NBP: National Broadband Plan Announced

turbbo

Hiberno12345 wrote: »

Similar to the Irish water fiasco, I predict single issue "Fiber broadband now" candidates from rural areas at the next election if this is not tackled.

If they could be half as ruthless rolling out proper broadband as they were installing water meters we'd be doing well.

oscarBravo

Future of rural broadband coming up on the Last Word.

tsue921i8wljb3

oscarBravo wrote: »

Future of rural broadband coming up on the Last Word.

Will their "tech expert" suggest low earth orbit satellites as he has done before?

xxyyzz

Siena Gigantic Backyard wrote: »

Will their "tech expert" suggest low earth orbit satellites as he has done before?

Timmy Dooley? Unlikely

marno21

Siena Gigantic Backyard wrote: »

Will their "tech expert" suggest low earth orbit satellites as he has done before?

This charlatan is on talking that same ****e as before. Satellite broadband.. **** me.

It's no wonder this kind of thing is so slow to get done given the absolute volume of misinformation in the media

Eamon Ryan on talking about gigawatts of broadband on Newstalk earlier, a man who was Minister of Communications for 4 years

oscarBravo

Siena Gigantic Backyard wrote: »

Will their "tech expert" suggest low earth orbit satellites as he has done before?

He did. FML. :mad:

pegasus1

Hmmm.. Plan 'B'

Isn't this country going to get 17 Billion€ from Apple..?

So Why not have a Govenment built fibre network using just some of that Money..

listermint

ED E wrote: »

Almost positive he's correct.

If you add the 300K due to be done by year end to the existing NGA + Virgin footprint and you have 72% of the population covered by high speed broadband (30Mb).

The remaining 550k addresses represent most of the last 28% of the population.

What's high speed about 30mb broadband.

Were in the realm of 4k video now and 8k coming online. What is 30mb high speed BB ?


A dichotomy is what it is

Leonidas BL

This is the kind of rubbish we have in west Sligo.

Schorpio

Leonidas BL wrote: »

This is the kind of rubbish we have in west Sligo.

What's that in gigawatts? :pac:

Leonidas BL

Schorpio wrote: »

What's that in gigawatts? :pac:

turbbo

Leonidas BL wrote: »

Reference to Eamonn Ryan from an earlier post. I thought it was funny. But the broadband in Sligo is dismal I know too well.

Leonidas BL

turbbo wrote: »

Reference to Eamonn Ryan from an earlier post. I thought it was funny. But the broadband in Sligo is dismal I know too well.

Oh right, I didn't see it. Im lucky I got this page loaded :P

TimHorton

Apparently Eir dropping out is a good thing ! so says Denis Naughten

http://www.midwestradio.ie/index.php/news/44492-rural-broadband-will-be-rolled-out-quicker-than-planned-following-withdrawal-of-eir-says-minister-denis-naughten

fritzelly

TimHorton wrote: »

Apparently Eir dropping out is a good thing ! so says Denis Naughten

http://www.midwestradio.ie/index.php/news/44492-rural-broadband-will-be-rolled-out-quicker-than-planned-following-withdrawal-of-eir-says-minister-denis-naughten

Ahh sure it'll be grand then, no need to worry folks

Though another 300,000 homes/premises connected by 2020 by eNet (rough maths in the head)- something just doesn't add up there

adocholiday

fritzelly wrote: »

Ahh sure it'll be grand then, no need to worry folks

Though another 300,000 homes/premises connected by 2020 by eNet (rough maths in the head)- something just doesn't add up there

Ah yeah good old eNet will sort all out. An unproven company in providing residential broadband on a mass scale will be the knight in shining armour for a couple of hundred thousand houses. Forgive me if I'm skeptical

WestyJon

adocholiday wrote: »

Ah yeah good old eNet will sort all out. An unproven company in providing residential broadband on a mass scale will be the knight in shining armour for a couple of hundred thousand houses. Forgive me if I'm skeptical

I can't see enet getting the contract as is being spouted as a good thing. Sense enquiries/tribunals down the line, when things go wrong, into awarding a state contract to an obvious underdog in a now non-competitive tender. That they see a business case where experienced incumbents don't is what leads me to this conclusion.

The other problem for us with poor broadband is that the more the gap closes the less political impetus there will be to sort out the remainder. Eirs 300k, Enet 115k etc. will leave a small number with crap broadband and a lesser voice that no one will want to listen to.

As it is the minister and dept are probably more focused on not making a mistake ( leading to complex contracts/onerous conditions) and effectively doing nothing than actually sorting out the problem. Lesser of two evils politically I would imagine.

