NBP: National Broadband Plan Announced

The high horse brigade

The high horse brigade wrote: »

The last Airwire review was 2016, hardly a site you could use to advise people of the latest offerings. Complaints made a few years ago aren't really valid, I complained about mine 5 years ago, now i have 90/20 VDSL

Once again I was asked to link to a service that works well and I know first hand the Airwires Jet service I linked to (is one of the many different technologies they offer) that does work well for anyone who has short distance to these masts and clear line of sight.

Which service did they have? I bet it wasn't this new technology.
http://www.airwire.ie/index.php/products/jet

Will double check with them, but they ended their 12 month contract in January or February.

Looking at other reviews and thread on here about them shows a mixed result.

Marlow

DubInMeath wrote: »

Some terrible reviews for them

http://ratemyisp.ie/ratings/airwire/

Have you had a look at the reviews? I know for a fact, that some of those aren't even Airwire customers, because the second last review is a product, that they never had.

Probably a review of somebody with a provider named Airwire in another country .. (I know, there is a provider trading under the name Airwire in India). Like that second last review. Airwire is known for not having caps on the majority of their packages. And when there is a cap ... it's not something small like 100 GB.

BBnet has similar issues. There is another BBnet in Australia. I know for fact, they get quite a few misguided support requests.

And the next thing, that keeps me wondering: so you have 29 reviews. How many customers has that ISP ? So how many bad (or good reviews) out of the total amount of customer base ?

If you had 100s .. or 1000s of bad reviews in the last year, I'd be worried. 29 reviews total for a company trading over 10 years with no reviews the last 3 years sounds pretty good to me.

dashoonage wrote: »

I'm on a bbnet wireless service for 11 years now. I wouldn't change from it for anything less that fibre. It has been 100% reliable bar a few minor issues which any provider would have such as equipment failure and I cant fault them for their repair time.

BBnet, like Airwire, Net1, Westnet and many other regional providers like that are offering VDSL and FTTH. So they have taken it to the next level. They're probably also one of the few, that will get you across from one platform to another, when a better suitable platform becomes available.

/M

Marlow

Gary kk wrote: »

If it's the only three wisp in the area then it's a 100% fail. Are you saying the other 50 are all good. I am not trying to attack you here only pointing out some things.My current provider is a wisp I am getting 20 down 4.5 up at peak times not bad can't really complain. Then again I am paying 50 down. Data cap at 25g a day
If I was paying for fiber would I be getting closer to the 50 down? Would I have a data cap?

25 GB a day is 750GB a month. Most of the mainstream providers have a FUP of 1 TB ... it's not so long ago, that Imagine had a 20GB daily cap and that was on so called "up to 70 Mbit/s" .. that was enforced HARD. Now they just have a 1 TB Fair Use Policy .. like Vodafone, Sky, Pure Telecom and a lot of others. Very few providers are totally unlimited.

And as for the speeds you get down, that's all down to the tech, your provider is using. 200 Mbit/s down is possible on fixed wireless currently, but not many offer it due to lack of fibre to the masts and the issues getting the bandwidth to that point in the first place.

And when you say 20 down/4.5 up at peak times. How did you test that ? And have you made sure nobody else in the house was using it during the test ?

/M

Gary kk

Marlow wrote: »

And when you say 20 down/4.5 up at peak times. How did you test that ? And have you made sure nobody else in the house was using it during the test ?

/M

WiFi was off only the pc connected. I can send them to you later not at home now

Marlow

Gary kk wrote: »

WiFi was off only the pc connected. I can send them to you later not at home now

Nah ... that's fine. It probably is contention so. Matter of technology so and what bandwidth the provider has to that mast. To be able to provide 50 Mbit/s to a larger amount of customers, it has to be fairly modern tech unless they are over promising. A 25GB daily cap isn't bad though for 50 Mbit/s. Considering that some providers have only 20% more on 1 Gbit/s FTTH packages.

/M

Ultimanemo

DubInMeath wrote: »

Originally Posted by Johnboy1951 View Post
It might help if those 'good' wisps were named along with the masts which are fibre fed and have solid connections that do not drop through the floor during peak use.

Imagine has been named many times, but where is the balance?

