SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

ED E

UPCs MMDS stuff is very much a legacy product and not really something to be taken seriously. The vast majority of the network is HFC and a stellar product, so you cant really rate them on it.


They take their time with upgrades, slow and steady but with proper workmanship and stable deployments. Wherever they go, they win, no point in taking risks until FTTH starts to become a threat (which it hopefully will be soon).

jca

I can't speak for Ashbourne but here it isn't a mmds system. It's a hotch potch mess of poorly hung ancient cables,relay boxes and the poorest quality internal wiring I've ever seen. Slow is certainly the correct word to be using. A walk around looking at the standard of workmanship would make you shudder.

red_bairn

Irish Steve wrote:

Round this area (Ashbourne), they're a serious sick joke, the cable network is still using the same outdated and inappropriate technology that it was using in 1990 when it was Ashbourne Relays, before Chorus took it over and made an even bigger mess of it before being swallowed up by UPC.

We have Chorus as well and UPC provide broadband to a newer area called Charlesland to the south of Greystones. The TV is poop and we are unfortunate to be direct fed customers for Eircom with FTTC around the corner. Literally biting my pillow here over how annoying it is to have these systems so close yet so far. It would have been a blessing to have ESB setup sometime this year...now that looks like it will be some time.

loyatemu

Surely an opportunity for UPC in places like Ashbourne & Greystones where they have the coax in place but haven't fully upgraded yet to try and get the jump on Eircom and ESB before FTTH gets rolled out. I don't know anyone who uses UPC for their TV in Greystones, yet virtually every house has their cable attached to it.

bk

MOD: Lads, this is a thread about ESB/Vodafone FTTH, not UPC TV! Please back on topic.

The majority of UPC's network has been upgraded to a very high quality HFC network which delivers fantastic speeds and reliability. UPC absolutely dominate the areas they have upgraded, taking as much as 50% of Eircoms phone and broadband customers in those areas.

Unfortunately they are still a small number of areas, which I believe represent well less then 10% of UPC's total customers, that haven't been upgraded yet and are stuck on crappy legacy NTL and even worse Chorus networks.

These areas are usually isolated from the rest of the UPC network. They aren't feed by fiber, they are fed by crappy low bandwidth microwave links and the cables to the houses are old and probably support at best half the radio bandwidth of upgraded areas.

In order to upgrade these areas, UPC needs to run (or rent) lots of fiber from their main network to these areas, install HFC nodes on every street/estate and run new cable to each house.

You should think of these areas like old Eircom areas that have ADSL only and haven't been upgraded with fiber feed FTTC cabs and VDSL yet.

It really is a pity that these areas still exist and haven't been upgraded yet. But I'm sure it is a simple economic business decision for UPC if they should upgrade them or not.

The only thing that is sort of on topic about this conversation, is this question: given that UPC Ireland is now directly part of Virgin Media UK, will UPC Ireland get some of the £3 billion they announced to expand in the UK, to also expand their network here in Ireland, potentially upgrading the areas discussed above? And especially if ESB delay their FTTH rollout.

Nollog

The last month I've seen heavy machinery around the train station down by the pier(?) in cobh, this morning I saw a new electricity pole and a thin black cable coming from the sea.

No idea if related, could be anything. also could've been sleep-deprived and the pole's been there the whole time, the wire being some string of a workman's kite.
I've no idea what's going on there, no KN or ESB vans, I always assumed it was irish water or ianrod, since I saw large pipes a week or two ago, ones I assume would be for water, or some magic that made rails work.

SpaceTime

bk wrote: »

The only thing that is sort of on topic about this conversation, is this question: given that UPC Ireland is now directly part of Virgin Media UK, will UPC Ireland get some of the £3 billion they announced to expand in the UK, to also expand their network here in Ireland, potentially upgrading the areas discussed above? And especially if ESB delay their FTTH rollout.

Unfortunately, that's not quite the case.

Liberty Global is the parent company behind UPC (Ireland and several other markets), UnityMedia/KableBW (Germany), Ziggo (NL), Telenet (Belgium) and it acquired Virgin Media.

They're sister companies, owned by a single parent entity that is working towards integrating itself into being a big pan-European player with all of those efficiencies.

Any UK network investment in Virgin Media is just that. It's unlikely to have any implications in the Ireland except in Northern Ireland where they operate.

UPC Ireland's network is currently higher capacity and faster than Virgin Media which currently maxes out at 152Mbit/s vs 240Mbit/s here (domestic/residential) and 500Mbit/s (business).

It's more likely they'll ditch the virgin brand slowly in the UK than adopt it across their full portfolio of cable companies as it's a licensed brand and I can't see them wanting to ditch their rather expensive UPC rebrand in favour of paying someone else for a brand.

