NBP: National Broadband Plan Announced

celticbhoy27

The Cush wrote: »

Actually still going on about giving it to the ESB as if they'll do it cheaper.

5 bloody g. For once I'll look forward to ff canvassers coming to my door. They'll be getting an earful.

theguzman

zapitastas wrote: »

Strange stance for FF to take

Not really when you are a corrupt party willing to take Brown envelopes from all and sundry.

The Cush

theguzman wrote: »

Not really when you are a corrupt party willing to take Brown envelopes from all and sundry.

and that sold off the eircom infrastructure that could have done this.

knipex

funnyname wrote:

People said the same on free edumacation and how's we doing on that now?

That is an absolute nonsense comparison. Free education benefited everyone equally. This.. its nonsense.

It also flies in the face of Government policy which is to clamp down on one off housing.

By all means bring fibre to all towns and villages and even to the ribbon developments around them where multiple houses benefit, but running fibre to a house in the middle of nowhere is nonsense..

We have a developments policy and then roll out something like this that flies in the face of that policy.

It was promised as a political stunt and contract is being signed as a political stunt.. Its straight out of FF Bertie playbook..

OH and I was born in a rural area, spent most of my life in a rural area and currently live in a rural area..

westyIrl

knipex wrote: »

OH and I was born in a rural area, spent most of my life in a rural area and currently live in a rural area..

And you have or don't want proper broadband?


Jim

knipex

Orebro wrote:

As far as I can see in this case Robert Watt and his Dept know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.


We voted in the Gov, not the civil servants.

Watt is doing exactly what he is paid to do. Advising the government. How many times have we seen people blame civil servants when things like this go wrong..

Last time they were ignored by politicians eager to spend money we ended up with the IMF...

Anteayer

You've got to ask the question: do you want future proofed fibre to every address in the country or not?

Much like rolling out the digital telephone network in the 1980s this is going to cost money if it's done properly and it's not profitable - it's loss making and is being done for a social purpose.

For years we've been attempting to do this on the cheap. The real cost of doing it was always going to be very large. It's spread over a large number of years though.

I don't really see why or how this project, which basically involves rolling out national infrastructure that's every bit as complicated as wiring job as the rural phone network build outs 30-40 years ago, was ever going to be done for cheap or commercially.

Much like any other infrastructure, we need to be a realistic about the costs. There's no point in carrying on with other the pretence that it's achievable at low cost.

Fibre to home is also just physical wiring and will support future technology is that upgradable by changing equipment at either end of those wires as speeds improve and tech evolves.

It's a huge investment in rural Ireland and its one that will potentially be every bit as profound as the rollout of modern rural telephones in the 70s and 80s.

We've already tried to do this on the cheap in the recent past and failed.

Mortelaro

knipex wrote: »

Watt is doing exactly what he is paid to do. Advising the government. How many times have we seen people blame civil servants when things like this go wrong..

Last time they were ignored by politicians eager to spend money we ended up with the IMF...

The financial regulator was ignored in the run up to the crash?
That's news to me!
My memory was he did and said nothing!
Where on earth are we going with all this ?
Theres 2 choices
Build it properly (requiring that State money)
Or build a Mickey mouse wireless outfit that only half works
Yeah that would be something to be proud of Not

Gary kk

knipex wrote: »

OH and I was born in a rural area, spent most of my life in a rural area and currently live in a rural area..

I am guessing you already have fiber

BarryM

[QUOTE=knipex;110145757

It also flies in the face of Government policy which is to clamp down on one off housing. [/quote]

Could you point me to the source(s) for that?

yrreg0850

Surely satellite can reach every area.
So instead of giving a venture capitalist investor billions, why not give a "satellite" subsidy to each house holder who cannot get fiber presently due to location.


You might then see the likes of Eir who are also going to benifit from this mess, getting their finger out when they see competition from satellites.

Gary kk

yrreg0850 wrote: »

Surely satellite can reach every area.
So instead of giving a venture capitalist investor billions, why not give a "satellite" subsidy to each house holder who cannot get fiber presently due to location.


You might then see the likes of Eir who are also going to benifit from this mess, getting their finger out when they see competition from satellites.