Name the good ones so potential customers can know and not believe all are like Imagine are portrayed.




Some terrible reviews for them

http://ratemyisp.ie/ratings/airwire/

Reviews for ISPs aren't reliable, what normally happens is when people get frustrated for any reason, they go and write bad reviews, the ones with good service "don't feel it".

tsue921i8wljb3

All this WISP talk is rather irrelevant I'm afraid. The people making the decisions have decided that it's not viable. Here is Patrick Neary, the CTO of the DCCAE, speaking to the communication committee last week.

We definitely looked at mixing the technologies and having different percentages of fixed wireless and fibre. Other technologies were considered as well. We looked at having a predominant solution, say, fibre and then the delta being used by a fixed wireless, say, 20%, 5%, etc. We have looked at lots of different variants of this.

Going back to what Mr. Ó hÓbáin was hinting at there, when one deploys a fixed-wireless network, one may pick up a number of homes through that deployment but, ultimately, one needs to bring fibre out to the backhaul in those particular sites and one is building a lot of fibre to those particular sites anyway. What one finds, if one mixes that then with a fibre deployment, is one ends up building a lot of the same infrastructure anyway because a fixed-wireless service will not take every contiguous home along a road. It might take 60% or 70% and then one must still build the fibre down the same road to get to the last three. One is not substantially reducing the fibre cost by introducing an overlay of a fixed-wireless network. It is not a case where one can say, "Okay, I will do this section here with fixed wireless and all of those premises are then removed, and then I will do the remainder with fibre." One is overlaying two networks, one on top of the other.

We have done a lot of analysis on what works best. Ultimately, we have had serious teams of bidders with real in-depth technical expertise examining the same question. Two of the bidders have mobile arms - Eir and Vodafone, which was backing the SIRO bid. They had serious mobile expertise and wireless expertise to draw upon to look at that as well, and they all concluded that a predominantly fibre-to-the-home network is the best way to do this.

Obviously, we looked at a full fixed-wireless access topology deployment as well. Independent of the Department, ComReg's Plum report shows that more than 4,500 new masts would require to be deployed. The deployment time of that is quite substantial. They estimated it was well over ten years.

We would look to how the bidder has come to the conclusion. We have examined that thoroughly to see have they robustly examined the variance. That certainly was part of our analysis.

Marlow

The point, that fibre deployment to the masts is needed is correct.

It is also correct, that all premises en route to connect these masts, you may as well serve them with fibre. For sure.

The point, that 4500 new masts would be needed is incorrect. Because Comreg has not even evaluated, what mast and repeater sites regional providers have access to. A lot of these are not mainstream mast sites and are not populated with mobile comms gear.

My personal guess is, that between the larger regional providers, there are at least 1500-2000 sites, that Comreg doesn't even records of. Actually .. they may .. for the purpose of licensed point-to-point radio links. But that data was not taken into consideration.

They also have not included the masts that suddenly had fibre due to OpenEIRs 300k rollout .. if they wanted it.

Because the Department from a very early stage decided not to include these providers and just go with somebody, who would take the whole hog .. they are working on incomplete data. And that costs them. The chunks and once off houses left out by OpenEIR in the 300k costs them even more.

/M

Marlow

Oh...

and on the point of fibre to the masts: every one of these masts has a considerable power installation.

While it may not be feasable to bring fibre to every home along the powerlines due to the complexity of the power grid, the time delays accessing certain pylons etc. it would have been very feasable to get the ESB to roll fibre to all of these mast sites.

Just saying.

lets say 6000-7000 mast sites with each one fibre drop instead of of 800k+ (now 540k) premises, improving both tetra communication, radio transmitters, fixed wireless and mobile solutions.

/M

tsue921i8wljb3

The ship has sailed. It is not us you need to convince.

Marlow

Siena Gigantic Backyard wrote: »

The ship has sailed. It is not us you need to convince.

I'm not sure, that ship has sailed yet. Plenty of opposition.

There was an article in the Sunday Times today stating, that the state will have to pay 10s of millons on top of the 5bn broadband plan, because it did not include the annual 10m annual estimate for overseeing the implementation of the project. That's just another 250m, that they negleted to tell anyone about.

