Imagine LTE Rural Broadband

df_h

BrokenMan wrote: »

About 5 miles from monivea towards Loughrea

I am about 3-4 miles closer than you in same general direction, but if keep going in your direction you would be behind the hilll I am on hence no line of sight

I keep doing speedtests
http://www.speedtest.net/results.php?sh=c97693cb25f42f9b316193caa3291d9d&ria=0

tsue921i8wljb3

marno21 wrote: »

This won't happen.

1. Imagine say they can cover 400 homes per site. How are these 400 homes picked to be removed from the map?

2. Imagine can't guarantee 30Mbit for the length of the day as they have a 20Gb daily cap which can be covered in a little over an hour. If you download 20Gb over the space of the 7am - 12am (daytime) capped usage period, you have an effective speed of 2.96Mbit

3. Imagine can't guarantee 30Mbit either due to the poor backhaul feeding the sites.

Ireland may be willing to accept pathetic contacts for their infrastructure, but the EU won't stand for it.

Hopefully you are correct. However it would not surprise me to see some form of action taken by Imagine. There is a lot of money being invested in this rollout. They knew the NBP was on the horizon so you would assume they have some plan to counteract it.

tsue921i8wljb3

Dero wrote: »

This is my biggest fear. I actually said it to the sales guy, but (being a sales guy), he assured me that availing of this will have no effect on my NBP intervention status. If they were to use the customer base they are building up now as a basis for removing them from the NBP, surely that would enrage a large portion of said customers?

Yeah sales guys are notoriously unreliable. Plus I doubt he is privy to the plans of the company. No doubt it would be controversial but at the end of the day all Imagine will care about is their bottom line.

long_b

df_h wrote: »

I am about 3-4 miles closer than you in same general direction, but if keep going in your direction you would be behind the hilll I am on hence no line of sight

I keep doing speedtests
http://www.speedtest.net/results.php?sh=c97693cb25f42f9b316193caa3291d9d&ria=0

Which provider are those speed tests from?

Chef-1st

marno21 wrote: »

This won't happen.

3. Imagine can't guarantee 30Mbit either due to the poor backhaul feeding the sites.

Do you think this is why the speeds drop so much at peak hours?
Do providers share feeds to the sites??
There is no way they can hold +30M in the evenings going by my speed tests over the last month.

Pious14

Got an email today stating I would get a call in the next few days for installation. Being waiting since May so this is great to see. On Woodcock hill mast which is due to go live. Has anyone got a similar email and if so, how long did it take from email to get a call?

Decent Skin

Pious14 wrote: »

Got an email today stating I would get a call in the next few days for installation. Being waiting since May so this is great to see. On Woodcock hill mast which is due to go live. Has anyone got a similar email and if so, how long did it take from email to get a call?

Got that email yesterday too. Long overdue.

df_h

long_b wrote: »

Which provider are those speed tests from?

Imagine, 2.5km from Abbeyknockmoy mast

km79

if there online chat function is anything to go on customer service is very poor!
There must be only one lad doing it

df_h

Ring em, or fill out the form with your eircode and they will ring you back

Tech support definately know their stuff, I had a good laugh with the fella on phone last I rang while waiting for router to reboot

marno21

Chef-1st wrote: »

Do you think this is why the speeds drop so much at peak hours?
Do providers share feeds to the sites??
There is no way they can hold +30M in the evenings going by my speed tests over the last month.

Yes I do. They aren't sharing feeds with other ISPs but there isn't enough backhaul feeding the sites to provide every customer with guaranteed 30Mbps. If that was the case they'd need 12Gbit at every site, which isn't really likely under their business model of microwave feeds to sites owned by other companies.

KOR101

Reyansh Little Bandage wrote: »

Hopefully you are correct. However it would not surprise me to see some form of action taken by Imagine. There is a lot of money being invested in this rollout. They knew the NBP was on the horizon so you would assume they have some plan to counteract it.

There was an article in the Independent which said a delegation from the wisps had been in to meet the Minister after the shortlist was announced. The article said there would not be a legal challenge as they did not have the resources to mount a case that would likely take years.

The criteria for changing the map are really very onerous even for one of the large companies never mind the minnows. I think Bolger did a great salesman job with a French infrastructure fund that should have known better.

tsue921i8wljb3

KOR101 wrote: »

There was an article in the Independent which said a delegation from the wisps had been in to meet the Minister after the shortlist was announced. The article said there would not be a legal challenge as they did not have the resources to mount a case that would likely take years.

The criteria for changing the map are really very onerous even for one of the large companies never mind the minnows. I think Bolger did a great salesman job with a French infrastructure fund that should have known better.

That may have been the ISPAI WISP group which consists of regional ISPs. AFAIK Imagine are not a member of this group.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=97633285&postcount=858

popsy09

Coming out to me tomorrow got a call today I got lucky I suppose I only ordered it Monday

Pious14

popsy09 wrote: »

Coming out to me tomorrow got a call today I got lucky I suppose I only ordered it Monday

Where are you based? As mentioned previously, I am based in Limerick and got an email today stating i would get a call shortly, but it appears quite a few got the same email. I've been waiting since May!

popsy09

Housing estate just outside cork city

Worked out well so far be interesting to see what speeds I get tomorrow

coffeeJohn92

Got the call from Imagine on Monday and the two lads came today to do the install. They spend about 30 mins trying to get a signal but sadly it was very inconsistent.

They hooked the receiver to a 10ish foot pole and got a signal in the garden in front of our house, but could not get it when testing from the gable. The cause, from what they said, was a few evergreen trees at the bottom of the road. We live on a hill and these trees would be level with the highest point on our house.

