Rural broadband myth

Ubbquittious

It's still called Telecom Eireann here in North Kerry. We don't do any of the rebranding sh1te

Ipso

Ubbquittious wrote: »

It's still called Telecom Eireann here in North Kerry. We don't do any of the rebranding sh1te

Are the pnt still on the go?

DarkPassenger

OneEightSeven wrote: »

I agree with the OP. There's absolutely no economic benefit to rolling out fibre to one-off housing, but the government are touting it as such to justify feeding one-off housing with high speed internet because it's one of the biggest complaints their TDs receive. Make no mistake, this is all for votes.

Why are we rewarding people who bought/built cheaper homes with high speed internet? It's costs significantly more to provide one-off housing with services than urban homes:

• Their electricity subsidised by urban customers because their homes are fed by over ground cables and poles on private land, which ESB have to compensate farmers/landowners for. They pay a rural tariff but that doesn't come anywhere close to paying to true cost of supplying their homes with electricity.
  
• Their phone line is subsidised by urban customers because homes are fed by telephone poles on private land which Eir have to pay annual compensation for each pole, but unlike the ESB, they don't pay a rural tariff. 40% of our population live in one-off housing ans it's the reason why we are the 4th-most expensive country in Europe for broadband.
  
• Their postal delivery is subsidised. Their postman delivers by van, mine delivers by a push-bike, so mine services obviously consumers less fuel.
  
• Emergency services consume more fuel reaching their homes

Why are we rewarding people who buy cheap land to build a home or bought a cheaper home in rural Ireland with fibre optic broadband? If people want to live rural, they should pay the full cost of providing services to their homes and accept that their services will never be of the same standard as urban homes.

It's not a reward it's a utility that should be provided to everyone in the country.

DarkPassenger

I highly doubt people being happy with their wireless service is why take up is low, it's probably more to do with people being stuck in 18 month contracts, not understanding the product and hearing about Fibre before (FTTC) and thinking it's the same crap.

Silent Running

Ubbquittious wrote: »

It's still called Telecom Eireann here in North Kerry. We don't do any of the rebranding sh1te

Then it should be The Department of Posts and Telegraphs, P 7 T for short.

Discodog

DarkPassenger wrote: »

I highly doubt people being happy with their wireless service is why take up is low, it's probably more to do with people being stuck in 18 month contracts, not understanding the product and hearing about Fibre before (FTTC) and thinking it's the same crap.

And because Eir are so hopeless. Joe Duffy said that they could fill Liveline, five days per week, just on Eir complaints. Plus they insist on payment by Direct Debit.

mikhail

my3cents wrote: »

How much cheaper?

I don't know the figures, but electrical cable can be joined very simply (pretty much just twist the two ends together) whereas every join on optical fibre is a major operation in which you're effectively trying to line up two things the size of a hair across.

Ubbquittious

Silent Running wrote: »

Then it should be The Department of Posts and Telegraphs, P 7 T for short.

Anything with "Department" in it brings up too many bad memories around here

markodaly

This biggest issue here is the model of development we have followed the past few decades for Rural Ireland.
People want to have a McMansion in the middle of nowhere, with their neighbors a 100M up the road, on some ribbon development. Great!

Of course, delivering services like Broadband to these people is very very difficult and expensive.
The state has, of course, subsidised this type of lifestyle choice by subsidizing ESB connections to these remote properties. Now, we want to reward the same bad decision making by throwing good money over bad to subsidize BB connections.

We should be trying to get people to live in clusters of towns and villages, not in the middle of nowhere.

The rural BB moan, is just that, a moan.

banana_bear

banana_bear wrote: »

What about them? 99% of all jobs that are done in the office and where you "could work from home" are done by the way of connecting to a local machine and working from there.

.

I’d have to disagree there I would say most people who are working from home are exchanging data between their machine and office or cloud servers on top of that video calls etc are a regular occurrence and require a fast and realiable connection.

Any work I do from home (in this and my previous job) is done on my local machine connected to cloud servers so every save involves an upload (often a large one) and opening any file involves a download. Working on a poor connection makes it so slow and even leads to corrupt documents etc. This is how it is from most if not all the people I know who do remote work.

Wireless just does not cut it, 4G etc is too unrealiable. Fiber is needed in all rural areas.

ED E

Ipso wrote: »

Are the pnt still on the go?

Plenty of P&T manhole covers all over the country, including Dublin.

zapitastas

markodaly wrote: »

This biggest issue here is the model of development we have followed the past few decades for Rural Ireland.
People want to have a McMansion in the middle of nowhere, with their neighbors a 100M up the road, on some ribbon development. Great!

Of course, delivering services like Broadband to these people is very very difficult and expensive.
The state has, of course, subsidised this type of lifestyle choice by subsidizing ESB connections to these remote properties. Now, we want to reward the same bad decision making by throwing good money over bad to subsidize BB connections.

We should be trying to get people to live in clusters of towns and villages, not in the middle of nowhere.