And then there is that clause, where the government will have to compensate NBI for lack of uptake. That also comes on top of the current figure.

/M

tsue921i8wljb3

Marlow wrote: »

I'm not sure, that ship has sailed yet. Plenty of opposition.

There was an article in the Sunday Times today stating, that the state will have to pay 10s of millons on top of the 5bn broadband plan, because it did not include the annual 10m annual estimate for overseeing the implementation of the project. That's just another 250m, that they negleted to tell anyone about.

And then there is that clause, where the government will have to compensate NBI for lack of uptake. That also comes on top of the current figure.

/M

It was covered at the committee. They denied it would be €250m.

If this project fails I don't foresee that fibre will be rolled out to masts nationwide any time soon. It's basically this plan or nothing at this stage.

Marlow

It was also made clear from the opposition, in this case Eamon Ryan, that if you allocate 10M per year, then it is unlikely, that those 10M will not be used, to their full extend.

The fact is, that this figure alone shows how much of the joke the original budget figure prior to tender submissions were. That's a figure that would pretty much have been known at that point.

/M

listermint

Personally I won't have a decent plan rolled back to a crappier plan to support services that suffer from contention today's


Sole purpose of which is to serve those companies and the the public.


Because let's not split hairs. That's what it is.

Marlow

Contention also applies to FTTH. Don't be fooled. On the 300k, on the last mile there is only about 80 Mbit/s per household, if all ports are full.

That then even gets further contended down the line.

And the 80 Mbit/s is only, if the traffic was equalized .. but it is not.

The NBP will on top of that be more costly to the end user than both OpenEir and SIRO offerings. The base price at access is already announced higher than any network in the state.

Nevermind the houses, that come in at a build cost over 5k. I don't see many of them forking out the difference to be connected. Plenty of people not connected to OpenEirs network, because they did not want to dig up the driveway, nevermind pay for it.

So that lack of takeup will cost the state even more money as they have to compensate NBI for lack of takeup.

The 15-20% take up figure for OpenEir didn't come out of the blue. Well .. for OpenEir it did, because they thought they were tapping into a virgin market. But also they ignored the fact, that a lot of these people have broadband from regional providers for over a decade. And often at a lower price point.

/M

The Cush

Marlow wrote: »

Contention also applies to FTTH. Don't be fooled.

Give me contended FTTH over 3 Mbps contended wireless anyday.

ctlsleh

J

Marlow wrote: »

Contention also applies to FTTH. Don't be fooled. On the 300k, on the last mile there is only about 80 Mbit/s per household, if all ports are full.

That then even gets further contended down the line.

And the 80 Mbit/s is only, if the traffic was equalized .. but it is not.

The NBP will on top of that be more costly to the end user than both OpenEir and SIRO offerings. The base price at access is already announced higher than any network in the state.

Nevermind the houses, that come in at a build cost over 5k. I don't see many of them forking out the difference to be connected. Plenty of people not connected to OpenEirs network, because they did not want to dig up the driveway, nevermind pay for it.

So that lack of takeup will cost the state even more money as they have to compensate NBI for lack of takeup.

The 15-20% take up figure for OpenEir didn't come out of the blue. Well .. for OpenEir it did, because they thought they were tapping into a virgin market. But also they ignored the fact, that a lot of these people have broadband from regional providers for over a decade. And often at a lower price point.

/M

That’s only the case if everyone on a fully loaded PON tree, I.e. a 100% take rate on that PON, was consuming their max throughput at the exact same time, which isn’t statically probable.
Due to the bursty nature of usage, reading the newspaper, downloading a specific item or streaming music or video, almost all operators are easily delivering a 1Gb service on GPON today without issues, so while possible to be the case, it’s extremely unlikely a subscriber would ever hit an 80Mb limit. It’s also easy to manage, you just split the PON onto a lower split ratio. Where the contention really happens and can become an issue is if they don’t provide enough Uplink/Backhaul capacity to an OLT site.

Marlow

Oh. I know that.

But some of the fixed wireless slating here is beyond belief.

The tech that some of the providers that really care have rolled out has an aggregate of 750 Mbit/s per secor with approx. 40 customers per sector at the most unless you get greedy. And latency that is very much beyond anything apart maybe FTTH.

