Eir rural FTTH thread II

babi-hrse

With the openeir network everything that comes in contact with the fibre is made of plastic. I wonder will this plastic be as tough in 50 years time as it is today. Imagine fibre lines falling from the poles in traffic. I'd say the tensioners have undergone rigerous testing but can anyoje really account for 50 years of plastic under duress from tension and the elements.

fritzelly

Fibre has better tolerance than copper so should have the same if not better lifespan of copper
Less prone to some of the issues that copper has

babi-hrse

It's prone to a whole lot less. With copper your dealing with insulation resistance capatiance shorting voltage from adjacent pairs and that could be anywhere along a 7km long circuit the longer the circuit the more the likelyhood of an issue. Fibre is there's the dp there's the house if light and good signal by the time you get it to the house you should be good to go. But glass isn't exactly solid it's more of a slow creeping solid.
If you see a hous with windows over 100 years old the glass at the bottom will be thicker than the glass at the top so is there anything to say in 50 years there'll be issues with signal?

chris_ie

Quick question lads. How many connections can be done in a single access point under the road? Someone mentioned to me a while back that it was one access point/chamber per house. The access point in question is in front of our house, but the time I spoke to a KN guy a year ago he was in it connecting the neighbors house. So I’m not sure if that’s their connection point or if ours is in there also. If it’s not then it means I’ve got a duct longer than 50m to a pole further away with a few bends and no access points. House built 2007.

Marlow

chris_ie wrote: »

Quick question lads. How many connections can be done in a single access point under the road?

Are you talking about DPs (Distribution Points) ? The black 3M boxes. Typically 4, some of them have an expansion module to 8.

/M

chris_ie

Marlow wrote: »

Are you talking about DPs (Distribution Points) ? The black 3M boxes. Typically 4, some of them have an expansion module to 8.

/M

I meant the box at the road. Metal man hole cover. Where duct would usually go to?

Marlow

chris_ie wrote: »

I meant the box at the road. Metal man hole cover. Where duct would usually go to?

That's just an access chamber. The DP can be 2 chambers up the road .. or on a pole for that sake.

All that's in the access chamber is a bunch of pipes coming in. Only every 3rd or 4th has actual gear in it.

/M

fritzelly

babi-hrse wrote: »

It's prone to a whole lot less. With copper your dealing with insulation resistance capatiance shorting voltage from adjacent pairs and that could be anywhere along a 7km long circuit the longer the circuit the more the likelyhood of an issue. Fibre is there's the dp there's the house if light and good signal by the time you get it to the house you should be good to go. But glass isn't exactly solid it's more of a slow creeping solid.
If you see a hous with windows over 100 years old the glass at the bottom will be thicker than the glass at the top so is there anything to say in 50 years there'll be issues with signal?

Gravity and that is old glass techniques

chris_ie

Marlow wrote: »

That's just an access chamber. The DP can be 2 chambers up the road .. or on a pole for that sake.

All that's in the access chamber is a bunch of pipes coming in. Only every 3rd or 4th has actual gear in it.

/M

Ah right. Just trying to suss out if our duct goes to that chamber, I know the neighbors does. Will just have to see what they say. The actual DP is on the pole our line comes from. Just don’t know if our line passes through that access chamber or some other odd route. Cheers Marlow

babi-hrse

babi-hrse wrote: »

If you see a house with windows over 100 years old the glass at the bottom will be thicker than the glass at the top so is there anything to say in 50 years there'll be issues with signal?

That's an urban myth!
In the olden days, the quality of the glass was very variable and the thickness was not constant, the glaziers simply put the thickest end downwards.

Peppa Cig

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Let us know how you get on with this and how many of its various functions you use.

Thanks.

The Fritzbox 7590 working well for me. I don’t use telephony features just for wireless and cables connection.

Surprisingly the WiFi range is not as good as Eir modem but the connection is solid. Will probably place a Fritzbox repeater in attic to cover furthest bedrooms upstairs. Hopefully this will extend range in garden also.

I was having various issues with the Eir modem including drop outs, slow WiFi, DNS issues etc.

These appear to have disappeared with Friztbox 🙂

oleras

Peppa Cig wrote: »

The Fritzbox 7590 working well for me. I don’t use telephony features just for wireless and cables connection.