The gap being closed in a piecemeal fashion as it is now, is not a good thing overall. NBP 'pure' and timely was the only thing that could have prevented this.

Jim

dublinman1990

This was really one process that the Government really did not want to ultimately fail before Eir decided to pull their plug. If the FF Government, at the time, had not put Telecom Éireann near any realm of the private sector; we could have had a very different outcome about having fast broadband for every person living in this country. Everything about this plan could have great potential to be so much easier to manage from an infrastructure point of view; from any company that was tasked with the rollout of Fibre broadband at a most critical stage in this country's future. This is when our economy & population is trying to show strong growth once again going from the CSO & census figures. Anything that is talked about our economy afterwards could have stayed in a constant positive state of growth for several years if we had the fibre broadband embedded in now. This could be described as a real severe hit to the morale of people living in rural Ireland.

I have no idea how e-Net are supposed to make this plan a viable success as I am not familiar with their broadband reception. I am with Eir mobile myself in South Dublin on a 4G wireless connection. The signal from it varies from 40% to 60% with a maximum connection. When you use 3G on Eir mobile in Dublin; it is a constant 100% signal for the whole time. Fibre broadband could well exceed mobile by multitudes of that if you had the money to afford having it in your home. But that issue could be fraught with contention issues like lower speeds, frequent throttling without everyone trying to use high speed broadband all in one time & by experiencing frequent dropout issues around any area of Dublin. This is what you receive in real terms when we are faced with the issue of having broadband infrastructure owned within the entirety of the private sector right now in Ireland. Sure it would be great if you could afford Virgin media broadband for your home in Dublin now. But a service like Virgin & from any other ISP gets exposed to these types of issues regularly at any time when you don't want it to happen. Having viable public broadband infrastructure in Ireland could have easily solved these issues right from the beginning if FF kept it out of private hands altogether if the Eircom sale was a non-runner.

And tbh; I don't see how this could be managed if we are supposedly getting billions of more money from unpaid tax from the likes of Apple.

fritzelly

Don't get the rose tinted view of Telecom Eireann - was expensive as hell before deregulation and you could start getting decent packages on your phone/internet

Marlow

Leonidas BL wrote: »

This is the kind of rubbish we have in west Sligo.

Out of personal interest .... nearest village ?

There's a new Fixed Wireless ISP setting up around Lough Arrow. Castlebaldwin based.

Funnily enough, I was in the Sligo City Hotel yesterday (and their broadband is from Fastcom) and the internet was completely broken. Lots of packet loss and broken routes.

/M

Pique

OK, honest question here and I'm not very knowledgable in this so forgive the potentially dumb question.

Would it be so bad if Enet got the gig? Why or why not?
Are they proposing wireless as the solution or do we know yet?


I'd also like to add. As a Rossie, Naughton is a tw@. Coming from the most rural county in the country, he has just screwed the majority of us by his ineptitude.

Marlow

Pique wrote: »

OK, honest question here and I'm not very knowledgable in this so forgive the potentially dumb question.

Would it be so bad if Enet got the gig? Why or why not?

Because eNet generally can't even deliver enterprise and carrier grade products to the standard, they'd ought to. Nevermind, that their pricing is through the roof.

Pique wrote: »

Are they proposing wireless as the solution or do we know yet?

Could be either. They've been trialing FTTH in a few places and also Airspeed is their sister company.

/M

WestyJon

Any wireless solution would be analogous to handing out batteries during rural electrification.....temporary non-scalable wasteful fix. If it turns out to be any part of Plan A or 'Plan B' all but in the most extreme cases (and should be dedicated ptp only in them cases), we may as well give up now. That two FTTH 'orientated' competitors pulled out, the remaining enet consortium still seeing a business case, has me very concerned at this possibility. As someone hoping for a FTTH solution at my rural location, Enet would have been my last pick of the bunch from an implementation perspective. However, its up to the Department to specify the technology, or at least specify a future-proofed service at a level that the dog on the street knows only fiber can meet.

The Department must feel somewhat shell-shocked at what has happened in the past few months. Gave themselves scope by breaking the NBP up into 2 tender lots and having only one bidder left makes it look farcical now tbh. I'm in no personal doubt that blame for this near-on failure of the tender process lies square with the Department and/or Minister, not that it will ever be admitted.



Jim

Gonzo

Eir and Siro were the only two bidders who I think were capable of delivering FTTH and a proper future proofed NBP. Eir even more so than Siro, as Eir now has proper experience at rolling out FTTH to rural communities.