Satellite broadband is crap end of

KildareP

yrreg0850 wrote: »

Surely satellite can reach every area.
So instead of giving a venture capitalist investor billions, why not give a "satellite" subsidy to each house holder who cannot get fiber presently due to location.


You might then see the likes of Eir who are also going to benifit from this mess, getting their finger out when they see competition from satellites.

Satellite is not broadband nor is it any competition to actual broadband.

The latency is horrendous, the contention even more so, and it suffers badly from rain fade which isn't a great mix for a country where it tends to rain a lot

celticbhoy27

yrreg0850 wrote: »

Surely satellite can reach every area.
So instead of giving a venture capitalist investor billions, why not give a "satellite" subsidy to each house holder who cannot get fiber presently due to location.


You might then see the likes of Eir who are also going to benifit from this mess, getting their finger out when they see competition from satellites.

Same way you see eir getting the finger out in response to imagine? Fiber needs delivered no half measures

yrreg0850

yrreg0850 wrote: »

Surely satellite can reach every area.
So instead of giving a venture capitalist investor billions, why not give a "satellite" subsidy to each house holder who cannot get fiber presently due to location.


You might then see the likes of Eir who are also going to benifit from this mess, getting their finger out when they see competition from satellites.

One company tooway provides satellite internet access to the whole of Europe, all of the companies that advertise as satellite broadband providers are just reselling and installing tooways systems.

Its an over sold, useless, over priced, false advertised piece of crap, and that's me politely describing it without even getting into the technical reasons why it's not broadband.

There are a number of threads on here and elsewhere online showing what a terrible service it is.

Goreme

yrreg0850 wrote: »

Surely satellite can reach every area.
So instead of giving a venture capitalist investor billions, why not give a "satellite" subsidy to each house holder who cannot get fiber presently due to location.


You might then see the likes of Eir who are also going to benifit from this mess, getting their finger out when they see competition from satellites.

Someone I know in South Offaly could get almost no mobile internet coverage there - with download speeds of only 0.5Mbps. So he got in Satellite a couple of months ago, but the Satellite internet, it is only 2Mbps!!!

The high horse brigade

A satellite has the same backhaul as a small exchange in a rural village shared between the whole of Europe. It's not an option, never will be

SkepticQuark

I can't believe satellites are still brought up as legitimate options. "But maybe we just pay Elon Musk to let use Starlink, yeah that will work!"

The Cush

yrreg0850 wrote: »

You might then see the likes of Eir who are also going to benifit from this mess, getting their finger out when they see competition from satellites.

There''ll be an uproar in the eir boardroom over this ... of laughter of course.

gnf_ireland

SkepticQuark wrote: »

I can't believe satellites are still brought up as legitimate options. "But maybe we just pay Elon Musk to let use Starlink, yeah that will work!"

Politicians need to offer alternatives to the proposal, or at least sound like they are briefed on the issue and understand the options. Its not about being correct, its about getting publicity on the lack of a major media event.
Low Orbit Satellites are an option, albeit a new one, and needs to go through the cycle like 5G did !

The Cush

Michael Fitzmaurice TD on with SOR, reviewing the week, the most positive opposition politician I've heard on the NBP announcement this week.

The panel also mentioned Michael Martin was on another radio station this morning discussing the NBP, apparently he said he met a woman in Galway who was happy with her satellite broadband. FF are going from bad to worse.

rodge123

The Cush wrote: »

Michael Fitzmaurice TD on with SOR, reviewing the week, the most positive opposition politician I've heard on the NBP announcement this week.

The panel also mentioned Michael Martin was on another radio station this morning discussing the NBP, apparently he said he met a woman in Galway who was happy with her satellite broadband. FF are going from bad to worse.

FF & Labours carry on since the announcement will ensure I wont be considering any of their candidates for local/European elections.
While I welcome the FG NBP announcement, they aint getting any votes from me either until the contract is signed and sealed.....no more votes based on promises.
Suppose I'm nearly left with just independants (Which Im not mad about voting for) but needs must.

enfant terrible

yrreg0850 wrote: »

Surely satellite can reach every area.
So instead of giving a venture capitalist investor billions, why not give a "satellite" subsidy to each house holder who cannot get fiber presently due to location.