Surprisingly the WiFi range is not as good as Eir modem but the connection is solid. Will probably place a Fritzbox repeater in attic to cover furthest bedrooms upstairs. Hopefully this will extend range in garden also.

I was having various issues with the Eir modem including drop outs, slow WiFi, DNS issues etc.

These appear to have disappeared with Friztbox ��

Yeah, i never had an issue with wifi range using the eir router, changing to a fritzbox during the week, lets hope it stays as good.

lucernarian

DarkPassenger wrote: »

Fibre laid past here yesterday, should I forget about it until next year or will it be available fairly soon? Vodafone customer if that makes any difference.

Seems to vary by quite an amount. One instance I know of was a 7 month wait between fibre being erected, and activation acceptance of orders.

KCross

lucernarian wrote: »

Seems to vary by quite an amount. One instance I know of was a 7 month wait between fibre being erected, and activation.

11 weeks for me.

Highly variable, as you say.

CrummyOldDanish

FTTH has just rolled out to my address. I had an eir rep call to the house selling fibre bundles and he told me FTTH has been live at my address since the 7th of November. He advised me to call eir loyalty to get better offers. After the guys in the call centre told me FTTH wasn't available, I called the rep back and he confirmed that I could 100% receive it. I also called into an eir shop. After explaining the situation to the lad behind the counter, he looked up my eircode on R6 and showed me the result which showed 1000Mb FTTH as available.

Armed with this knowledge, I called eir back and after getting through to customer support, the agent told me that she needed to merge some information in whatever database she was looking at, that it would take 48 hours, and that she'd call me then. Of course I never got a call back

I spoke to eir again today and heard the same thing again: FTTH was not available. I then spoke to technical support again and the agent told me that she found it as available and said to mention to sales that it was on prequal on UG. As usual, sales told me I couldn't get it.

I'm at the end of my rope now as this is going on for two weeks, on hold for up to an hour at a time. FTTH shows as available on the eir extreme site as well as the airwire site (in a contract with eir unfortunately, otherwise I'd be gone). Does anyone have any advice or suggestions for what I could do? Thanks in advance. Sorry for the wall of text, I'm just a bit frustrated and desperate at this stage.

fritzelly

Your eircode needs to be merged with your current ard key - as already told it takes a day or two, then it should show on the system as available to order.
But here is the kicker - eir are taking forever to update their backend systems at the moment so while it is all showing ok in UG at the wholesale side sales still cannot order it because it is not being updated in R6. I believe this side is still outsourced to India.
Any other provider would probably not have a problem ordering it (assuming the details were sent off to be merged)

Marlow

fritzelly wrote: »

(assuming the details were sent off to be merged)

The merging is only needed for R6.

Anyone that orders on UG, orders straight of the Eircode. No ard needed. So no merge needed either. Plus the merge would have been done, as the service went live anyhow ... automatically.

I'd say that's a R6 problem. Hence why it works everywhere else.

/M

fritzelly

For a new customer maybe, going VOIP, but where there is a current PSTN line it still needs to be merged

Marlow

fritzelly wrote: »

For a new customer maybe, going VOIP, but where there is a current PSTN line it still needs to be merged

IF you want a bundle .. yes .. here's a funny one: if you have a bundle .. or a mixed service (like phone from one provider, broadband from another) ... even if it's copper for phone and fibre for the broadband from the other.

If you port your phone number out of the network .. you'll loose your broadband in the process. ... with a 24 hour delay.

That really makes bundles a mess.

/M

fritzelly

Well most people have bundles so that's the kicker - and that would be the same problem for any provider
For the OP there's ways around it but messy if you want to keep the same phone number.
Call 1800 303 733, they have more sense about stuff - think Cork is taking over sales stuff now but clueless.

p.s.
Remainder of (current) customer care support are gone at the end of the week - say hello to even longer wait times!

Marlow

fritzelly wrote: »

Well most people have bundles so that's the kicker

Essentially, if you want to keep your own phone number, porting out means 48 hours downtime. 4 days, if it's across a weekend.

- 24 hours after the phone is ported, the broadband drops.
- 24 hours after the broadband dropped, the port becomes available.
- it takes another 24 hours to re-instate the broadband.