Eir's 300k rollout is definitely going a bit slower than expected, but what they are doing is fantastic to the rural communities they are providing for. Their 300k rollout shows how they could have transformed the rest of rural Ireland and it is a massive blow that they have bailed on the NBP. It was fairly obvious they were going to the clear winners, especially after Siro pulling out.

Today's reports and articles that the NBP will still be delivered on time and at same cost I really don't believe. Enet have very little experience at delivering FTTH to anyone, let alone rural communities. What sort of manpower are they capable of reaching? I doubt it's anything like the scale of Eir or even Siro. Enet is a company most of us know very little about. How are they gonna roll out FTTH to most of the 540k homes and on time? We don't even know how much of their plan is FTTH, there could be lots of wireless involved with their bid. Imagine's current rollout has proven so far that Wireless tech really isn't up to delivering a stable experience and suffers from all the usual problems that wireless tech has always suffered from.

NIMAN

If I was a betting man, I'd say this plan is now officially fecked.

ED E

listermint wrote: »

What's high speed about 30mb broadband.

Were in the realm of 4k video now and 8k coming online. What is 30mb high speed BB ?


A dichotomy is what it is

30 is the minimum. The majority of addresses that can get 30, get more. As a baseline its conservative but its enough for four members of a family to stream 1080p youtube/netflix simultaneously. Thats not terrible.

BarryM

ED E wrote: »

BarryM wrote: »

Naughten also said 72% will have access to high speed bb by year end.... again, where is he thinking of, certainly not in his native Roscommon.

Almost positive he's correct.

If you add the 300K due to be done by year end to the existing NGA + Virgin footprint and you have 72% of the population covered by high speed broadband (30Mb).

The remaining 550k addresses represent most of the last 28% of the population.

ED E wrote: »

BarryM wrote: »

Naughten also said 72% will have access to high speed bb by year end.... again, where is he thinking of, certainly not in his native Roscommon.

Almost positive he's correct.

If you add the 300K due to be done by year end to the existing NGA + Virgin footprint and you have 72% of the population covered by high speed broadband (30Mb).

The remaining 550k addresses represent most of the last 28% of the population.

Maybe nitpicky, but, "covered" does not necessarily mean "accessible". Read the FTTH thread on here. That is why I mentioned Roscommon.

Averaging in the bb business is not a valid measure of coverage.

xxyyzz

There's an assumption that Enet will be awarded the contract as a result of being the last man standing but I would assume that they must meet all the criteria of the tender before they could be considered. I have no idea how a company of their size can solve this problem and make it comercially viable so it is very hard to see this going ahead.

Johnboy1951

xxyyzz wrote: »

There's an assumption that Enet will be awarded the contract as a result of being the last man standing but I would assume that they must meet all the criteria of the tender before they could be considered. I have no idea how a company of their size can solve this problem and make it comercially viable so it is very hard to see this going ahead.

All of that would have been dealt with in the opening tender considerations.
Enet got to be one of the last three, so they have already been deemed a suitable entity.

ED E

xxyyzz wrote: »

There's an assumption that Enet will be awarded the contract as a result of being the last man standing but I would assume that they must meet all the criteria of the tender before they could be considered. I have no idea how a company of their size can solve this problem and make it comercially viable so it is very hard to see this going ahead.

Its ENET and SSE, not just ENET.

kazoo106

To listen to some here, you would think that the flavour of FTTH being rolled out by OpenEir was some sort of holy grail of broadband standard. Fact is its not - its a single core multiplexed, contended, easy roll out solution with very big limitations. The 300 and 1Gig profiles should not be offered as the true fact of the matter is that this particular flavour of FTTH has around a 75Mb/s MAX commit rate (when everybody is using the service simultaneously).
Proper fibre uses two cores and is bound only by light and transceivers - this is not.

I for one am glad that OpenEir have pulled out of this tender, however, I am worried as to the potentially twisted reasons why - are they potentially going to make more money by selling NGN circuits and renting poles to the winning bidder?

Excluding the company that has poisoned the whole wireless industry by overselling their product - there are point to point products on 17GHz and 24GHz that blow GPON out of the water (capable of uncontended 766Mb/s). There are also Point to multipoint products available today that are better than FTTC already.

When implemented PROPERLY (and not the way a certain company does) wireless works, and it cannot be discounted as long as the contented GPON technology is being placed out there as a so called holy grail !