Now .. you take that, and you manage that correctly, you get very similar results to current FTTH rollouts. Assuming you have the bandwidth to site.

No . This is not 5G .. it is beyond 4G .. but the again .. those who market 5G in Ireland currently:

- have actually LTE Cat 12 (600 Mbit/s agg at optimum)
- not enough bandwidth to site
- and would have needed 80 MHz wide spectrum to achieve optimum, but ended up with 60 MHz ( booohooo )
- and the cheek to hook 150 customers into each sector

And because of said scenario above (60 MHz) their gear would run at 120/30. So to compete with the others for speedtest needle junkies .. even when the average usage is 2-3 Mbit/s atthe most ... they throttled their upload to sub 2Mbit/s to achieve 150 Mbit/s downloads at peak.

So ... the greed of endusers in achieving high speed has cost them a cost effective service and accept that they are going to be b*** f***** again like another NAMA buyout.

Happy days.

What we really need:
- regulated wholesale pricing for backbone fibre
- regulated pricing for government infrastructure (MANs)
- a way to get fibre to masts, villages and towns without year long planning delays
- CoCos stop trying to charge annual licenses for masts and infrastructure (yes .. they do .. when the word mobile and broadband is mentioned)
- and an advertising regulator, who actually cares

/M

listermint

The greed of end users.

Ironic platform for a guy that puts in 6 points that solely suits his own business



Transparent as the day is long.

Shows the contempt companies have for users I suppose.

Marlow

No .. it has nothing with contempt to do.

Ireland is a weird place. Look at any other European market (apart from Switzerland maybe) and you will see the mainstream packages on fibre being 50, 80, 100 and 150 Mbit/s being rolled out.

Anything above that is prices at premium business pricing.

Do you know why ? Do you know the financials involved to provide these speeds reliably ? On a consistent basis ?

It is a pipe dream. Because just because the provider can offer you that speed within his network, you are unlikely to achieve it beyond their boundaries.

This rat race was sparked by Virgin Media with their 240 and 360 Mbit packages.

Eircom followed suit with their 66 Cities and Towns program offering up to 1 Gbit/s

SIRO followed suit with a super discounted Gbit promotion.

The result is a support nightmare for most providers.

Also . The NBP contract called for 30 Mbit/s now, 100 Mbit/s by 2025. Most people .. by todays standards are effectively served at 50 Mbit/s. Take that to 2025 and the 100, maybe 150 Mbit figure is very valid.

But because of the rat race, NBI followed suit, is rolling out 150 Mbit .. but at a price tag higher than any other wholesale network and the consumer is going to pay the price (both in tax and retail) instead of getting a cost effective solution, that could have lowered the mainstream entry pricing.

But because everyone feels they have to hit that speed figure .. the economic reality of it all reall does not matter. The pipe dream is more important.

/M

listermint

Ah grand so.

Virgin started a 'rat race' . People don't need these speeds sure look at Europe.

I hope to god people like yourself are not trying to entice business into this country because frankly with your disappointing 5 year outlook we'd be shagged altogether.


You've nothing but blame ,. blame for bigger operators blame for customers blame for the government blame.

It's nigh on time we cut the **** and put this small island where it should be at he fore front European technology industry.

End of.

listermint

Incidentally. I had to laugh earlier today. I didn't respond at the time. When a poster said he was getting speed drops in the evening due to contention.

You asked him was someone else using the wireless in his house .


Under the expectations that having more than 1 person within a rural household using the internet was too much to ask.


As I said before . Transparent.



Aspirational these rural people. They should be happy with their lot. Kids can share the connection one at a time in allocated slots and the parents shouldn't watch TV service during that.

Lol

Marlow

Are you aware that bandwidth from lets say Galway to Dublin costs 6-10 times the price of what it costs from Dublin to Paris ? And that includes government owned fibres !

The issue we are having here is:

a) irish consumers expecting a state of the are access network paid by tax money
b) speeds that are beyond what any country in Europe has mainstream
c) at a price point that is lower than anything else (the talk on the pub is, that we all are getting fibre broadband for free ... and I am not kidding)
d) being happy killing off an entire industry .. that even at slow speeds .. has provided broadband where none was to be got for decades .. without even consulting them
e) and all of the above without fixing any of the legacy issues that put us in this situation in the first place

I can see, how that is going to have a happy ending !

