Eir rural FTTH thread II

tsue921i8wljb3

KOR101 wrote: »

So, that leads us back to my original question about whether the FTTP figures include Virgin Media's expansion. I was a bit curious about the Cable Broadband figures as they increased only marginally, but I suppose that tallies with the point that Virgin media have been forced to do this just to maintain market share.

It depends what Virgin are reporting them as. If there are a significant number of Virgin FTTP included it makes Openeir and SIRO's numbers even worse.

KOR101

Dominique Loud Waistband wrote: »

It depends what Virgin are reporting them as. If there are a significant number of Virgin FTTP included it makes Openeir and SIRO's numbers even worse.

It WOULD be interesting to have a breakdown.

KOR101

Some recent figures (not year end ones)........

The operator – which sensationally exited the Irish Government’s National Broadband Plan (NBP) process this week – said that it has now passed 170,000 premises in Ireland with fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband, out of which 21,000 FTTH connections have been activated.

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/eir-q2-earnings-broadband-fibre

A spokesperson for Siro told Siliconrepublic.com this morning (20 February) that the company has 16,500 FTTH customers.

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/ftth-council-europe-league-table-ireland

Bored Accountant

Got my fibre installed today.
KN lad turned, seen pole in my yard and the duct at the bottom with the copper going into it. I told him it was blocked and not a chance he'd get the fibre in. He was delighted when I told him straight from the pole to the gable end of the house, into the attic, run lenght of the house and installed the ONT in press where I have all my cables.

He said for awhile, they stopped doing attic installs, but quite a number of people refused install if there was going to be cable running along the front of the house, that they started doing them again.

IMG_20180316_140703.jpg
IMG_20180316_144335.jpg
thumbnail_IMG_20180316_144319.jpg

fritzelly

Any reason VM wouldn't be included in those figures as they do FTTP

Find it harder to believe eir are doing some 10k installs a month

Marlow

fritzelly wrote: »

Find it harder to believe eir are doing some 10k installs a month

If FTTC installations are included in that figure ... maybe.

/M

fritzelly

Marlow wrote: »

If FTTC installations are included in that figure ... maybe.

/M

FTTC are listed separately are they not

tsue921i8wljb3

fritzelly wrote: »

Any reason VM wouldn't be included in those figures as they do FTTP

Find it harder to believe eir are doing some 10k installs a month

Virgin have only relatively recently begun to deploy FTTP but they are probably included in the figures. It is 10000 per quarter which is three months, also SIRO connections and any other operator using fibre to the premises are counted in the 10000.

fritzelly

Virgin have had fibre to the home for years, or am I missing something. Or does it not count because it terminates outside the house then over coaxial

Checked the PDF and they would be counted as FTTP

oscarBravo

It's really annoying the way anything and everything can be called "fibre". Why don't we just call dialup "fibre to the exchange" and have done with it?

fritzelly

I suspect the Comreg figures do not include VM, I would be sure VM must have more fibre subscribers than that base figure in the pdf

Bored Accountant

fritzelly wrote: »

I suspect the Comreg figures do not include VM, I would be sure VM must have more fibre subscribers than that base figure in the pdf

I don't thing VM's figures are included because they don't open up their lines to other operators?

KOR101

oscarBravo wrote: »

It's really annoying the way anything and everything can be called "fibre". Why don't we just call dialup "fibre to the exchange" and have done with it?

Comreg's report says....

FTTP (fibre to the premises) refers to a range of fibre access installations such as fibre to the home (FTTH), fibre to the premises (FTTP) and fibre to the curb.

So, I don't think Comreg is confused.

Are VM slowly moving from coax to fibre? If so, I would say they are not included in the figures.

fritzelly

KOR101 wrote: »

[/I]Are VM slowly moving from coax to fibre? If so, I would say they are not included in the figures.

Have VM not been installing FTTH, across Dublin for instance, for years now - the only difference is the fibre doesn't go to the actual modem, that is still delivered on coaxial from right outside the house. I'm pretty sure it is fibre else why replace all the cables with the same thing

Then this:
https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/virgin-media-digs-in-for-fibre-battle-as-major-network-expansion-beckons-35378463.html

tsue921i8wljb3

fritzelly wrote: »

Virgin have had fibre to the home for years, or am I missing something. Or does it not count because it terminates outside the house then over coaxial

Checked the PDF and they would be counted as FTTP

They are not counted as FTTP. How could they be when the fibre cable does not go to the premises in the vast majority of Virgin's current installations. Virgin's figures are mainly accounted for in the Cable Broadband subscription type where they have 375546 subscribers.

KOR101

Dominique Loud Waistband wrote: »

They are not counted as FTTP. How could they be when the fibre cable does not go to the premises in the vast majority of Virgin's current installations. Virgin's figures are mainly accounted for in the Cable Broadband subscription type where they have 375546 subscribers.

But if the fibre goes to the curb, with coax into the home shouldn't that count?

tsue921i8wljb3

It looks like Virgin are not being counted in the FTTP numbers. According to the Liberty Global Q4 figures they had 372200 internet subscribers.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=106172702&postcount=294

The Comreg cable broadband figure is 375546. The 3000 difference could be accounted for by small operators such as Casey Cablevision in Waterford.

fritzelly

Dominique Loud Waistband wrote: »

They are not counted as FTTP. How could they be when the fibre cable does not go to the premises in the vast majority of Virgin's current installations. Virgin's figures are mainly accounted for in the Cable Broadband subscription type where they have 375546 subscribers.