Now I'm not saying that they were a bunch of cowboys, but does that not seem a bit daft...that maybe 3-4 trees could cause that much of a signal loss? We are 16km from the mast as they told me and said that was not a problem.

If anyone could help me with that to put my mind at ease it would be great.

So for anyone else that might read this and have signed up for Imagine just prepare that you might be greatly disappointed if all it takes is a few trees.

oscarBravo

coffeeJohn92 wrote: »

Now I'm not saying that they were a bunch of cowboys, but does that not seem a bit daft...that maybe 3-4 trees could cause that much of a signal loss? We are 16km from the mast as they told me and said that was not a problem.

I guess whether or not it seems daft depends on how much you know about microwave signal propagation.

popsy09

I hope for my sake I get a signal as I told nova I was cancelling today and they tried to keep me by offering a good deal but I refused and refused and told them there speeds just don't cut it and If I have a chance of getting better I will

I don't want to be ringing back Friday asking to continue as a customer ha ha

coffeeJohn92

oscarBravo wrote: »

I guess whether or not it seems daft depends on how much you know about microwave signal propagation.

I'm the John Snow of microwave signal propagation, but I never thought that standing in the way of going from a 6-7mb/s connection to a 50-80mb/s was 4 trees.

It's just a bit hard to take, knowing that we will be stuck with a max 7mb/s connection for a least 2 more years.

Hope you have more luck that us popsy09.

Wing126

Would a big difference in elevation be an indicator of how the signal would be?

ED E

Wing126 wrote: »

Would a big difference in elevation be an indicator of how the signal would be?

Elevation only helps if it dodges something between you and the far end.

oscarBravo

coffeeJohn92 wrote: »

I'm the John Snow of microwave signal propagation, but I never thought that standing in the way of going from a 6-7mb/s connection to a 50-80mb/s was 4 trees.

16km of free space will have very little effect on the signal, apart from it getting weaker. Once that relatively weak signal reaches the trees, it gets further attenuated and scattered by them - not necessarily by much, but it means that the receiver has to work much, much harder to decipher the signal.

It's not a great analogy, but: imagine someone's sending you information by turning on and off individual lights that are arranged in a pattern. If you're right beside the group of lights, it's easy to see which lights are on and off. If you're further away but still have line of sight, it's still pretty straightforward. Now imagine you're a long way away, and there's a slightly dirty pane of glass in the path. It's not like the glass will block the signal; but it's much harder to see which lights are on or off at any given time.

In order to continue to communicate, it might be necessary to resort to having all the lights either on or off, rather than using patterns. This will work, but obviously it's much slower to just send one of two possible values instead of one of several at any time.

Free space loss doesn't distort microwave signals (apart from some weird issues like thermal inversions or whatever), but once you go non-line-of-sight, you start to get multipath problems that mean that the complex QAM coding schemes that LTE relies on for capacity don't work reliably, so you have to drop back to simpler QAMs, or worse.

Wing126

ED E wrote: »

Elevation only helps if it dodges something between you and the far end.

I get ya.

The more I look at the area between my house and the mast, the more it looks like I'll not reach the 30Mb at installation with the reports from these guys that can't get it.

Reason I ask about elevation is that I'm 17m above sea level and the mast is 240m above sea level. Thought that would help a bit.

tsue921i8wljb3

oscarBravo or 9726, would there be a good reason from a network planning point of view to disqualifying sub 30Mb/s connections? Would having a lot of slower clients have an overall detrimental impact on those with higher speeds?

Wing126

Reyansh Little Bandage wrote: »

oscarBravo or 9726, would there be a good reason from a network planning point of view to disqualifying sub 30Mb/s connections? Would having a lot of slower clients have an overall detrimental impact on those with higher speeds?

Well for one, it would be more users on the network. More users on the network will have an effect on everyone using the network regardless of what speeds people are getting. It's contention/congestion. Look through the thread and you'll see a number of users posting lower speeds during peak times when more people are using the network.

tsue921i8wljb3

Wing126 wrote: »

Well for one, it would be more users on the network. More users on the network will have an effect on everyone using the network regardless of what speeds people are getting. It's contention/congestion. Look through the thread and you'll see a number of users posting lower speeds during peak times when more people are using the network.

That is not my question. I was not referring to contention which obviously is a real concern.

For example 100 users on a mast. In the first case there is a limit with only those having a speed greater than 30Mb/s connected.

In the second case there is no speed limit. 100 users are connected. Are those with higher speeds impacted?

oscarBravo

Reyansh Little Bandage wrote: »

oscarBravo or 9726, would there be a good reason from a network planning point of view to disqualifying sub 30Mb/s connections? Would having a lot of slower clients have an overall detrimental impact on those with higher speeds?

I honestly don't know enough about LTE framing and protocols to give a definitive answer, but I believe so. Certainly my experience with 802.11 and its derivative protocols is that a small handful of clients with poor signals will dramatically reduce the overall capacity of a sector. That's also been true in my experience with WiMAX.

long_b

oscarBravo wrote: »

I honestly don't know enough about LTE framing and protocols to give a definitive answer, but I believe so. Certainly my experience with 802.11 and its derivative protocols is that a small handful of clients with poor signals will dramatically reduce the overall capacity of a sector. That's also been true in my experience with WiMAX.

Great information OscarBravo.
Thank you!

tsue921i8wljb3

oscarBravo wrote: »

I honestly don't know enough about LTE framing and protocols to give a definitive answer, but I believe so. Certainly my experience with 802.11 and its derivative protocols is that a small handful of clients with poor signals will dramatically reduce the overall capacity of a sector. That's also been true in my experience with WiMAX.

Thanks. I thought I had read something about 802.11 alright. I suppose it is actually a positive for Imagine if they are actively building a robust network.