You might then see the likes of Eir who are also going to benifit from this mess, getting their finger out when they see competition from satellites.

People want to watch Netflix in 4k not crappy SD.

cregmon

Why is it when I listen to any of the radio panel talk shows, the panel consists of journalists, politicians and/or business managers. There never seems to be anyone invited who has actual technical qualifications and experience. Most if not all of the crap ideas could be easily dismissed if the producers bothered themselves to get someone who knows what they're talking about rather than just folk who know how to plamass.

Failing that, the show's researchers should be able to do some basic groundwork and educate the presenters. Is there anyone here who know how to get in touch with such people and put the facts under their noses?

Marlow

The Cush wrote: »

apparently he said he met a woman in Galway who was happy with her satellite broadband. FF are going from bad to worse.

Are you aware, how many people call fixed wireless "satellite broadband". It's because it's delivered through a dish on the house. Surely it has to be satellite.

So, when somebody tells you, that they have satellite broadband .. find out, who the provider is. In 9 out of 10 cases where they are happy with the broadband, you'll find, that they have fixed wireless from a regional provider/wisp. Not satellite.

/M

gnf_ireland

The Cush wrote: »

Michael Fitzmaurice TD on with SOR, reviewing the week, the most positive opposition politician I've heard on the NBP announcement this week.

The panel also mentioned Michael Martin was on another radio station this morning discussing the NBP, apparently he said he met a woman in Galway who was happy with her satellite broadband. FF are going from bad to worse.

Michael Fitzmaurice is very pro-rural Ireland, but also has habit of not talking about things he is not prepared to talk about. He has clearly given time to read and understand the material made public (or some of his advisers have). He is one of the few independents I actually have time for - although I may not agree with all his policies.

As for FF and the Galway woman who was happy with their satellite broadband. I was happy with 20Mbits back in the day, and I am now happy with the 360Mbits I get from VM. Over time I am sure I will be happy with the 1Gbits once it is available. Would I be willing go to back to 20Mbits now - absolutely not !

My mother has satellite broadband and is 'happy' with it, when compared to dial-up or 3G dongle. However, when she is at my house and uses my internet connection she cannot believe the difference, with effectively no download restrictions. Happy is relative !!

Pique

Definitely. people were happy with oil lamps until they got electric light.

There's lots of talk on other forums about how there is absolutely no benefit, financial or otherwise to rural BB, and that we should be all moved into towns "if we want to watch Netflix". Those same people will clamour for state intervention in affordable housing in Dublin, without a hint of irony.

As for the panel discussions and contributers, there is always a CEO from a wisp saying how wireless/'5G' could do it for cheaper, with no conflict of interest ever mentioned, of course. Adrian Weckler on Primetime last night was the only bulwark against that point of view (and did it very well imo).

KildareP

cregmon wrote: »

Why is it when I listen to any of the radio panel talk shows, the panel consists of journalists, politicians and/or business managers. There never seems to be anyone invited who has actual technical qualifications and experience. Most if not all of the crap ideas could be easily dismissed if the producers bothered themselves to get someone who knows what they're talking about rather than just folk who know how to plamass.

Failing that, the show's researchers should be able to do some basic groundwork and educate the presenters. Is there anyone here who know how to get in touch with such people and put the facts under their noses?

Because they're not listened to. People want the absolute cheapest price and don't really care about the technicalities. Ask someone which is better value - a €15 mobile plan or a €30 one? €30 broadband or €50? You'll get the cheapest every time, very few will even ask for more details like coverage, quality, speeds, etc.

All anyone is focused on this week is the €3bn pricetag, they're not debating the technical background to it or what makes up the pricetag, only that they *somehow* think wireless or satellite can deliver the same future proofed solution for way less than fibre can. Yet no-one's come out with a fully costed solution as to how wireless can deliver a product that is both equal in spec and cheaper than fibre (hint:

It doesn't exist!

)

What would greatly help some of the misleading information is if they did what the Australian's did and made it mandatory that you must clearly state the monthly price, the overall cost-of-contract price, the minimum download speed and the average download speed.