I'd say UK customers might see TiVo replaced with the next generation of Horizon or something like that and the Virgin logo gradually being phased out in favour of either UPC or Liberty.

They recently purchased Ziggo in the Netherlands too and opted to rebrand UPC NL as Ziggo instead of the other way around. So, perhaps they might be planning on using the Ziggo brand across the full network..?

Basically though, UPC Ireland and Virgin Media UK's plans aren't connected at present at all in terms of management. They're sister companies now but that's as far as the relationship goes. (May change, but hasn't so far).

UPC Ireland was actually part of UPC Holding BV in the Netherlands, not Virgin Media UK.
It's now been 'extracted' as UPC Broadband Ireland Ltd. So, it remains to be seen how they reorganise it.
It would appear that since Feb 2015 they're connecting it directly to the UK but it's arms-length and more of an internal reorganisation. It's been moved from the UPC NL BV 'credit pool' to the Virgin Media one, and UPC NL was moved into a new pool with Ziggo leaving the UPC NL BV group mostly focused on Eastern Europe (and Austria)

http://www.libertyglobal.com has all the info - as you can see the branding's a version of UPC's - just with a transparent logo and more multicolours.

There is also a strong possibility that Liberty Global will merge the UK and Irish operations into a single brand to get more bang for their buck with advertising too. It would give UPC Ireland a lot more clout with access to rights for programming, especially on-demand/prime.

The other thing about UPC which could bring this back bang on topic is that Vodafone has been sniffing around Liberty Global for some time now. Lot of denials, but there's still a possibility that they may attempt to buy the entire Liberty European portfolio.

That could make the Irish operation with ESB interesting!

bk

SpaceTime I thought Virgin Media had now actually bought UPC Ireland and is now directly it's parent:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/28/idUSFit91230320150128

Perhaps it hasn't gone through yet?

Certainly the CEO of UPC Ireland now reports Virgin Medias CEO:

http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2014/11/18/upc-irelands-ternsjo-to-report-to-virgins-mockridge/

This could either be very good or very bad news!

When it comes to infrastructure, UPC Ireland are far ahead of Virgin. Not only is the top speed 240Mb/s versus 150Mb/s, but if you read UK broadband forums, you hear that Virgin Media suffers badly from congestion at peak times, with speeds dropping to as little as 10Mb/s!! Something you don't see happen here in Ireland at all.

On the other hand Virgin Media do a far better job with Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) then UPC. Virgins broadband router is considered the best supplied by an ISP in the UK. It is a dual band, dual radio 802.11n model with excellent wireless performance and it supports bridging by default in it's admin interface. And supposedly they are currently testing a new 802.11ac model!

On the TV side they use TiVo for their DVR, which is not only far superior to Horizon, but also considered by most to be far superior to Sky+

UPC Ireland's CPE is really bad. Which is surprising as that is the easy part of the equation! Getting infrastructure right is much more difficult and expensive.

So I hope we will see some of the Virgin Media CPE make it to Ireland, while keeping up the quality of UPC Irelands network infrastructure. However I fair the reverse may happen!!

SpaceTime

It's only an internal reorganisation of Liberty Global, they're all sister companies under the Liberty Global umbrella in reality.

They're pulling UPC Ireland out of a holding company that is primarily focused on Switzerland, Austria and Eastern Europe. UPC NL has been pulled out too. I suspect they're going to create a big Benelux/German speaking brand under Ziggo and then perhaps leave UPC with the more Eastern European focused market as it's also got Direct-to-home Satellite TV etc in those markets too.

This diagram gives a good idea of where they're at:



The blue bits are UPC branded, the other colours are other brands. You can see UPC IRL is way out on its own there.

My only concern is that Virgin Media (or whatever it becomes) might just see Ireland as that annoying extra bit of the UK market and ignore us. Our cable networks were floundering with NTL IRL.

Liberty's big announcement though is most likely to bring Virgin Media UK up to speed with the UPC networks rather than anything else. It needs quite a lot of rewiring much like the networks here did over the last few years.

rob808

Maybe ESB migth of delay it to see if they win NBP contract in summer,even doh if they don't they start working on the towns they announced.why is everyone talking about upc got Notting to do with ESB and Vodafone.

kaizersoze

What might be the delayed start?
I wonder are they realising that €450m isn't going to cut it?

SpaceTime

€450m will cut it as it's scalable - just depends how much of 'it' you want to cut.

bk

SpaceTime wrote: »

€450m will cut it as it's scalable - just depends how much of 'it' you want to cut.

Yes, but if the price per home is more expensive then they originally estimated, that would throw off either their profit margin or the price they paln to charge for it. Thus maybe making it uneconomic

I hope not.

itsallok

bk wrote: »

T
The problem with being a reseller is that it is a low margin business. Almost all the profit is in actually owning the network.