So .. when we already are being complete b***f***** om government fibre today .. how could you imagine the NBP in its current form going down without a failure ?

/M

listermint

No I get it.

We should be happy with our lot as residential customers

And bandwidth should be preserved for businesses who will pay a premium for it.


Understand I get it. Profit marlow.

Marlow

No. You don't get it.

If it was profit, why is it, that none of the WISPs have a Ferrari outside their doorstep for every manager ?

Instead the government hands billions to the same people that already mismanage government fibre.

For a project, that attacks the problem from the wrong end .. again.

To what purpose ? Eyeballs. Because infrastructure work does not get noticed by voters.

/M

listermint

Marlow wrote: »

No. You don't get it.

If it was profit, why is it, that none of the WISPs have a Ferrari outside their doorstep for every manager ?

/M

Erm... What?

Is that your gauge. Ok grand.

I've take exactly what you've said and summarised it.

Your happy for residential customers to have slower upload and download speeds because as you said the continent.

You want the preserve the bandwidth for business because they pay more for it. Because continent.

You want the status quo but lower charges for the wisps.


Profit


Enough said.


Ferrari? Em... Ok

Marlow

No.

You read the parts that suited you.

I said:
- if the overall cost of backbone in Ireland was regulated the baseline price of broadband would be lowered
- if infrastructure to masts, towns and villages was created and regulated, providers would only have to focus on building access networks
- if Councils would actually make deployment uncomplicated, a rollout would be swift

Today, our baseline for broadband in Ireland is 20-30 EUR.... on the continent it is more like 10 EUR

Take those 2 figures and think what difference they make to an average Irish household.

So .. if you were to get line 10Mbit for a 10er . 50 Mbit for 20, about 300 for 30 and a gig for 50 .. would that not be great ?

But in Ireland that is never going to be happening, because core problems do not get solved.

NBIs baseline for 150 Mbit/s FTTH is 30 EUR. Thats access. A provider will have to charge 50EUR+ to turn 5 quid profit. Before he pays his employees.

/M

listermint

We won't ever agree on this. of that I can awknowledge.

We're coming at it from different reasons

I'm a consumer I want the best service for my money. I need the best service for my money. It's not a case of looking admiringly at a Virgin connection and saying lol that would be great.

It's needing that level of connection for various reasons. Multi use household. Home working. Security systems. Streaming , gaming and future ... Whatever that brings


So I'll make no apologies on expecting the best because that's what I need . I don't have a 300 euro router for the lols

Marlow

A 300 EUR router is cheap.

And I will not tell you what my monthly broadband bill is per month, nor what router I have .. but it is more than that. Both.

The reason: i work in the industry, i want a good working environment when working from home, i know the costs (overall) to provide this service.

Fact is: the majority of households targeted with the NBP can not even afford 30 EUR/month for broadband and they certainly won't pay more than the 35 quid for a router than what they can grab of the clearing table in PCWorld. So your scenario is not average. They are. That is what needs to be considered in this rollout. Anything else is selfish.

/M

Johnboy1951

Marlow wrote: »

A 300 EUR router is cheap.

And I will not tell you what my monthly broadband bill is per month, nor what router I have .. but it is more than that. Both.

The reason: i work in the industry, i want a good working environment when working from home, i know the costs (overall) to provide this service.

Fact is: the majority of households targeted with the NBP can not even afford 30 EUR/month for broadband and they certainly won't pay more than the 35 quid for a router than what they can grab of the clearing table in PCWorld. So your scenario is not average. They are. That is what needs to be considered in this rollout. Anything else is selfish.

/M

Can you post some links to where this fact is determined?

I accept this is your opinion, but I doubt it is a proven fact.

Marlow

I would love to see an actual market research on this ..

I can only state the perception of what i am exposed to in my dialy day work.

It also became very transparent during the NBS (three NBS for 20 quid .. people jumping for that, when it became available, those who could not live with the quality of service returned to their respective providers immediately, those returning to their respective regional providers when the price got jacked up again end NBS)

The fact is, because none of the data from the GBS and NBS has been accounted for collected or considered ... and the NBP is based on a incomplete data and a limp ... there is no research available .... it would destroy the NBP ... and that is not good for elections.