As an example, and I don't mean to pick on Vodafone only they're the only company that operates both here and in Australia, but take a look at Vodafone Ireland's site and Vodafone Australia's site:
Ireland:
https://n.vodafone.ie/support/mobile/network-coverage.html
What is 4G+?

4G simply makes data on your phone faster, giving you a much better experience. Now Vodafone offers 4G+, the fastest speed available and up to 3 times faster than standard 4G (up to 225Mbps ).

Australia:
https://www.vodafone.com.au/network/coverage-checker

4G means Vodafone 4G areas with speeds ranging between 1Mbps and 30Mbps when using a compatible device on this network, with an average download speed of 10Mbps

It's like they're advertising two vastly different products yet it's the exact same technology from the exact same company - only one division is mandated to provide specifics and one isn't.

Ten Pin

Why is it when I listen to any of the radio panel talk shows, the panel consists of journalists, politicians and/or business managers. There never seems to be anyone invited who has actual technical qualifications and experience. Most if not all of the crap ideas could be easily dismissed if the producers bothered themselves to get someone who knows what they're talking about rather than just folk who know how to plamass.

Failing that, the show's researchers should be able to do some basic groundwork and educate the presenters. Is there anyone here who know how to get in touch with such people and put the facts under their noses?

IMO you'd be wasting your time, advertising supersedes all else. If you're a program editor/producer and a WISP spends 50k on ads per month, there is every chance that any content that rubbishes wireless technology compared to fibre will be strongly discouraged.

There must be plenty of comments sent in with accurate facts but are hardly ever read out.

Almost every program has a "listener" comment praising 5G as magic beans, it's too often for it to be just some random punter. Pat Kenny actually attributed one such comment to someone called "Sean", no prizes for what the surname probably is even though he only gave the first name.


Anyone pushing wireless as an alternative to proper fibre broadband should have their power washer taken off them and be forced to wash their car with a spray bottle, maybe then they'd understand the difference between wireless and fibre

purpleisafruit

Ten Pin wrote: »

IMO you'd be wasting your time, advertising supersedes all else. If you're a program editor/producer and a WISP spends 50k on ads per month, there is every chance that any content that rubbishes wireless technology compared to fibre will be strongly discouraged.

There must be plenty of comments sent in with accurate facts but are hardly ever read out.

Almost every program has a "listener" comment praising 5G as magic beans, it's too often for it to be just some random punter. Pat Kenny actually attributed one such comment* to someone called "Sean", no prizes for what the surname probably is even though he only gave the first name.

*During the interview with Denis Naughten

My new favourite thing is seeing all the 5G will kill us all nut jobs on all of Imagine's posts

Anteayer

cregmon wrote: »

Why is it when I listen to any of the radio panel talk shows, the panel consists of journalists, politicians and/or business managers.?

Despite all the presence of IT companies in Ireland, there's very little in the way of local tech media. It's very difficult to get any kind of decent discussion on these topics in the media. Even in larger countries like the UK, the tech media's fairly limited.
There just isn't a big enough market here to fund specialist journalism, we're English speaking and very close to the UK and US markets, so a lot of subject areas get covered locally by generalists with the specialist media being more international.

The other aspect of coverage and debate that annoys me here is nobody ever seems to bring up the costs involved in maintaining a population that seems to be determined to facilitate and support incredibly low density housing. We've a lot of scatter development which is practically off-grid and it costs serious money to connect those people up.

I don't mean that people shouldn't live in rural areas, but I mean people should try to cluster their housing so that it's somewhat sane to provide it with services. If we lived in villages, we'd be able to connect them up to broadbands, power, water, sewage and transportation at some kind of sane price. Instead, we just have one off housing all over the place and an expectation that it an be linked up at no cost or at the same cost as urban (and I would include small villages in urban) housing.

Ireland has similar issues in areas like water, sewage, healthcare, transportation, education etc and it all comes down to the same issues.

