SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

ED E

We've seen eir slowly easing themselves into it waiting for the NBP, they've been running FTTH for 3yrs now in some areas (if my memory is right on the dates). They know how much it will cost even outsourcing most of it to KNN, ESB's labour costs are even higher as their staff are on a lot more than eir and KNN and are required for anything using their plant.

It always seemed too good to be true to have a dual access network even though thats exactly what we need.

Ould Mr Brennan

ED E wrote: »

We've seen eir slowly easing themselves into it waiting for the NBP, they've been running FTTH for 3yrs now in some areas (if my memory is right on the dates). They know how much it will cost even outsourcing most of it to KNN, ESB's labour costs are even higher as their staff are on a lot more than eir and KNN and are required for anything using their plant.

It always seemed too good to be true to have a dual access network even though thats exactly what we need.

A fear of mine would be if siro begin to wind down their rollout then eircom might not feel too pressured with theirs

bk

Ould Mr Brennan wrote: »

A fear of mine would be if siro begin to wind down their rollout then eircom might not feel too pressured with theirs

I'm certain that would happen.

I believe Eir has always had a plan to go 100% FTTH eventually *

However I expect they were going to milk VDSL for a lot longer and to slowly and steadily upgrade to FTTH. Siro seems to have forced them to speed up their plans and rollout FTTH faster.

If Siro falter, then it is likely Eir will go back to their original plan of a slower upgrade to FTTH.

* Even if Eir don't face competition, FTTH is in Eir's long term interest, if Comreg lets them replace the copper network with it, due to much lover maintenance and opex costs. The rollout would just be slower and the product more expensive due to lack of competition.

damienirel

bk wrote: »

I'm certain that would happen.

I believe Eir has always had a plan to go 100% FTTH eventually *

However I expect they were going to milk VDSL for a lot longer and to slowly and steadily upgrade to FTTH. Siro seems to have forced them to speed up their plans and rollout FTTH faster.

If Siro falter, then it is likely Eir will go back to their original plan of a slower upgrade to FTTH.

* Even if Eir don't face competition, FTTH is in Eir's long term interest, if Comreg lets them replace the copper network with it, due to much lover maintenance and opex costs. The rollout would just be slower and the product more expensive due to lack of competition.

I would have thought Siro was the one true hope - Eir/com has such a brutal track record it's hard to see them move quickly and cost themselves money.

The help forums here are full of complaints on how customers planned area upgrades have been pushed out for many months even years. It's already faltering. If you don't have fibre already chances of it becoming available this year are slim I'd say. NBP needs to pick up pace for anything to happen.

Subcomandante Marcos

user2011 wrote: »

There based up at the old brewery see them coming out of there every morning.

If you're seeing ESB vans coming in and out of the old Brewery it's because John Teeling Sr (former of Cooley) has bought it and is building a new multi-million euro distillery there. It would be a pretty big job and I'd say the ESB are installing stuff on site for the new build. They're already making spirits on side and are expanding.

rustalan

He's talking about the McArdle and Moore brewery. Teeling bought the old Harp brewery.

Subcomandante Marcos

rustalan wrote: »

He's talking about the McArdle and Moore brewery. Teeling bought the old Harp brewery.

Ah, fair enough.

Was snooping the thread to see if there were updates for SIRO in my area and saw that and thought he meant the Great Northern site.

rustalan

Siro updated their rollout page. They have enabled another small section in Dundalk and a bigger one in Carrigaline.

fr0zen

According to their rollout map I am in the covered area of Carrigaline, I guess its just a matter of Vodafone starting to roll out the service

Flibbles

Received an email from SIRO.


"The construction process has commenced in Letterkenny and Tralee is at survey stage."

Woo!

PeadarB

Flibbles wrote: »

Received an email from SIRO.


"The construction process has commenced in Letterkenny and Tralee is at survey stage."

Woo!

Noticed that over the last few weeks. The KN lads were at the sub-station in Sylvan Park this morning. They have been more active since the Christmas break and at the rate they are moving at now I wouldn't be surprised to see some connections by the end of March. I'll need to transfer to vodafone now as eir have said they will not provide me with a connection to their new fibre run as I don't have a ducted connection to my house. I have a ducted Electric Ireland connection though and look forward to connecting to Siro via the mini-pillar some time soon.