Here is another fact: with schools being provided broadband nationwide, it was assumed that every household has broadband. The school boards instated, that some projects and home work had to be delivered via the internet. The result was parents driving their children to internet cafes and hotel lobbies in the weekends to hand in said projects.

These households were never interested in broadband. A government decision forced them to pay for it. I can name more examples .. like milking machines or registering cattle.

/M

listermint

Marlow wrote: »

A 300 EUR router is cheap.

And I will not tell you what my monthly broadband bill is per month, nor what router I have .. but it is more than that. Both.

The reason: i work in the industry, i want a good working environment when working from home, i know the costs (overall) to provide this service.

Fact is: the majority of households targeted with the NBP can not even afford 30 EUR/month for broadband and they certainly won't pay more than the 35 quid for a router than what they can grab of the clearing table in PCWorld. So your scenario is not average. They are. That is what needs to be considered in this rollout. Anything else is selfish.

/M

In the same post you said a 300 euro router is cheap

You say most house holds cants afford 30 per month.

I'd evident time and time again you don't care a jot for the consumer you actually seem to revel in showing a level of arrogance and ambivalence to their needs.

Have you considered joining the dail, you might suit the place .

300 euro is cheap... Christ on a bike. It's a residential multi use router not a Cisco mesh in an office .


Try harder marlow

Marlow

I stated i work in the industry. My level is within the industry.. on a professional level. And that is where (for me) the cost lies.

A residential customer does not pay nor need the gear at my level.

But it seems i have to spell every inch out for you. And you just confirmed my point. And no mesh involved.

/M

listermint

Marlow wrote: »

I stated i work in the industry. My level is within the industry.. on a professional level. And that is where (for me) the cost lies.

A residential customer does not pay nor need the gear at my level.

But it seems i have to spell every inch out for you.

/M

I am a residential customer.

The thread is full of them. They're all crying out for more stable and better bandwidth.

Your wrong. People have been putting up with it in this country for too long.

ArrBee

I've no conflict or vested interest.
I have "bad" internet at home which I'm happy enough to limp along with until a solution is made available - so long as that solution is being worked on.
Kids aren't old enough yet to be demanding access and I don't miss streaming as I never had it.


I can certainly see where the 2 of ye are coming from.
I dearly want better internet, and any talk that puts that in jeopardy is a concern.
But I can also see how the current solution was not the only possible way to sole the problem. It is however the only viable solution left.

I can see how if the points Marlow identified as blockers were to be fixed, the market could correct itself reducing or eliminating the need for the govt to be involved in funding the access side of the network. But I would suggest, looking at how things get done in this country, that to achieve that would require a bunch of connected thinking which doesn't seem likely to happen.
Also, I'd say it needs to have happened already.

I do get the sense that Marlow is putting a position forward that it's more of "a shame that the right thing wasn't done", as opposed to "we should change direction and do the right thing".


Equally I can see that those of us with poor internet (and many are worse of than my 2-3Mb/s peak time) wont stand for a change in direction that results in another 10yrs waiting.

That shouldn't stop us from discussing things that could have been?

BarryM

Marlow wrote: »

Nah ... that's fine. It probably is contention so. Matter of technology so and what bandwidth the provider has to that mast. To be able to provide 50 Mbit/s to a larger amount of customers, it has to be fairly modern tech unless they are over promising. A 25GB daily cap isn't bad though for 50 Mbit/s. Considering that some providers have only 20% more on 1 Gbit/s FTTH packages.

/M

" To be able to provide 50 Mbit/s to a larger amount of customers,"

Isn't that the crunch? Many rural based (of necessity, due to geography and population density) wisps cannot afford to invest in the "gear" 'cos there are not enough potential customers. I have those down/up figures in rural west Cork, effectively only one supplier... fine until the tourists arrive in the Summer.

