.

Bottom line: SIRO used to have those maps, but removed them.

/M

EdgeCase

Anyone have any idea if Siro will consider connecting overhead if a duct is blocked / not suitable where there's overhead lines adjacent too?

I've a house in Cork City that dates from the late 1970s and the ESB line comes in underground. I've never seen the duct. The cable seems to come up into the meter cabinet through an open void in the brickwork and I can't physically see any duct.

The Huawei guys surveyed the ducts outside and didn't make any comment other than to say that my house connects to a mini pillar outside which seems to serve 3 houses. It's quite a small metal cabinet without any vault.

It seems to cover a few houses and a street lamp. There's one at roughly every 3rd house.

On the other side of my house there's an overhead ESB distribution line which has drop-wires going into neighbouring houses that are not fed underground. That literally runs within 1 meter of my boundary wall. There's a lamppost with several ESB overhead drops coming off it to different houses.

My OpenEir line also comes in overhead from roughly the same location and crosses the front garden connecting in at the eves of the house, even though all the other houses in the street I'm on are served with underground Eir lines.

I was just wondering, if there's an issue with the duct, would it be possible that they could run the line overhead from the ESB pole?

Also we're doing some landscaping and I was wondering would it be worth rolling in some ductwork out to the pole ?

I confirmed with Siro that my eircode is definitely on the rollout, but there's no indication of when.

I'd suspect the uptake would be quite high in our area as the Virgin coverage is pretty patchy some streets have it, others weren't touched by Cork Multichannel years ago. Some areas also have Virgin TV but the wiring's too poor to provide broadband and OpenEir's VDSL cabinets are quite a long run of lines away so speeds tend to max out at about 40-60mbit/s for most of us.

Marlow

EdgeCase wrote: »

Anyone have any idea if Siro will consider connecting overhead if a duct is blocked / not suitable where there's overhead lines adjacent too?

You're probably connected by direct buried cable, which normally would disqualify you. But if that pole is there and in the vicinity of your house, then you'll be flagged as overhead installation.

SIRO are quite good like that. They will connect/pass as many house as they can and look at all options.

Your fiber does not have to come the same way as your power supply.

/M

Marlow

Had a chat with two Actavo installers from Letterkenny today, when I was in Sligo.

Busy in Donegal now with Buncrana also having gone live on SIRO.

/M

EdgeCase

It doesn't look like direct buried cable though - just fairly simple PVC covered grey stuff.

Airwire: MartinL

We have updated the database on our availability checker today.

Premises passed within our coverage:
Athlone - 758
Clarecastle - 79
Limerick - 653
Portlaoise - 79
Shannon - 161

It can be found here: https://www.airwire.ie/avail

jack presley

The Siro lads were doing work in my estate recently. How soon after the work on the ground is done before it becomes available? I presume it's a couple of months but typically how many?

TheDriver

jack presley wrote: »

The Siro lads were doing work in my estate recently. How soon after the work on the ground is done before it becomes available? I presume it's a couple of months but typically how many?

How long is a piece of string. We first saw work 8 months ago, then told we're going live in Nov and nothing happened.

5starpool

According to the siro site and an email I got from them siro is available at my address now (Ashbourne) but according to the Vodafone site it isn't. Does it take a day or so to propagate to the providers or something do ye know?

tsue921i8wljb3

5starpool wrote: »

According to the siro site and an email I got from them siro is available at my address now (Ashbourne) but according to the Vodafone site it isn't. Does it take a day or so to propagate to the providers or something do ye know?

SIRO would send a list of new premises to all ISPs. It is then up to the ISP to merge that data into their own availability checker. Some ISPs are more proactive at this than others. Keep checking over the next few days.

Connrang

Hi,
When SIRO laid the backbone in our area the first to benefit were VF customers who were upgraded. Then there will be the flyer drop and knock on the door of the sales people. But be careful, I signed up in August, the fibre cable is outside my gate on a pole and still no connection.....they will offer an installation date when they are signing you up so push for an early one, at least then you'll know if there will be difficulties.

Digiweb

5starpool wrote: »

According to the siro site and an email I got from them siro is available at my address now (Ashbourne) but according to the Vodafone site it isn't. Does it take a day or so to propagate to the providers or something do ye know?

Can check your Eircode via PM if you like

5starpool

Are all VF installs the gigabox now? Will that allow full 1gb speed on wired connections? I have cat 6 cables to be all rooms via a switch so have multiple devices connected via cable with a unifi AP also which I use for wireless (which I don't expect to be full speed obviously). I'm still weighing up providers but know someone in VF which is good if I ever have an issue which I can did recently. Is there a reason, given my setup, to prefer one supplier over another based on the supplied router?

I won't be getting phone or TV most likely via the BB.

tsue921i8wljb3

5starpool wrote: »

Are all VF installs the gigabox now? Will that allow full 1gb speed on wired connections? I have cat 6 cables to be all rooms via a switch so have multiple devices connected via cable with a unifi AP also which I use for wireless (which I don't expect to be full speed obviously). I'm still weighing up providers but know someone in VF which is good if I ever have an issue which I can did recently. Is there a reason, given my setup, to prefer one supplier over another based on the supplied router?

I won't be getting phone or TV most likely via the BB.

All Siro installs from Vodafone are the Gigabox I believe.

Vodafone have only recently introduced the Gigabox so you'd have to expect it is up to the task of routing 1Gb. You should not have issues really.

In Ashbourne is it not just Vodafone and Digiweb available?