It's a pity as I've had stellar service from eir FTTC up to now.

ukoda

PeadarB wrote: »

Noticed that over the last few weeks. The KN lads were at the sub-station in Sylvan Park this morning. They have been more active since the Christmas break and at the rate they are moving at now I wouldn't be surprised to see some connections by the end of March. I'll need to transfer to vodafone now as eir have said they will not provide me with a connection to their new fibre run as I don't have a ducted connection to my house. I have a ducted Electric Ireland connection though and look forward to connecting to Siro via the mini-pillar some time soon.

It's a pity as I've had stellar service from eir FTTC up to now.

Out of curiously, I assume you are willing to pay the prices Vodafone are offering it at?

PeadarB

ukoda wrote: »

Out of curiously, I assume you are willing to pay the prices Vodafone are offering it at?

Eir have said definitively that they will not provide me with FTTH any time soon despite the fact that the new fibre run is only 25 metres from my PSTN "pole drop," which is fed from the same manhole containing the new fibre core.

I have no issue with the prices charged by Vodafone. I moved from them to eir when the FTTC was first mooted and was connected within 1 week to the then new FTTC in May 2013. I've been out of contract for some time and am free to move wherever, when the time comes.

Praetorian

rustalan wrote: »

Siro updated their rollout page. They have enabled another small section in Dundalk and a bigger one in Carrigaline.

At this pace Siro should complete their rollout by 2099. It's really not a very inspiring rollout so far.

Kristopherus

Praetorian wrote: »

At this pace Siro should complete their rollout by 2099. It's really not a very inspiring rollout so far.

You're very correct there. I got an email from them last week. Absolutely nothing new in it. A fine example of a "holding" message is what I would call it.:mad:

rustalan

It does seem slow. However, they have a lot more of Dundalk nearly finished by the look of it. It seems that they run the initial cable along the poles and leave a coil of cable about half way down. It looks as though another crew come back a few months down the line and but a black box on the coil of cable. This is what they did on the Point road which is live at present. They have sizable areas with these boxes completed. They also have a lot more areas with just the cable run especially Blackrock and Haggardstown.

Eir started their FTTC rollout according to this article around the beginning of 2012:

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/2012/02/20/eircom-fibre-rollout-plans-to-reach-1m-homes-in-three-years

Reading the first post of this thread http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=77212923&postcount=1 they were to have 1.6 million premises done by mid 2016. I guess these things take time.

I agree the rollout looks to be slow but as other posters have pointed out Eirs rollout was pretty spectacular speed wise.

I did read an article (sorry cant find the link) where the Siro crew said Dundalk would be finished by July 2016. I don't know how on target they are to completing that though. They started on the Point road around July 2015

Mgit

I don't think it's fair to compare the eircom fttc rollout and siro ftth in terms of rollout times. Eir just had to put in cabinets, each covering up to a few hundred homes.
Siro must facilitate every single property in dundalk and plan for this. I think if they give every single home service it will be a major achievement and a drastic change from eirs hit and miss availability and distance dependent speeds.
As far I know the fibre will never be connected into your house until you order service. If you do the installer will come and blow the fibre from the esb mini pillar into your meter and then drill a hole into your house.
I'm guessing it would be silly to waste time pulling the fibre into houses that may never use the service. I think I read this in the Vodafone terms and conditions or maybe in a thread here...

Danny Boy

Mgit wrote: »

I don't think it's fair to compare the eircom fttc rollout and siro ftth in terms of rollout times. Eir just had to put in cabinets, each covering up to a few hundred homes.
Siro must facilitate every single property in dundalk and plan for this. I think if they give every single home service it will be a major achievement and a drastic change from eirs hit and miss availability and distance dependent speeds.
As far I know the fibre will never be connected into your house until you order service. If you do the installer will come and blow the fibre from the esb mini pillar into your meter and then drill a hole into your house.
I'm guessing it would be silly to waste time pulling the fibre into houses that may never use the service. I think I read this in the Vodafone terms and conditions or maybe in a thread here...

If they get 5 per cent paying customers I'll be surprised

rustalan

Mgit wrote: »

I don't think it's fair to compare the eircom fttc rollout and siro ftth in terms of rollout times. Eir just had to put in cabinets, each covering up to a few hundred homes.
Siro must facilitate every single property in dundalk and plan for this. I think if they give every single home service it will be a major achievement and a drastic change from eirs hit and miss availability and distance dependent speeds.
As far I know the fibre will never be connected into your house until you order service. If you do the installer will come and blow the fibre from the esb mini pillar into your meter and then drill a hole into your house.
I'm guessing it would be silly to waste time pulling the fibre into houses that may never use the service. I think I read this in the Vodafone terms and conditions or maybe in a thread here...