Even looking at communication services, if you look back to the 1960s and 70s we had incredibly poor non-urban telephone services compared to any other peer country at the time. While some of the reason for this was economic, a lot of it was organisational and planning related. The technology at the time, which was largely crossbar electromechanical switching systems, was not really capable of being downscaled to tiny exchanges, so quasi-rural scatter was incredibly difficult to connect up. We only got modern services out to those areas when distributed digital switching technology arrived in the early 1980s, allowing remote switches that were not much bigger than an office phone system.

The reality of rolling out this kind of infrastructure to rural homes in Ireland is that it costs a lot of money. If you compare it to something like the ESB's rural electrification project, that took from 1946 until the 70s and cost huge money.

P&T/TÉ did a huge rollout of digital exchanges and new local wiring to rural areas and backhaul (trunks) to rural areas in the early 1980s too and that project in modern terms cost billions in terms of hardware, and it would be hard to even calculate the manpower cost as much of it would have been rolled into P&T/TÉ operations.

We could have taken the view that rural electrification or PSTN service wasn't viable and just left people off grid. We didn't because we took a social and political decision to roll the infrastructure out, even if it wasn't economic because it served a social purpose. The rural FTTH projects are basically the same concept with slightly different technology.

The FTTH projects are basically replacing the copper-wired PSTN with fibre. That's an enormous project by any standards.

celticbhoy27

Pique wrote: »

Definitely. people were happy with oil lamps until they got electric light.

There's lots of talk on other forums about how there is absolutely no benefit, financial or otherwise to rural BB, and that we should be all moved into towns "if we want to watch Netflix". Those same people will clamour for state intervention in affordable housing in Dublin, without a hint of irony.

As for the panel discussions and contributers, there is always a CEO from a wisp saying how wireless/'5G' could do it for cheaper, with no conflict of interest ever mentioned, of course. Adrian Weckler on Primetime last night was the only bulwark against that point of view (and did it very well imo).

Those same people will be first ones to moan about lack of broadband in hotels when they go on holidays away to the countryside

Redriddick

Marlow wrote:

Are you aware, how many people call fixed wireless "satellite broadband". It's because it's delivered through a dish on the house. Surely it has to be satellite.

Marlow wrote:

So, when somebody tells you, that they have satellite broadband .. find out, who the provider is. In 9 out of 10 cases where they are happy with the broadband, you'll find, that they have fixed wireless from a regional provider/wisp. Not satellite.

This, a friend of mine called to the house awhile back and asked what the dish was on my chimney, I said it's for my broadband and he said so you have satellite broadband. The assumption that its a dish is that it has to be satellite. I educated him a small bit on fixed wireless....

Anteayer

I agree that wISPs can be part of the mix for very remote spots, but they still need plenty of local fibre to get the bandwidth. So your're really looking at 'fibre to mast'

Also 4G and 5G has to be connected to fibre to make it anyway worthwhile. If you're just going to have 5G radio access locally that's backhauled on microwave networks pinging mast-to-mast, you end up with high latency, low bandwidth networks that choke when people start putting them under any kind of strain.

Bringing fibre rollout to or as close as possible to as many people as possible means lots of long term upgradable capacity for all sorts of technologies. The reality at the moment is that the web and streaming services are filling bandwidth as soon as it's available.

If you think about it, it's not that many years ago that a 512kbps or 1mbit/s DSL seemed like an incredible amount of bandwidth. We're now looking disappointedly at 40Mbit/s on a 4G phone while out and about and people are seeing 100mbit/s VDSL as rather slow and ADSL as unusable.

When most of the current WISPs launched their services were adequate with sub 10mbit/s services. Many of them are now very slow compared to fixed line stuff.

kazoo106

Would you believe, average usage across ALL platforms, FTTH, VDSL and Fixed wireless is just short of 2Meg.
It makes no difference which platform the customer is on - this figure stays the same - and I can get data to back this up

So in retrospect, the urban dweller in a small town not getting an openeir FTTH update next year who will be permanently stuck on 32Meg VDSL connection uses the same as his rural neighbour on the Gig FTTH service.