ED E

kazoo106 wrote: »

To listen to some here, you would think that the flavour of FTTH being rolled out by OpenEir was some sort of holy grail of broadband standard. Fact is its not - its a single core multiplexed, contended, easy roll out solution with very big limitations. The 300 and 1Gig profiles should not be offered as the true fact of the matter is that this particular flavour of FTTH has around a 75Mb/s MAX commit rate (when everybody is using the service simultaneously).
Proper fibre uses two cores and is bound only by light and transceivers - this is not.

I for one am glad that OpenEir have pulled out of this tender, however, I am worried as to the potentially twisted reasons why - are they potentially going to make more money by selling NGN circuits and renting poles to the winning bidder?

Excluding the company that has poisoned the whole wireless industry by overselling their product - there are point to point products on 17GHz and 24GHz that blow GPON out of the water (capable of uncontended 766Mb/s). There are also Point to multipoint products available today that are better than FTTC already.

When implemented PROPERLY (and not the way a certain company does) wireless works, and it cannot be discounted as long as the contented GPON technology is being placed out there as a so called holy grail !

Wait, you're complaining about 2.5Gb per 31 subs being contented but then claiming wireless/fixed wireless cannot be ruled out when sectors are 200Mb peak for no less than 50 subs (and more like 200 subs).

How much scotch was in your coffee this morning?

kazoo106

I am talking micro PTP

turbbo

ED E wrote: »

Wait, you're complaining about 2.5Gb per 31 subs being contented but then claiming wireless/fixed wireless cannot be ruled out when sectors are 200Mb peak for no less than 50 subs (and more like 200 subs).

How much scotch was in your coffee this morning?

Anybody arguing wireless is better than fibre would need to lay off the booze alright! Don't find my self agreeing with ED E too often but definitely on this.

kazoo106

I'm not arguing that wireless is better than fibre - however, there are wireless products out there that are BETTER than this GPON technology. Do not let a certain ISP taint your view of wireless - also don't be conditioned by relentless TV ads telling you you "need" fibre.
I could provide you stats of both - from customer perspectives based on real world usage and you'd be very very surprised with the comparisons.
(I've actually had decaff this morning)

Usage in Ireland is currently approx 0.78Mb/s across 24 hours - this figure is the same on all platforms (and I have analysed the data from thousands of wireless and close to 1000 fibre customers)

It is projected that by 2021 - this figure will rise to just under 2Meg average usage and quadruple every 5 years until it tops out at around 17Meg - it will not go above this.

Yes - GPON can deal with this max - but what I'm saying is, when implemented correctly (and the word correctly is very important) wireless technologies of TODAY can deal with that easily, and the technology is evolving at fast pace.

oscarBravo

kazoo106 wrote: »

I am talking micro PTP

OK, spec it out for us. Design a hypothetical micro PTP wireless solution to feed 31 customers with better-than-GPON services, and lay out the cost of the equipment at both ends, including getting fibre and power to the base station. Explain how you'll deal with LoS issues, like trees and terrain.

And then explain how the system can be expanded to deal with future demand for increase in speed.

turbbo

kazoo106 wrote: »

I'm not arguing that wireless is better than fibre - however, there are wireless products out there that are BETTER than this GPON technology. Do not let a certain ISP taint your view of wireless - also don't be conditioned by relentless TV ads telling you you "need" fibre.
I could provide you stats of both - from customer perspectives based on real world usage and you'd be very very surprised with the comparisons.
(I've actually had decaff this morning)

Usage in Ireland is currently approx 0.78Mb/s across 24 hours - this figure is the same on all platforms (and I have analysed the data from thousands of wireless and close to 1000 fibre customers)

It is projected that by 2021 - this figure will rise to just under 2Meg average usage and quadruple every 5 years until it tops out at around 17Meg - it will not go above this.

Yes - GPON can deal with this max - but what I'm saying is, when implemented correctly (and the word correctly is very important) wireless technologies of TODAY can deal with that easily, and the technology is evolving at fast pace.

Fair enough I take your point but I don't agree that more wireless is the solution in rural Ireland. It think fixed line fibre services are far more effective. And that's based off my real life experiences of both!
And when you talk about wireless being "done right" - surely the same applies for FTTH that also if "done right" is great. Try caffeinated stuff it's much better.

AyJay

turbbo wrote: »

Fair enough I take your point but I don't agree that more wireless is the solution in rural Ireland. It think fixed line fibre services are far more effective. And that's based off my real life experiences of both!
And when you talk about wireless being "done right" - surely the same applies for FTTH that also if "done right" is great. Try caffeinated stuff it's much better.