The rural BB moan, is just that, a moan.

For sure, everyone should just move to Dublin

zapitastas

zapitastas wrote: »

For sure, everyone should just move to Dublin

I think you missed a line in the piece you quoted:

"We should be trying to get people to live in clusters of towns and villages, not in the middle of nowhere."

OneEightSeven

OneEightSeven wrote: »

• Their electricity subsidised by urban customers because their homes are fed by over ground cables and poles on private land, which ESB have to compensate farmers/landowners for. They pay a rural tariff but that doesn't come anywhere close to paying to true cost of supplying their homes with electricity.
  
• Their phone line is subsidised by urban customers because homes are fed by telephone poles on private land which Eir have to pay annual compensation for each pole, but unlike the ESB, they don't pay a rural tariff. 40% of our population live in one-off housing ans it's the reason why we are the 4th-most expensive country in Europe for broadband.
  .

Did you make this absolute and utter nonsense up yourself or did you steal it from some other joker?

We have loads of ebs and telephone poles on our land and have never received a cent for them nor does any other farmer. Absolute anti-rural lies is all you are sprouting.

Rural Ireland is as entitled to fiber BB as anyone stuck living in the hell hole that is Dublin. Rural dwellers more than pay their way, we actually pay for our water, we pay for our own sewage, we pay more for our electricity, we pay more in fuel taxes, we pay far more for a phone and a large number of us have no proper BB which prevents working from home etc.

Many of us are not happy to live in a small crap house stuck to another house in an estate with everyone one on top of each other, we aspire to much better.

markodaly

zapitastas wrote: »

For sure, everyone should just move to Dublin

Re-read my post, people should be living in the towns and villages, not up the arse of a mountain.

zapitastas

markodaly wrote: »

Re-read my post, people should be living in the towns and villages, not up the arse of a mountain.

That horse has bolted for a lot of people. The 1950swould have been a good idea to consider that sort of spacial development. Most people now actually are being drawn to live in Dublin as that is where the employment is being created. Not much point in telling people to live in towns and villages for access to broadband if there is nothing to do. I have seen this sort of development in eastern block countries where those working the farms would be driven from every day from centralised villages to the land.

OldRio

markodaly wrote: »

This biggest issue here is the model of development we have followed the past few decades for Rural Ireland.
People want to have a McMansion in the middle of nowhere, with their neighbors a 100M up the road, on some ribbon development. Great!

Of course, delivering services like Broadband to these people is very very difficult and expensive.
The state has, of course, subsidised this type of lifestyle choice by subsidizing ESB connections to these remote properties. Now, we want to reward the same bad decision making by throwing good money over bad to subsidize BB connections.

We should be trying to get people to live in clusters of towns and villages, not in the middle of nowhere.

The rural BB moan, is just that, a moan.

I was going to point out the errors in your post. Then I checked some of your posting history. Wow. You have issues.
Good day to you. Life's to short.

Seth Brundle

zapitastas wrote: »

Not much point in telling people to live in towns and villages for access to broadband if there is nothing to do. I have seen this sort of development in eastern block countries where those working the farms would be driven from every day from centralised villages to the land.

If the absence of something to do is a reason why rural folk aren't settling in clusters as much as they should then how do you explain all the ribbon development and one off housing given they would have even less to do?

monkeybutter

markodaly wrote: »

Re-read my post, people should be living in the towns and villages, not up the arse of a mountain.

Hard to milk cows and pick spuds in town isn't it

ghostdancer

markodaly wrote: »

This biggest issue here is the model of development we have followed the past few decades for Rural Ireland.
People want to have a McMansion in the middle of nowhere, with their neighbors a 100M up the road, on some ribbon development. Great!

Of course, delivering services like Broadband to these people is very very difficult and expensive.
The state has, of course, subsidised this type of lifestyle choice by subsidizing ESB connections to these remote properties. Now, we want to reward the same bad decision making by throwing good money over bad to subsidize BB connections.

We should be trying to get people to live in clusters of towns and villages, not in the middle of nowhere.

The rural BB moan, is just that, a moan.

spot on.

there are physical, scientific limitations of broadband.
if you choose to live miles away from the nearest village or town, then this is the price you pay.

if it was economically viable to provide broadband/fibre, then companies would be doing it, as they're in the business of making profits.

it isn't, so either pony up the cash yourself, or get over it.

ghostdancer

Colonel Claptrap wrote: »

I would move to the countryside in a heartbeat if I was guaranteed excellent fibre broadband.

I would work from home 3/4 days a week then make the long commute to Dublin for the other 1/2 days.

There are no jobs in my area of specialty in the West of Ireland. If I could move my job West, by working from home, I'd be delighted.

I'd say I'm not alone in thinking this.

there are plenty of places in "the west" with fibre broadband available:
https://www.eir.ie/broadband/coverage-map/

Danzy

Bella Doyle wrote: »

There is this myth being pushed by the media that super fast fiber broadband in rural Ireland will mean that everyone will be able to set up a rival to Amazon.com from their spare room. The reality is the vast majority of people in rural Ireland will only sign up to fiber to get better Netflix, mind you lots of people are already happy with the wireless service they have, which is why take up of eirs rural fiber broadband where it's available is so low

The very most will but isnt that the the same everywhere.