It makes me laugh when I hear countless politicians claim that "Ireland needs to bring the standard of Broadband in rural areas up to that of our cities towns and villages" when the reality is that most of these towns and villages will be stuck on sup par VDSL for ages - but it wont really matter I suppose until the average usage exceeds 20Meg

Usage doubles every 3 years so we wont have to worry about that for approx 9 years or so

Anteayer

There was a similar phenomenon in the 80s and 90s where a lot of urban areas, especially in the cities, were connected to 1960s/70s electromechanical telephone services while rural areas were on 80s/90s digital systems.

Urban areas got technology earlier, so it was used until it was life expired / economic to replace it.

The non-digital phone services however made no practical difference to end users - other than you heard some clicks and snaps before your call when through, they did more or less the same thing as their digital counterparts. Businesses who wanted ISDN could usually get it - they just had small ISDN capable remote switches in the same building. With broadband there's a real material difference in what can be done.

I'd agree though, at present the vast majority of users aren't really going to notice much difference between a 'up to' 100Mbit/s VDSL service and a FTTH service unless they're really ploughing through data.

Those services get stretched a bit when they're on longer lines, particularly if you combine them with IPTV, but for most they're currently fairly adequate.

The issue in rural areas, and that includes some villages, is ADSL that people are stuck on sub-10mbit/s ADSL services or slow WISPs that are genuinely over congested with daily caps and so on. Neither of those solutions are suitable for home businesses. I know I was using a "broadband" line in Leitrim that I couldn't use cloud services like Dropbox, couldn't upload anything of any scale, video conferencing was an absolute waste of time and even VoIP didn't work due to excessive pings and jitter.

There's no point in rolling out VDSL in rural areas, as beyond villages it doesn't work due to length of lines. So, it's not going to be a solution in rural areas. They'll inevitably have to skip to FTTH if they're doing fixed line broadband as it's the only thing that can work reliably on longer runs.

The one thing I don't understand in Ireland is why CATV based broadband wasn't used in the 90s for ribbon development. Coax is ideal for trunk and branch networking. DSL technologies are radial spoke networks from a central node and don't work at all well for ribbons along roads.

I'd query your 2 'Meg' statistics though. That doesn't sound current at all.

20Mbit/s will just about cut it for most streaming services though. The big issue will be around highly contended connections, which tends to be an issue with some of the WISPs and microwave backhauled DSL exchanges.

Mortelaro

kazoo106 wrote: »

Would you believe, average usage across ALL platforms, FTTH, VDSL and Fixed wireless is just short of 2Meg.
It makes no difference which platform the customer is on - this figure stays the same - and I can get data to back this up

So in retrospect, the urban dweller in a small town not getting an openeir FTTH update next year who will be permanently stuck on 32Meg VDSL connection uses the same as his rural neighbour on the Gig FTTH service.

It makes me laugh when I hear countless politicians claim that "Ireland needs to bring the standard of Broadband in rural areas up to that of our cities towns and villages" when the reality is that most of these towns and villages will be stuck on sup par VDSL for ages - but it wont really matter I suppose until the average usage exceeds 20Meg

Usage doubles every 3 years so we wont have to worry about that for approx 9 years or so

Could you parse that?
Are you saying the max bandwidth used on average is 2Mb a second ?
That seems a rubbish stat if you are doing NBP on the basis of wanting people to work from home or the capacity to do anything much
Shur even peak domestic use happens for only 2 hours,so do we divide that by 24 and restrict bandwidth to a 24th of peak and leave people using in peak hardly able to do anything,never mind closing down working from home?

Anteayer

I'm looking at ComReg statistics for Q4 2018:

Cable : 272,274,262 GB for 372844 users = 730GB used per quarter.
VDSL: 319,537,954 GB for 618630 users = 517GB used per quarter
FTTP (fibre to premises) 44,809,702 GB for 90642 users = 494GB per quarter
FWA (Wisp) 14,553,321 for 47,552 users = 306GB used per quarter
ADSL: 79,757,214 GB for 295,970 users = 269GB per quarter

Residential Broadband Subscriptions (<2Mbps) 5,386
Business Broadband Subscriptions (<2Mbps) 2,623
Total Broadband Subscriptions (<2Mbps) 8,010