I suppose Turbbo this then begs the question, is the current rollout of FTTH being done right?

Johnboy1951

kazoo106 wrote: »

I'm not arguing that wireless is better than fibre - however, there are wireless products out there that are BETTER than this GPON technology. Do not let a certain ISP taint your view of wireless - also don't be conditioned by relentless TV ads telling you you "need" fibre.
I could provide you stats of both - from customer perspectives based on real world usage and you'd be very very surprised with the comparisons.
(I've actually had decaff this morning)

Usage in Ireland is currently approx 0.78Mb/s across 24 hours - this figure is the same on all platforms (and I have analysed the data from thousands of wireless and close to 1000 fibre customers)

It is projected that by 2021 - this figure will rise to just under 2Meg average usage and quadruple every 5 years until it tops out at around 17Meg - it will not go above this.

Yes - GPON can deal with this max - but what I'm saying is, when implemented correctly (and the word correctly is very important) wireless technologies of TODAY can deal with that easily, and the technology is evolving at fast pace.

This figure is hardly meaningful to me as a user.
What about peak times?
In the projected figures how high does the peak demand go?

turbbo

AyJay wrote: »

I suppose Turbbo this then begs the question, is the current rollout of FTTH being done right?

Is anything done right? - I would hazard a guess it's not but I'd prefer to have "not done right" fibre over "not done right" wireless.

$hit I think i'd prefer "not done right" fibre over "done right" wireless.

kazoo106

Yes - I agree to a point, but every technology has its place - it would be far less expensive to run a point to point link to that distant boreen than have Alex White out with his shovel (like what was said in 2015)

There is also the rural vs urban elephant in the room - where most urban areas are content with their (average 35Mb/s) FTTC

turbbo

kazoo106 wrote: »

Yes - I agree to a point, but every technology has its place - it would be far less expensive to run a point to point link to that distant boreen than have Alex White out with his shovel (like what was said in 2015)

There is also the rural vs urban elephant in the room - where most urban areas are content with their (average 35Mb/s) FTTC

"Content" = ara sure ishn't 35 gigawatts fhast enough wha?

turbbo

kazoo106 wrote: »

Alex White out with his shovel

Now that is some image. Has he ever used one?

AyJay

turbbo wrote: »

Now that is some image. Has he ever used one?

Only to clear some of the $hit politicians talk???:D

turbbo

AyJay wrote: »

Only to clear some of the $hit politicians talk???:D

So in effect he'd be clearing a path in front of himself then.

turbbo

kazoo106 you'll have to start your own thread maybe something like "Isn't wireless great". I'm sure you get a few loons from Imagine who'd agree with ya.

ED E

kazoo106 wrote: »

Yes - GPON can deal with this max - but what I'm saying is, when implemented correctly (and the word correctly is very important) wireless technologies of TODAY can deal with that easily, and the technology is evolving at fast pace.

Physics called, it called you a dreamer.


Spectrum is spectrum. We have finite amounts. We have even more finite amounts that are usable.

I can run 100,000 fibres in a county each carrying 10Gb. Thats 1000 Tbps. Then if needed I can run 100k more.

In that same county I have maybe 500Mhz of spectrum for consumer tech use. In 1980 we used that with analogue services, then we went digital, now we've gotten better at cramming bits into each clock cycle. We're still almost at full. Once spectrum is used, its used. You cant add more. You cant magic up 7G that somehow uses 300Ghz but can still penetrate the air around us.

Dev84

turbbo wrote: »

kazoo106 you'll have to start your own thread maybe something like "Isn't wireless great". I'm sure you get a few loons from Imagine who'd agree with ya.

I think the once happy imagine customers are now starting to see the effects of Imagine themselves over subscribing the system.

Imagine done this with Wimax also. Quick money and then get out.

ED E

Dev84 wrote: »

Imagine done this with Wimax also. Quick money and then get out.

Dont forget the lawsuit!

turbbo

ED E wrote: »

Physics called, it called you a dreamer.


Spectrum is spectrum. We have finite amounts. We have even more finite amounts that are usable.

I can run 100,000 fibres in a county each carrying 10Gb. Thats 1000 Tbps. Then if needed I can run 100k more.

In that same county I have maybe 500Mhz of spectrum for consumer tech use. In 1980 we used that with analogue services, then we went digital, now we've gotten better at cramming bits into each clock cycle. We're still almost at full. Once spectrum is used, its used. You cant add more. You cant magic up 7G that somehow uses 300Ghz but can still penetrate the air around us.

But if it's "done right" LOL!!