FTTC Cabinet Ports Full

myate

Has anyone had an issue when ordering FTTC fibre, when it comes to installation, that the cabinet ports are full so you can't proceed with the installation?

Just wondering what happens - is there an availability list or something, or how does it work when one port does become free.

Falconire

myate wrote: »

Has anyone had an issue when ordering FTTC fibre, when it comes to installation, that the cabinet ports are full so you can't proceed with the installation?

Just wondering what happens - is there an availability list or something, or how does it work when one port does become free.

This means that the five cabinet to where your phone line would need to be connected to is full.

Nothing is going to happen unless eir upgrade or expand the cabinet and this is very unlightly as they are now focusing on fiber infustructure.

tuxy

This is rare but it does happen unfortunately. If someone in your area moves and cancels their broadband this would be a chance for you to take that port.

ED E

Very oversubscribed: They might add a roof extension to the copper cab and add an LT to increase capacity.

Slightly oversubscribed: Watch out for "For Sale" signs and try again.

Mezzotint

The cabinets are modular and they regularly add a piece to the top of the cabinet to accommodate more equipment to both the copper junction cabinet and the one containing the MSAN/DSLAM equipment. You see it quite a bit around parts of Cork and Dublin and I'm sure other areas.

Did they cancel the order, or accept it with a delay?

I'd suggest maybe trying a smaller ISP like Digiweb who might be more willing to actually ask what's going on. Eir retail is a bit 'computa-says-no'.

Marlow

OpenEIR had quite a few of those cabinets. In Galway City it was over 900 subscriber lines, where no new connections could be ordered.

A lot of it was due to failed line cards, which had not been replaced, as they deemed it no being financially viable.

Can you check on http://airwire.ie/avail and see, if it comes back with no ports available there ?

If it doesn't, then it's a different issue. If it comes back with "no ports available", then the VDSL DSLAM is simply full.

/M

Mezzotint

Financially non viable doesn't make sense. The whole fleet of cabinets is maintained by the vendor, Huawei. If there's a fault, it gets repaired or replaced.

Where a cabinet has run out of capacity, it can be extended but beyond that, they'd need to add a second cabinet, so perhaps there's a business case requirement that needs to show sufficient demand to justify the outlay on civil engineering and so on, but there would also be a lead time and potentially even getting permission from the council to add another box

Marlow

Mezzotint wrote: »

Financially non viable doesn't make sense. The whole fleet of cabinets is maintained by the vendor, Huawei. If there's a fault, it gets repaired or replaced.

Sorry, but in real life and depending on their contracts, that's not the way it happens.

From what I've seen, where a linecard or some ports on a linecard went faulty, OpenEIR have just simply moved circuits to other empty ports. Until said cabinet has no free ports anymore. It looks like, that they still operate like traditionally, where they keep in house spares.

Also, they have zero interest in spending any more money on the copper infrastructure, including VDSL / FTTC, because they are in the process of rolling out FTTH to 1.3-1.4M premises of those 1.7M premises, that are covered by VDSL. That also means, that line cards elsewhere will be freed up eventually, that can be used as spares. So why buy new ones ?

There was some expansion done at the start of the year (Galway was one of those places), but again also here: they have no interest in spending money on copper tech, as they are abandoning this path. So do not expect them to do any copper expansion of any cabinets anymore at this point.

So yes .. financially not viable .. very much so.

/M

Mezzotint

Well, it would be a fantastic way of losing potential business and revenue long term if they turn it away because of inadequate capacity.

FTTC is likely to still be in use for quite a while. FTTH is only barely beginning urban rollout.

Marlow

Mezzotint wrote: »

Well, it would be a fantastic way of losing potential business and revenue long term if they turn it away because of inadequate capacity.

It took them over a year and a lot of convincing to add enough resources in Galway City to de-list the over 900 premises, that couldn't be ordered there. And that was before the IFN was announced and even planned for.

For areas with a smaller number impacted than that, it may take longer.

That's what we're talking about here.

/M

BobMc

this happened to our house couple christmases ago, fault on our port and no spares in the cabinet took about 6 weeks to get it back. Right pain in the hoop it was, and kids went balistic

myate

Quick update...it was actually a neighbour who said who had an installation booked but they didn't come because the ports were full. We had an installation last week, and no problem. Very strange. We are with Eir, the neighbour Voda.

Marlow

myate wrote: »

Quick update...it was actually a neighbour who said who had an installation booked but they didn't come because the ports were full. We had an installation last week, and no problem. Very strange. We are with Eir, the neighbour Voda.

The two houses could very well be hanging of different cabinets.

OpenEIR has no facility to change a house from one cabinet to another. Wherever the house is wired to, that's where it's going to be connected.

/M

Berserker5

Marlow wrote: »

Sorry, but in real life and depending on their contracts, that's not the way it happens.

From what I've seen, where a linecard or some ports on a linecard went faulty, OpenEIR have just simply moved circuits to other empty ports. Until said cabinet has no free ports anymore. It looks like, that they still operate like traditionally, where they keep in house spares.

Also, they have zero interest in spending any more money on the copper infrastructure, including VDSL / FTTC, because they are in the process of rolling out FTTH to 1.3-1.4M premises of those 1.7M premises, that are covered by VDSL. That also means, that line cards elsewhere will be freed up eventually, that can be used as spares. So why buy new ones ?

There was some expansion done at the start of the year (Galway was one of those places), but again also here: they have no interest in spending money on copper tech, as they are abandoning this path. So do not expect them to do any copper expansion of any cabinets anymore at this point.

So yes .. financially not viable .. very much so.

/M

Are people with FTTC getting FTTH

Didn't know that, who qualifies?

Marlow

Berserker5 wrote: »

Are people with FTTC getting FTTH

Didn't know that, who qualifies?

There is no data yet. Rollout starts 2020.

/M