Residential Broadband Subscriptions (2Mbps - 9.99Mbps) 138,541
Business Broadband Subscriptions (2Mbps - 9.99Mbps) 33,587
Total Broadband Subscriptions (2Mbps - 9.99Mbps) 172,128

Residential Broadband Subscriptions (=10Mbps - 29.99Mbps) 118,811
Business Broadband Subscriptions (=10Mbps - 29.99Mbps) 26,877
Total Broadband Subscriptions (=10Mbps - 29.99Mbps) 145,688

Residential Broadband Subscriptions (=30Mbps - 99.99Mbps) 603,995
Business Broadband Subscriptions (=30Mbps - 99.99Mbps) 76,386
Total Broadband Subscriptions (=30Mbps - 99.99Mbps) 680,381

Residential Broadband Subscriptions (>=100Mbps) 405,500
Business Broadband Subscriptions (>=100Mbps) 18,452
Total Broadband Subscriptions (>=100Mbps) 423,953

It's actually a better picture than I'd have expected.

This is a bit crude, but it's a good guesstimate:

There are 1,576,409 households in Ireland
Roughly 34% of the population is in rural areas, so we're talking 535,979 households and lets say throw in 50,000 businesses for sake of bulking it up .. so maybe at max 600,000 rural FTTH premises.

So it's €3 billion over 10 years, which is 300 million a year.

Which works out at around €500 per rural broadband line per year in subsidy.

It's very hard to compare that to what Telecom Éireann spent in rural areas, as the figures aren't easy to get and aren't broken down and lots of cross-subsidisation happened by charging very high rates across the board to fund some of it, so urban areas were paying for rural services but in modern terms the hardware spend alone was in the certainly in the multiple billions over 20 years.

kazoo106

I am saying that the "mean" usage across platforms on 30/04/2019 was 1.87Mb/s

Peaks of course went higher, but mean stays the same

This is based on INEX traffic from an ISP which uses 1.7% of traffic through INEX (despite having only 0.5% of total market share)

Anteayer

Mean usage would be fairly meaningless for network planning as network traffic is by its nature extremely bursty.

The mean usage by cars of the M50 is far less impressive than rush hour, but in terms of data traffic, someone may need bandwidth briefly to sync with Dropbox, watch something on Netflix and so on, but it doesn't mean they're using that kind of bandwidth all the time.

The problem with the narrower band networks is they can't cope with those bursts of demand.

I mean, if I were to conclude that a single carriageway road around Dublin would be fine, based on mean traffic, it wouldn't add up either and data traffic is far more difficult to plan as bandwidth can vary instantaneously depending on what the end user is doing. So, you have to plan for peak usage and having adequate capacity to cope with it.

You could sync a large file with a cloud service on a slow line, but it would take days vs seconds on a fast line, the two would show the same mean usage but one would be vastly superior to the other in terms of practical usability.

The political question is quite simple:

Is rural broadband worth roughly €500 / year per rural household / business?
Some would conclude it is. Some wouldn't. That's a matter of opinion and how people see priorities.

If it makes it possible for rural households / businesses to be more productive, that's somewhat mitigated in terms of increased economic activity. If not, we've just given over half a million households 500 quid a year to watch Netflix.

I'd be of the opinion that it's probably worth doing if you want to boost rural economies, but I'm not a Tory or a US Republican in my economic outlook.

ED E

https://pca.st/r910

(could be a repost, this thread is moving quickly of late)

Gary kk

https://www.newstalk.com/news/sinn-fein-move-dail-motion-calling-esb-appointed-broadband-plan-857931

Don't know what to say really have we not waited long enough.

rodge123

Gary kk wrote: »

https://www.newstalk.com/news/sinn-fein-move-dail-motion-calling-esb-appointed-broadband-plan-857931

Don't know what to say really have we not waited long enough.

A stunt purely to put pressure FF.
FF going to look like compete hypocrites if they don’t back the motion though after all their bluster during the week.

The Cush

ED E wrote: »

https://pca.st/r910

(could be a repost, this thread is moving quickly of late)

Thanks for posting. Good interview again from Adrian Weckler with Carolan Lennon.