Yeah, did more research and its hybrid coaxial if I'm reading it right.
But the technology they are using equals FTTH if I'm also reading that right as well

Don't think this was ever posted
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/virgin-media-broadband-ireland

tsue921i8wljb3

KOR101 wrote: »

But if the fibre goes to the curb, with coax into the home shouldn't that count?

Where is the curb? Is there a set distance for the curb? 50m, 100m... As oscarBravo says the misuse of the word fibre in the industry is rampant. I believe if the fibre cable does not touch the premises the product should not count as FTTX. Other people may have a different opinion.

tsue921i8wljb3

fritzelly wrote: »

Yeah, did more research and its hybrid coaxial if I'm reading it right.
But the technology they are using equals FTTH if I'm also reading that right as well

Don't think this was ever posted
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/virgin-media-broadband-ireland

Yeah the vast majority of their network would be HFC. Their newer builds here and in the UK seem to be using RFoG where the fibre cable is brought all the way to the premises then converted to coaxial in a box attached to the outside of the home. How many of these are in Ireland I don't know.

fritzelly

Dominique Loud Waistband wrote: »

Yeah the vast majority of their network would be HFC. Their newer builds here and in the UK seem to be using RFoG where the fibre cable is brought all the way to the premises then converted to coaxial in a box attached to the outside of the home. How many of these are in Ireland I don't know.

I wonder why they were replacing all the cables throughout Dublin if it's the architecture that determines the speed and not the cable itself

tsue921i8wljb3

fritzelly wrote: »

I wonder why they were replacing all the cables throughout Dublin if it's the architecture that determines the speed and not the cable itself

They went to Docsis 3.0 and potentially 3.1 in the future and probably needed high quality coaxial throughout to ensure network performance. We're well off topic now!

wheresthebeef

Dominique Loud Waistband wrote: »

Yeah the vast majority of their network would be HFC. Their newer builds here and in the UK seem to be using RFoG where the fibre cable is brought all the way to the premises then converted to coaxial in a box attached to the outside of the home. How many of these are in Ireland I don't know.

We have this in work it seems. Thin cable that looks like fibre converted back into coax which the Virgin Modem connects to. It's 500Mbps connection so it's faster than usual Virgin stuff.

KeRbDoG

Is it just one optical fiber from the bundle that feeds a pole fiber terminal/junction box, which is then optically split within that box to a number of ports with each port going to a house?
I ask as I had a failed install by a KN dude who said there was 'no light on the port' in the nearest terminal/junction box. I've since just noticed that there seems now to be a customer fed from that box, so hopefully the issue was resolved (bad termination, feed not plugged in/fully on the feed fiber etc.)

Anyone have any insight?

KeRbDoG

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Is it just one optical fiber from the bundle that feeds a pole fiber terminal/junction box, which is then optically split within that box to a number of ports with each port going to a house?
I ask as I had a failed install by a KN dude who said there was 'no light on the port' in the nearest terminal/junction box. I've since just noticed that there seems now to be a customer fed from that box, so hopefully the issue was resolved (bad termination, feed not plugged in/fully on the feed fiber etc.)

Anyone have any insight?

From what I understand, the main fibre cable has bundles of fibres (3 x 12 strands) and all except one are spliced through the box, the one remaining is spliced to a an optical splitter for local connections.

tsue921i8wljb3

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Is it just one optical fiber from the bundle that feeds a pole fiber terminal/junction box, which is then optically split within that box to a number of ports with each port going to a house?
I ask as I had a failed install by a KN dude who said there was 'no light on the port' in the nearest terminal/junction box. I've since just noticed that there seems now to be a customer fed from that box, so hopefully the issue was resolved (bad termination, feed not plugged in/fully on the feed fiber etc.)

Anyone have any insight?

My understanding is that they are using a cascaded split of 1:8 then 1:4 so not every distribution box is going to have a splitter, in fact the majority will not have them. If there is a customer fed from the same point as you will be connecting to it is a good sign that you should be good to be connected.

tsue921i8wljb3

Dominique Loud Waistband wrote: »

My understanding is that they are using a cascaded split of 1:8 then 1:4 so not every distribution box is going to have a splitter, in fact the majority will not have them. If there is a customer fed from the same point as you will be connecting to it is a good sign that you should be good to be connected.

Actually thinking about it the above could be totally wrong. There may be splitters in each distribution point. I was thinking that they would have clustered the splitters together but on reflection I'm not sure if that makes much sense.

KeRbDoG

Wonder if its the case that a fiber strand is dropped at the end of a road and that then is split into multiple fibers in the cable.
At each pole distribution point/box it splits that into the number of ports, one per customer?

tsue921i8wljb3

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Wonder if its the case that a fiber strand is dropped at the end of a road and that then is split into multiple fibers in the cable.
At each pole distribution point/box it splits that into the number of ports, one per customer?

They are using a cascaded split design as far as I know. Packet confirmed it here

If they have deployed the 1:8 splitters at or close to the exchange then the 1:4 splitters could be housed in the distribution points serving the homes. The dispersed nature of many (most) exchange areas means that the design would be a non trivial issue.

ED E

It will be based on the prior POTS deployment. Few poles serve more than 4 homes outside cities. So you'll get an 8 way split at the start of a run and then a 4 way every 4th or more pole. There is then a little "doubling back" to be equidistant between the cluster of 4.