This is the point I was trying to make (poorly). The FTTC rollout is all we really have to compare to and Eir's initial estimate was 3.5 years. SIRO should take longer but understandably people want the service yesterday but it will take time. For example it took them a full day yesterday to run cable on the poles to 16 houses yesterday along a 300m stretch of road.

rustalan

Danny Boy wrote: »

If they get 5 per cent paying customers I'll be surprised

Why do you think they will get less than 5%?

Danny Boy

rustalan wrote: »

Why do you think they will get less than 5%?

Because the vast majority of the market won't pay you a red cent extra for 1000Mb over 40Mb - they only care if netflix, skype and a few other things they use work reliably.

And c40Mb through FTTC is more than enough for that.

SIRO are solving a problem that just doesn't exist for the vast majority of users. It did 3/4 years ago but that was 3/4 years ago.

They will of course get the Vodafone customers.

rustalan

Danny Boy wrote: »

Because the vast majority of the market won't pay you a red cent extra for 1000Mb over 40Mb - they only care if netflix, skype and a few other things they use work reliably.

And c40Mb through FTTC is more than enough for that.

SIRO are solving a problem that just doesn't exist for the vast majority of users. It did 3/4 years ago but that was 3/4 years ago.

They will of course get the Vodafone customers.

But you're assuming most people have over 40mb which is just not true. FTTC only covers you if you are around 1200m cable length from the cab. And at that you won't get close to 40mb.

Vodafone TV on its own requires 40 odd mb to run. Its not a great service granted but I'm just using it as an example. 4K TV is becoming more popular and with new services such as Sky Q 40mb will be quickly used up with multiple devices streaming.

Siro is a premium product as was E-fibre when it was first released. I think its very short sighted to think that 40mb will cover our internet needs for the future.

At the minute Eir and Siro are targeting different areas and competition for FTTH is just not there so the price will be dearer than standard up to 100mb broadband but as more areas come online competition will drive these prices down.

Vodafone's simply broadband price is 40 euro a month. This covers <1mb broadband to 100mb broadband. The price for guaranteed 350mb broadband will be 55 euro a month. I'll be very happy paying that and I think there will be plenty who will pay it too.

Slutmonkey57b

As anyone can see from upc's network, topline speeds are only half the issue. They've got customers on reliable 240mb who can't stream YouTube videos in standard resolution because they're not properly peered. You can download 50 gigs from steam in minutes and struggle to watch a 30 second cat video when it's finished.

Mgit

I'm all for new technology and very techie myself but I'm inclined to agree with you about the average internet user. I moved from a house with 2mb/s last year to a new house with 27mb/s efibre and I find it v fast and if I wasn't techie I wudnt even think of changing unless it was cheaper.
Unless you are very close to access points and modems you won't get more than 30 or 40mb on wireless so that's a big problem siro will have to overcome. I cabled my house with cat 5 cable in prep for siro but I know people who got efibre and said it was crap and no faster then their old 5mb connection. They were barely holding a wifi signal because of the modem location and being non techie blamed the poor speed on efibre.

There is many estates in dundalk such as some on the blackrock road, kingwood and the loakers that cannot get any efibre. Kingswood gets about 4mb/s and the loakers just gets 2mb/s. I think they will get huge uptake on siro especially in houses with non irish people who use online TV and voip etc

Danny Boy wrote: »

Because the vast majority of the market won't pay you a red cent extra for 1000Mb over 40Mb - they only care if netflix, skype and a few other things they use work reliably.

And c40Mb through FTTC is more than enough for that.

SIRO are solving a problem that just doesn't exist for the vast majority of users. It did 3/4 years ago but that was 3/4 years ago.

They will of course get the Vodafone customers.

satguy

I have Virgin 360MB



It's slowed down a bit when I moved from 240MB, an extra tenner and drop 20 or so MB's .. I signed up for a year, I had to let my Netflix sub go, the way they peer it just makes it so slow, I just gave up, it was that bad.

I watch youtube in 720p, only sometimes, maybe in the evening I might have to wait for a clip to buffer, just like the old dial up days.

I read that eir peer better with Netflix, and that someone with eir on 100MB can have a better Netflix experience than someone on Virgin 360MB..