A significant few will use it for their own businesses though and it is a big problem in many areas.

The same thing was said about the Phone network being rolled out years ago.

nice_guy80

Carlingford Locked wrote: »

Well if you're going to build in the middle of nowhere, I don't think the tax payer should be paying for your electricity connection either.

They don't
House builder pays for the connection

nice_guy80

Fibre broadband would allow two of my neighbours work 2-3 days from home
Would save a lot of driving
We're only 3 miles from a town with 20k+ population and there is no sign of broadband through the phone line and the mobile signal isn't good enough to rely on.

heroics

banana_bear wrote: »

I'm the last person who wants to raise a point against bringing fast broadband to every home, but you don't need "excellent fibre" broadband to work from home. You need RELIABLE broadband to work from home. Any crappy DSL line from eir or sky with 5MBit is enough, as long as it's solid (no outages and a constant latency < 50ms).

A Citrix or Remote Desktop connection uses less than 0.5MBit/s, and even if you work on your local PC directly accessing resources (files, mails, phone etc) from a VPN from your office, you'll be happy with 5MB/s. As long as the latency is low and the line is solid.

There's a huge difference between "running a business from home" (including servers in that location) and "accessing work ressources from home".

I'm working from home since 6 years. All the time I had a line of sight connection from Wicklow Broadband, which costs an arm and a leg (90.- for 12MBit/s) but generally is rock solid. I used to have both a DSL (eir, sky) and a 4g (Three) backup, but both of these were less reliable than the WBB line. DSL was down a lot, latency was all over the place, and 4G was a complete and utter lottery in terms of speeds. Both might of course be related to the area I live in, the infrastructure doesn't look like it has gotten any love for decades.

While Remote Desktop solutions work well if your company is big enough to invest in a Citrix/Remote Desktop infrastructures and the bandwidth required is tiny you have to be realistic. If your working from home and your wife works remote as well and then the kids want to play the PS4 and watch YouTube/iptv then that bandwidth disappears pretty quick.

I used to remote to the office when I had a pc there but now use a laptop and O365/ sharepoint/onedrive. It’s a pain on a slow connection if I’m in my dads for example compared to mine just to save and keep the files synced while on a voip call as the call quality suffers when uploading to the cloud services.

CrabRevolution

my3cents wrote: »

I've lived in rural Ireland for 20 years without broadband of any kind so another 10 years and the time scales will be similar.

Bit of a fake comparison there. You're taking your start point to be the beginning of broadband, not the beginning of the scheme to bring it to every cranny in Ireland.

Main electricity distribution began in the 1880s, so it was more like 100 years to reach every Irish house. It'll be a long time before the timescales are similar.

Ubbquittious

Adeline Shy Trespasser wrote: »

Did you make this absolute and utter nonsense up yourself or did you steal it from some other joker?

We have loads of ebs and telephone poles on our land and have never received a cent for them nor does any other farmer. Absolute anti-rural lies is all you are sprouting.

Rural Ireland is as entitled to fiber BB as anyone stuck living in the hell hole that is Dublin. Rural dwellers more than pay their way, we actually pay for our water, we pay for our own sewage, we pay more for our electricity, we pay more in fuel taxes, we pay far more for a phone and a large number of us have no proper BB which prevents working from home etc.

Many of us are not happy to live in a small crap house stuck to another house in an estate with everyone one on top of each other, we aspire to much better.

Yerrah feckit a lot of this ould sh1tetalk denouncing "one off housing" is just people who moved up to Dublin finding an outlet for their new-found anti-culchie sentiment. If they were so worried about the costs they'd be encouraging people to move to the countryside, increase the economies of scale.


Though tis getting easier by the day to live off the grid, give it a few years and the last remaining teeth will be taken out of the tired old services cost too much argument.

nice_guy80

Take for example the likes of county Roscommon which has the oldest average population in the country.

If rural broadband could provide the opportunity for people to move back then it would be a huge positive

An_Toirpin

In other countries I have heard of people installing their own fibre through the formation of skilled co ops. How come this hasn't happened here? Also how come people can't pay a fee to install fibre privately? I understand the cost could be prohibitive for most but why isn't there at least the opinion for weathly, it would reduce the work for Eir, or is there?

Potential-Monke

An_Toirpin wrote: »

In other countries I have heard of people installing their own fibre through the formation of skilled co ops. How come this hasn't happened here? Also how come people can't pay a fee to install fibre privately? I understand the cost could be prohibitive for most but why isn't there at least the opinion for wealthy, it would reduce the work for Eir, or is there?

There is. Pretty sure one of the owners of one of the satellite broadband providers has 'paid' to have just his mansion house serviced in the a-hole of County Waterford.