B

listermint

BarryM wrote: »

" To be able to provide 50 Mbit/s to a larger amount of customers,"

Isn't that the crunch? Many rural based (of necessity, due to geography and population density) wisps cannot afford to invest in the "gear" 'cos there are not enough potential customers. I have those down/up figures in rural west Cork, effectively only one supplier... fine until the tourists arrive in the Summer.

B

Many of them won't invest either.

There's no world that happens. You would still end up with a lopsided where few get decent services and others simply don't

Orebro

Marlow wrote: »

No. You don't get it.

If it was profit, why is it, that none of the WISPs have a Ferrari outside their doorstep for every manager ?

Instead the government hands billions to the same people that already mismanage government fibre.

For a project, that attacks the problem from the wrong end .. again.

To what purpose ? Eyeballs. Because infrastructure work does not get noticed by voters.

/M

Ah here, theres not many small business owners with Ferrari's outside the door (mine included!), thats hardly a barometer. You make it sound like the WISPs are in it as some sort of public charity and they're not making any money from it.

The simple fact is that they saw a gap in the market and filled it and have been making a living from it - fair play. But Internet access has become another utility like electricity and water, and will become more and more important as time goes by - therefore this long overdue investment is happening in rural Ireland. Undoubtedly there will be casualties in the WISP business but this is no reason to not go ahead with the NBP, it's just too important.

Handing billions to someone to do it? Well thats the only way to get it done. Would you do the same for the Motorways? Get one company to do the first 10 miles, then get another and so on, maybe do the same for public buildings?

You say you are here in a personal capacity, but you obviously have some links or affiliations with the WISP industry. You may say this has no bearing on an argument, but in fairness if someones livelihood depended on an industry under threat then they would obviously back said industry to the hilt!

micksey1969

I have Aptus broadband because my phone line gives me 1.5mbps which is completely useless. Now i was very wary of WISPs as i had another WISP a couple of years ago whos max speed was 12mbps and i signed up to their 9mbps plan and it was useless, transfer rate was 200kbps. Since i got in Aptus i got their 50meg plan as i was too far from the mast to get the 100 meg plan its been 100% for the last 7 months speed test shows 39mbps down and 5mbps upload and thats 24/7 never drops even in the evening transfer rate is around 4500kbps. Im moving house shortly where it has 18mbps max Next generation and ill be bringing Aptus with me hopefully they can get a signal there and ill go for their 100meg plan.

Grab All Association

WISP can surely still compete with the mobile broadband market. Not everyone can afford FTTH/VDSL. There’s a 60% take up of FTTH in my estate (8 out 15) at least 4 of the remaining 7 houses are using 4G dongles. Recent fibre fault (farmer broke pole) has shown this service has become almost unusable since I got rid of ADSL last summer.

Nova for example had a package under €30 up until very recently.

listermint

Grab All Association wrote: »

WISP can surely still compete with the mobile broadband market. Not everyone can afford FTTH/VDSL. There’s a 60% take up of FTTH in my estate (8 out 15) at least 4 of the remaining 7 houses are using 4G dongles. Recent fibre fault (farmer broke pole) has shown this service has become almost unusable since I got rid of ADSL last summer.

Nova for example had a package under €30 up until very recently.

Eh.... Fix the pole fault.

Are you blaming fibre on some idiots damage.

Grab All Association

listermint wrote: »

Eh.... Fix the pole fault.

Are you blaming fibre on some idiots damage.

You’ve misunderstood. I was without fibre for a week and it’s 4G I’m complaining about.

I’m talking about the 4G s***e I was using for a week. It was completely unusable since I last had to use it <July 2018 when my adsl would go down. The fibre is back working perfectly thankfully 1000mb.

I’m saying WISP’s can very easily compete with this 3G/4G snake oil product on offer from eircom/Vodafone/3.

knipex

Grab All Association wrote: »

There’s a 60% take up of FTTH in my estate (8 out 15)

I had a look at this over the weekend. I live in a rural area and its allready served with fiber. I checked on 5 roads leading out of the village all of which are served by fiber.

Out of 53 houses only 15 had fiber strung into them.

That's just under 30% take up. I know some of the houses still use ADSL and at least 1 using a 4g dongle.

I spoke to an Eir guy today (out checking poles) and he tells me that tends to be typically with take up of between 25 and maybe 60%.