I agree with you if the operator profile is end-to-end reseller. But, an operator with exchange level hand-off and their own in-situ backhaul can survive perfectly well and make good margins. There are at least 3 of these in Ireland at the moment, but Sky & Vodafone are not in that pot.

It allows an all-opex model as opposed to the capex heavy network operator model, with payback over 10 years. It's a perfectly legitimate and prudent decision to go this way, as you are not tied to any particular last mile, just the best available back to the exchange.

rob808

They probably do what eircom doing and charge it as a premium services to make up for cost.

Nollog

rob808 wrote: »

They probably do what eircom doing and charge it as a premium services to make up for cost.

Anyone not expecting a large installation charge and anything lower than UPC's top-tier whatever it will be at the time, monthly, is being a silly goose.

Azhrei

/\/ollog wrote: »

The last month I've seen heavy machinery around the train station down by the pier(?) in cobh, this morning I saw a new electricity pole and a thin black cable coming from the sea.

No idea if related, could be anything. also could've been sleep-deprived and the pole's been there the whole time, the wire being some string of a workman's kite.
I've no idea what's going on there, no KN or ESB vans, I always assumed it was irish water or ianrod, since I saw large pipes a week or two ago, ones I assume would be for water, or some magic that made rails work.

You mean down along the deep water quay? There is some serious work going on down there alright, I assumed at first it was initial construction on the new marina but as far as I know it's too far down to be that. I did see two KN vans pulling away from the site a few weeks ago, I managed to catch one before it left and asked the guys inside if they were working on something for the ESB in the area. They said they weren't.

I don't know anything about a new pole, but I did see the large pipes that you did. Who knows what's going on there.

bk

/\/ollog wrote: »

Anyone not expecting a large installation charge and anything lower than UPC's top-tier whatever it will be at the time, monthly, is being a silly goose.

Well I certainly wouldn't expect it to be less then UPC's €45 per month. However I can certainly see them matching this and also there being little or no install cost.

Lets do the maths. The ESB say they will connect 500,000 homes at a cost of 450 million, that works out at €900 per home install cost.

ESB's 10 year bond rate is just 1.67%, so total cost per home including financing is, €978 per home. Lets make it €1000 for simplicity.

€1000 / 10 / 12 = €8.33 line rental per month per home.

Of course there are more costs then just this, ongoing maintenance and oeprating costs, backhaul costs, costumer support and billing costs, etc. Plus the expectation that you will only win half of the homes you pass.

But still, hitting €45 per month with no install cost seems very doable.

Remember, the ESB aren't hampered by Eircoms massive debt or their legacy copper networj to maintain and service. So their costs would be much lower.

rob808

bk wrote: »

Well I certainly wouldn't expect it to be less then UPC's €45 per month. However I can certainly see them matching this and also there being little or no install cost.

Lets do the maths. The ESB say they will connect 500,000 homes at a cost of 450 million, that works out at €900 per home install cost.

ESB's 10 year bond rate is just 1.67%, so total cost per home including financing is, €978 per home. Lets make it €1000 for simplicity.

€1000 / 10 / 12 = €8.33 line rental per month per home.

Of course there are more costs then just this, ongoing maintenance and oeprating costs, backhaul costs, costumer support and billing costs, etc. Plus the expectation that you will only win half of the homes you pass.

But still, hitting €45 per month with no install cost seems very doable.

Remember, the ESB aren't hampered by Eircoms massive debt or their legacy copper networj to maintain and service. So their costs would be much lower.

Well ESB will just own the network and do maintenance were as vodafone will run it customer support billing cost.They probably have different packs since Vodafone now doing Tv.I guess you luck people who getting it have wait and see what price they will be charging can't see it be cheap doh.

dbit

UPC are now advertising home phone and 240MB Broadband for 25 a month , I am not sure if that is an initial sign up discount and whether or not it then flips after 6 months . The pricing battles have begun.

Avada

dbit wrote: »

UPC are now advertising home phone and 240MB Broadband for 25 a month , I am not sure if that is an initial sign up discount and whether or not it then flips after 6 months . The pricing battles have begun.

Thats €25 for 4 months, then €45 after that. Still a cracking deal.

Nollog

bk wrote: »

Well I certainly wouldn't expect it to be less then UPC's €45 per month. However I can certainly see them matching this and also there being little or no install cost.

Lets do the maths. The ESB say they will connect 500,000 homes at a cost of 450 million, that works out at €900 per home install cost.

ESB's 10 year bond rate is just 1.67%, so total cost per home including financing is, €978 per home. Lets make it €1000 for simplicity.

€1000 / 10 / 12 = €8.33 line rental per month per home.