Maybe next year if my area is wired and my contract with Virgin is up, I will move to SIRO and get that 4K TV I have my eye on...

dub45

Mgit wrote: »

I'm all for new technology and very techie myself but I'm inclined to agree with you about the average internet user. I moved from a house with 2mb/s last year to a new house with 27mb/s efibre and I find it v fast and if I wasn't techie I wudnt even think of changing unless it was cheaper.
Unless you are very close to access points and modems you won't get more than 30 or 40mb on wireless so that's a big problem siro will have to overcome. I cabled my house with cat 5 cable in prep for siro but I know people who got efibre and said it was crap and no faster then their old 5mb connection. They were barely holding a wifi signal because of the modem location and being non techie blamed the poor speed on efibre.

There is many estates in dundalk such as some on the blackrock road, kingwood and the loakers that cannot get any efibre. Kingswood gets about 4mb/s and the loakers just gets 2mb/s. I think they will get huge uptake on siro especially in houses with non irish people who use online TV and voip etc

I agree with you on the bolded bit - a huge number of people just want a fast reliable wifi signal and are not interested in the technical side of things - I meet lots of them in the work that I do. And again I keep saying it - so many devices now come with no ethernet capabilities that there must be plenty of homes now with no ethernet equipped devices at all.

Avada

satguy wrote: »

It's slowed down a bit when I moved from 240MB, an extra tenner and drop 20 or so MB's .. I signed up for a year, I had to let my Netflix sub go, the way they peer it just makes it so slow, I just gave up, it was that bad.

I watch youtube in 720p, only sometimes, maybe in the evening I might have to wait for a clip to buffer, just like the old dial up days.

I read that eir peer better with Netflix, and that someone with eir on 100MB can have a better Netflix experience than someone on Virgin 360MB..

Maybe next year if my area is wired and my contract with Virgin is up, I will move to SIRO and get that 4K TV I have my eye on...

Is that a wired speed test? If it is, I'd say you have a fault somewhere. Also, regarding Netflix, I've never had an issue with it on Virgin.

TireeTerror

satguy wrote: »

I have Virgin 360MB



It's slowed down a bit when I moved from 240MB, an extra tenner and drop 20 or so MB's .. I signed up for a year, I had to let my Netflix sub go, the way they peer it just makes it so slow, I just gave up, it was that bad.

I watch youtube in 720p, only sometimes, maybe in the evening I might have to wait for a clip to buffer, just like the old dial up days.

I read that eir peer better with Netflix, and that someone with eir on 100MB can have a better Netflix experience than someone on Virgin 360MB..

Maybe next year if my area is wired and my contract with Virgin is up, I will move to SIRO and get that 4K TV I have my eye on...

Something is not right with your service, your experience is not what you would get on Virgin. I think your memory of dial-up is slightly skewed, you would get a shock trying to load up a video nowadays on that speed.

You should be able to stream lots of HD content. I was with Virgin on 240Mb, before the 360Mb came out I moved house. My girlfriend was constantly streaming through Popcorn time in HD, I had 3 HD sports channels streaming on different monitors and I was also playing Battlefield 4 online. I also had my laptop downloading about 2-3TB of data per month as I was downloading all the TV series and movies and PC games because I knew I was moving house and would have to use 3 on 4G. I was able to do all of that with no lag whatsoever. If I clicked on youtube and had it set to 4K it would play instantly with not even 1 second of buffering. I could skip it ahead of where it had loaded and it would pick up in less than a second.

So yeah, something not right and you need to get on to them and make sure you are using Ethernet cables, and not old cat5 cables which are not fast enough. Also if youre using powerplug/powerlines you will lose a lot of speed, and also make sure they have a gigabit Ethernet port, most of them do not and the speed claims are actually only the theoretical maximum between the plugs, not from the computer and router as they are limited to 100Mb max due to Ethernet port being too slow.

enfant terrible

TireeTerror wrote: »

Something is not right with your service, your experience is not what you would get on Virgin.

Its happening to a lot of people
http://www.boards.ie/ttfthread/2057547730

Varik

Netflix publish the connection to each respective isp, and Virgin don't look bad until you realize that they have a connection that's on average 5-10 times faster than the average eir/vodafone/ect customer but still are in the middle of the pack for nexflix speeds.

Eir 3.15Mbps
Virgin 3.08Mbps