I am just under 2km from the village and in what would be called a ribbon development so compared to a lot of areas covered under the NBP relatively densely populated hence economically viable.

If I am reading the data correctly unless the take-up rate under the NBP is far higher then someone is going to loose a lot of money,,.

westyIrl

The issue with "uptake" or "take up" and why it became such a token word politically(wrongfully) is that it never has any timeline applied with it. So OpenEir saying their uptake of fibre being approx 15-20% (which sounds terrible) is applied to an approx 1 year window I believe. NBI is looking at 80% uptake at year 25 IIRC. i.e. that 80% of homes passed will be connected after 25 years.

Jim

Grab All Association

By 2022 it’ll be 50%> uptake at the very least. Those critics like Colm McCarthy recently on RtePT (the same guy who in 2009 recommended Tipperary Institute close down when student numbers were still growing) are talking pure shi-** , the build isn’t even completed yet and still a lot of areas yet to go live.

Whilst I was very optimistic that they’d do well here, the 60% take up here in just under 11 months has even shocked myself. It just shows you that if you build it they’ll not only come, they’ll pounce on it.

noodler

Grab All Association wrote: »

By 2022 it’ll be 50%> uptake at the very least. Those critics like Colm McCarthy recently on RtePT (the same guy who in 2009 recommended Tipperary Institute close down when student numbers were still growing) are talking pure shi-** , the build isn’t even completed yet and still a lot of areas yet to go live.

Whilst I was very optimistic that they’d do well here, the 60% take up here in just under 11 months has even shocked myself. It just shows you that if you build it they’ll not only come, they’ll pounce on it.

You don't seem to know what an bord snip nua actually was

daithi7

Seems our government are really wasting 3+billion over the next 25 years.....

According to this article the likelyhood appears that low earth orbiting satellites will be the technology of choice for remote connectivity and for very good reasons!!!

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/12/08/satellites-may-connect-the-entire-world-to-the-internet

...OneWeb, which is part-owned by Airbus, a European aerospace giant, and SoftBank, a Japanese tech investor, needs such a large quantity of satellites because it wants to provide cheap and easy internet connectivity everywhere in the world. Bringing access to the internet to places where it is scarce or non-existent could be a huge business. Around 470m households and 3.5bn people lack such access, reckons Northern Sky Research, a consultancy. OneWeb is one of a handful of firms that want to do so. They think the best way to widen connectivity is to break with the model of using big satellites in distant orbits and instead deploy lots of small ones that sit closer to the ground...

listermint

Enough of this drop box nonsense articles.

Read the thread . Or don't bother . Up to you.

The high horse brigade

daithi7 wrote: »

Seems our government are really wasting 3+billion over the next 25 years.....

According to this article the likelyhood appears that low earth orbiting satellites will be the technology of choice for remote connectivity and for very good reasons!!!

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/12/08/satellites-may-connect-the-entire-world-to-the-internet

...OneWeb, which is part-owned by Airbus, a European aerospace giant, and SoftBank, a Japanese tech investor, needs such a large quantity of satellites because it wants to provide cheap and easy internet connectivity everywhere in the world. Bringing access to the internet to places where it is scarce or non-existent could be a huge business. Around 470m households and 3.5bn people lack such access, reckons Northern Sky Research, a consultancy. OneWeb is one of a handful of firms that want to do so. They think the best way to widen connectivity is to break with the model of using big satellites in distant orbits and instead deploy lots of small ones that sit closer to the ground...

Welcome to the thread. This myth has been dispelled here many times. How many satellites do you think we will need? A satellite has less backhaul than a small rural exchange

Grab All Association

noodler wrote: »

You don't seem to know what an bord snip nua actually was

Oh I do. I was a student there at the time and iirc at the time he guesstimated student figures and staff numbers based on outdated information. Claimed there was only around 200 f/pt students and over 100 members of staff when the real number was over 700 students and less than 50 full time staff. Later claimed the DOE provided him with the figures. He refused to back down from this position when proven wrong by Michael Lowry. Btw student numbers are still growing year on year.

Spouting the same shi** on Prime Time recently about the “low” uptake Openeir 300k rollout without consideration to those builds not completed nor those still in contract, awaiting services to go live etc.