Of course there are more costs then just this, ongoing maintenance and oeprating costs, backhaul costs, costumer support and billing costs, etc. Plus the expectation that you will only win half of the homes you pass.

But still, hitting €45 per month with no install cost seems very doable.

Remember, the ESB aren't hampered by Eircoms massive debt or their legacy copper networj to maintain and service. So their costs would be much lower.

But they're in it for the money, and the equipment would be more expensive than a simple docsis 3 modem.

They're building a network on top of a network, they're not just plugging you in to what's already there.
I'd say 50 to 100 euro installation, 50 per month until they've got the lions share and expand.

rob808 wrote: »

Well ESB will just own the network and do maintenance were as vodafone will run it customer support billing cost.They probably have different packs since Vodafone now doing Tv.I guess you luck people who getting it have wait and see what price they will be charging can't see it be cheap doh.

Aw, I was hoping Vodafone wouldn't have anything to do with the consumer side. 100 GB cap on 1 gbit down/upload incoming.

dbit wrote: »

UPC are now advertising home phone and 240MB Broadband for 25 a month , I am not sure if that is an initial sign up discount and whether or not it then flips after 6 months . The pricing battles have begun.

is for first 4 months, 18 month contract for €45 after that.

MyPrime should be launching on the 23rd btw.

dbit

I regularly transfer 300 -380 GB a month on Eircoms 17MB adsl+2 service , never been warned once. On upc i used to push the same amounts , ESB/Voda restricting users to 100GB does not seem like a real world expectation for a home of up to 4-5 users to be fair. ??

Nollog

dbit wrote: »

I regularly transfer 300 -380 GB a month on Eircoms 17MB adsl+2 service , never been warned once. On upc i used to push the same amounts , ESB/Voda restricting users to 100GB does not seem like a real world expectation for a home of up to 4-5 users to be fair. ??

I do this thing where I exaggerate numbers to illustrate my point more vividly.

The cap would probably be half a terrabyte.

dbit

/\/ollog wrote: »

I do this thing where I exaggerate numbers to illustrate my point more vividly.

The cap would probably be half a terrabyte.

No worries M8 thanks .

dalta5billion

/\/ollog wrote: »

I do this thing where I exaggerate numbers to illustrate my point more vividly.

The cap would probably be half a terrabyte.

Vodafone have now removed the 300GB limit from all their plans.

dbit

The old cap levels are not practical in terms of modern speeds and ramp up in the demand from home users, I would guess in the near future a FUP and CAP will be a thing of the past.

murphaph

/\/ollog wrote: »

I do this thing where I exaggerate numbers to illustrate my point more vividly.

The cap would probably be half a terrabyte.

Basically you have no idea if there will even be a cap. It's a totally different product and Vodafone will "be on the customer side" insofar as Eirsom is on the customer side with VDSL...they are just a reseller (their retail arm) of the wholesale product.

bk

/\/ollog wrote: »

But they're in it for the money, and the equipment would be more expensive than a simple docsis 3 modem.

They're building a network on top of a network, they're not just plugging you in to what's already there.

Neither are UPC. UPC also pretty much rebuilt their entire network to support DOCSIS 3.0 and the high speeds we see today. They ran new fiber to pretty much every street in Dublin. New HFC cabs and even new coaxial cable run to every home that supports much higher bandwidth levels!

UPC was as big a build out and cost about the same, 500 million, as ESB's FTTH build. So they should be relatively equivalent.

The vast majority of the cost of building either network is in the labour and civils. More then 80% of the cost. FTTH versus HFC makes almost no cost difference.

murphaph wrote: »

Basically you have no idea if there will even be a cap. It's a totally different product and Vodafone will "be on the customer side" insofar as Eirsom is on the customer side with VDSL...they are just a reseller (their retail arm) of the wholesale product.

Well it is a little more complicated then that.

I believe ESB will operate the physical network, while Vodafone will actually be looking after the network operations at a wholesale level.

I'm sure Vodafone retail will then resell ESB/Vodafones wholesale product. But so can Eircom Retail, Sky, etc. and I believe they will all be dealing with Vodafone wholesale. Which seems to be a new thing for Vodafone.

KOR101

bk wrote: »

ESB's 10 year bond rate is just 1.67%, so total cost per home including financing is, €978 per home.

That's not how it works. The future cash flows must be discounted at a rate that reflects the risk of the investment, not the riskiness of the financing.

Even when you use existing cash the financing cost is what is called the opportunity cost of capital. By investing in something, you forego the opportunity to invest in something else of equal risk. Vodaphone can give the cash to shareholders to invest elsewhere.

I drew attention to the bond yields to illustrate the huge difference between Eircom and ESB and the investment case they face. It is also true that there has never been an easier time than now to make this sort of investment. The financial world is awash with money.