IF it was FTTH and somebody unplugged the ONT in the process, then it's not going to be 24 hours for the last step, but 4 work days for an engineer visit, because UG can't do an in-situ, if the ONT isn't powered.

Gotta love how inflexible those systems are .. NOT.

/M

fritzelly

Shouldn't be any (discernible) down time for porting a phone number or BB (within the OE network) - not sure what you are talking about?
Unless you are talking about ceasing service and then requesting the vacant number which is a whole different ball game from transfer of service.

Marlow

fritzelly wrote: »

(within the OE network)

Exactly this. As OE disbands of more and more copper lines, phone numbers will move completely outside of the OE network.

With that, bundles will become a pain. The sooner standalone broadband becomes the standard, the easier provider movement becomes.

/M

fritzelly

With the move to VOIP phone numbers then transfer of numbers becomes even easier (OE want this, get rid of the copper based infrastructure completely, even where its FTTC there is a move to VOIP) - wanna add phone to your BB then it takes an hour or so, transfer of numbers are easy since there is no "physical" phone number anymore, just 0's and 1's in a computer.

Still not understanding what you are getting at.

There is still a massive demand for a LL, days of just ordering BB only is a long way off.

CrummyOldDanish

fritzelly wrote: »

Well most people have bundles so that's the kicker - and that would be the same problem for any provider
For the OP there's ways around it but messy if you want to keep the same phone number.
Call 1800 303 733, they have more sense about stuff - think Cork is taking over sales stuff now but clueless.

p.s.
Remainder of (current) customer care support are gone at the end of the week - say hello to even longer wait times!

Thanks for the quick replies, all. So my best bet is to give that number a call tomorrow and explain the situation? I'm willing to do anything to get it sorted asap as I know the whole in housing with eir will just make things even worse.

Also, any idea why R6 in the shop was showing FTTH as available yet the agents in the call centre insist that R6 is telling them the max I can get is 8-12Mb (they said that was with the eircode and landline number)?

Marlow

fritzelly wrote: »

Still not understanding what you are getting at.

There is still a massive demand for a LL, days of just ordering BB only is a long way off.

The days of ordering broadband only have been around 10 years+ (in rural Ireland). Not because people wanted it, but because it was their only choice.

The result of that is, that a lot of rural homes actually never got a phone line .. at all. Mobile will do.

OEs systems are extremely inflexible. Every single change takes 24 hours. And some changes take multiple steps .. (of 24 hours each). It's part of the bad service experience.

It's another reason, why Eir don't even know how to reach a large chunk of customers. Also probably the reason, why door-to-door still is the only choice to get to these.

/M

fritzelly

bcross12 wrote: »

Also, any idea why R6 in the shop was showing FTTH as available yet the agents in the call centre insist that R6 is telling them the max I can get is 8-12Mb (they said that was with the eircode and landline number)?

It's a mismatch or rather lack of match between your eircode and your ARD key (what your current service is provided on based on your internal address key)
Once matched then no problem with ordering it
So probably people using different ways of checking for FTTH - phone number, eircode, ard key...

CrummyOldDanish

fritzelly wrote: »

It's a mismatch or rather lack of match between your eircode and your ARD key (what your current service is provided on based on your internal address key)
Once matched then no problem with ordering it
So probably people using different ways of checking for FTTH - phone number, eircode, ard key...

Ah, okay. Eir and OE's systems just sound more convoluted and ridiculous the more I learn about them.

I'll report back tomorrow anyway if I make any progress. Thanks again.

fritzelly

Wont argue about OE systems - calling them antiquated is being nice. To this day I do not understand why there is multiple links to check the various types of query when a few lines of code could work it out from the reference number (pet grievance of mine)! Like LNB, PNW, PNN, TTL, FLT etc - seriously they only mean one thing

But talk to many rural homes and LL is the only means of communication as mobiles don't work or you get half a conversation

fritzelly

bcross12 wrote: »

Ah, okay. Eir and OE's systems just sound more convoluted and ridiculous the more I learn about them.

I'll report back tomorrow anyway if I make any progress. Thanks again.

In a way not really OE's fault as there was never any kind of way to identify houses in Ireland - having a dozen houses using the same address!
With the eircode now they can and they are trying to move towards it as the identifier internally.