Just a few points from the interview in relation to the NBP
- she wasn't aware, read it … , renationalising eir for €5bn as an option considered
- selling off eircom infrastructure back in 1997 probably wasn't a good idea but we are where we are
- when debate gets heated in the Dáil, let the ESB do it or privatisation of eir are the lines rolled out "instead of continuing down the road the government are on"
- the €500m original figure for the rollout was never a real figure, it was just a number

On the €1bn subsidy over 25 years
- the regulated pricing for pole and duct access, eir make just over an 8% return, unchanged since 2016
- poles cost €600, 1.2m poles in the intervention area, over 30 years all of those poles will have to be replaced
- Storm Ophelia 2,500 poles had to be replaced
- mostly an overhead network, a lot of money goes into maintaining it
- eir has a lot copper customers in the intervention area whose revenue maintains the existing network
- these customers will most likely migrate to NBI's network with a resulting loss of revenue to eir for network maintenance
- the revenue lost will be equivalent to the money received via the NBP for pole and duct rental

On the overall cost of the plan, economics vs. society

Carolan Lennon: and you'll find its that last 5%, 50,000 - 100,000 homes that are going to drive an awful lot of the cost, that's the debate, so to me that's a political decision, a societal call. Is that kind of money worth that so people can live and work where they want. It's not an economic call … it's not a business case … you're not going to decide this looking at the business case … you've got to take in the bigger picture about what kind of society we want … how does all that work

Wishox

This silly out of touch bint is typical of a CEO in Ireland, Eir are the worst company in Ireland, all ill say is try to get through to them ! communications company my arse. They even closed the boards chat because they were getting to many complaints

https://www.boards.ie/ttforum/1293

Mortelaro

kazoo106 wrote: »

I am saying that the "mean" usage across platforms on 30/04/2019 was 1.87Mb/s

Peaks of course went higher, but mean stays the same

This is based on INEX traffic from an ISP which uses 1.7% of traffic through INEX (despite having only 0.5% of total market share)

So it's as handy as looking at the mean temp of my dinner this evening from the point It went on the table to when I finished it
Ie an irrelevant Stat with no relation whatsoever to the ability to do the most common things done with an internet connection

NewClareman

knipex wrote: »

That is an absolute nonsense comparison. Free education benefited everyone equally. This.. its nonsense.

It also flies in the face of Government policy which is to clamp down on one off housing.

By all means bring fibre to all towns and villages and even to the ribbon developments around them where multiple houses benefit, but running fibre to a house in the middle of nowhere is nonsense..

We have a developments policy and then roll out something like this that flies in the face of that policy.

It was promised as a political stunt and contract is being signed as a political stunt.. Its straight out of FF Bertie playbook..

OH and I was born in a rural area, spent most of my life in a rural area and currently live in a rural area..

Couldn’t agree more, this is spending billions on electioneering, nothing else. Nothing about it stands up to scrutiny. If you look at the proposed benefits, most don’t even need high speed broadband.
The few use cases that truly need this level of speed do not justify the cost of serving the one off houses.

NewClareman

Wishox wrote: »

This silly out of touch bint is typical of a CEO in Ireland, Eir are the worst company in Ireland, all ill say is try to get through to them ! communications company my arse. They even closed the boards chat because they were getting to many complaints

https://www.boards.ie/ttforum/1293

I agree with you that eir customer service is abysmal. However, that doesn’t justify the above rant re the CEO. Her remarks quoted in the post appear to be bang on the button.

theguzman

NewClareman wrote: »

Couldn’t agree more, this is spending billions on electioneering, nothing else. Nothing about it stands up to scrutiny. If you look at the proposed benefits, most don’t even need high speed broadband.
The few use cases that truly need this level of speed do not justify the cost of serving the one off houses.

Timmy Dooley, that you?

Pique

Can we stop calling them "one-off houses" like it's a dirty word?

Its over a million people. 20% of the population.

In any other situation of 2.6k spent per person over 25 years of a project (front loaded or not, that's the term) or E104 per person per year, not an eyelid would be batted.

Rather than the calls to justify that level of spending, what is the justification for NOT spending so little per person for such an important service?

One that according to KPMG actually returns E3.75bn over the term. By the way.