National Broadband Ireland : implementation and progress

ednwireland

anyone know if there's a list of when they plan to start surveying areas? as I'm in Donegal i suspect we will be last

listermint

ednwireland wrote: »

anyone know if there's a list of when they plan to start surveying areas? as I'm in Donegal i suspect we will be last

youd suspect wrong, id imagine the likes of Wicklow will be last.

Dero

listermint wrote: »

youd suspect wrong, id imagine the likes of Wicklow will be last.

Maybe last to be completed, but according to NBI, Wicklow has already been started.

https://twitter.com/NatBroadbandIrl/status/1303683415846383620

listermint

Dero wrote: »

Maybe last to be completed, but according to NBI, Wicklow has already been started.

https://twitter.com/NatBroadbandIrl/status/1303683415846383620

probably bray :P thats not wicklow

joe123

If anyone is interested, just saw this tweet

https://twitter.com/BusinessShowIrl/status/1304010478675427330

smelly sock

Lads this has probably been answered a million times but is this rural only or will urban areas be included. Just got a quote off Virgin for 1gb at an eye watering 85euro per month. Eir only have availability up to 100mb which won't do.

Badly need some competition in the market.

FastFullBack

smelly sock wrote: »

Lads this has probably been answered a million times but is this rural only or will urban areas be included. Just got a quote off Virgin for 1gb at an eye watering 85euro per month. Eir only have availability up to 100mb which won't do.

Badly need some competition in the market.

NBI wont help. They only intervene where fast broadband is not available

heavydawson

smelly sock wrote: »

Lads this has probably been answered a million times but is this rural only or will urban areas be included. Just got a quote off Virgin for 1gb at an eye watering 85euro per month. Eir only have availability up to 100mb which won't do.

Badly need some competition in the market.

If you're lucky the Eir urban fibre build-out will allow the other (non-Virgin) players to offer non-cable based 1gbps services, but for now you're stuck. Also, not that you were looking for it, but you won't get much sympathy here if you're turning down 100mbps as not-good-enough :-D

listermint

smelly sock wrote: »

Lads this has probably been answered a million times but is this rural only or will urban areas be included. Just got a quote off Virgin for 1gb at an eye watering 85euro per month. Eir only have availability up to 100mb which won't do.

Badly need some competition in the market.

id pay that in a heartbeat 1Gb ffs, im paying 60Per month for an LTE connection which is god knows what im getting depending on time of day. So i maintain a seperate 4G provider at 20 Per month in case. thats 80 per month for non fibre LTE....

joe123

listermint wrote: »

id pay that in a heartbeat 1Gb ffs, im paying 60Per month for an LTE connection which is god knows what im getting depending on time of day. So i maintain a seperate 4G provider at 20 Per month in case. thats 80 per month for non fibre LTE....

Yep. I currently pay Vodafone 20 soon to be 35 a month for copper broadband that constantly drops, and avg. speed of 6Mb Upload of 0.6. As my work relies on file uploads and downloads I regularly have to hotspot off my phone and hope I can maintain a steady LTE signal on 10up/3 down. Add in the fact that if a download/upload is taking place, I cant even load a web page.

Once this contract ends I'll have to move to lightnet and pay 55 euro a month for speeds of 20Mb on a fixed wireless service which is also prone to drop offs, but I need it for the upload speeds.

Painful stuff until NBI eventually gets to my area.

theguzman

It is reported in this weeks Kerryman newspaper that TLI (contractors to ESB Networks) have been awarded a contract for work on the National Broadband Plan and that they will be undertaking work shortly in Limerick.

Jofspring

theguzman wrote: »

It is reported in this weeks Kerryman newspaper that TLI (contractors to ESB Networks) have been awarded a contract for work on the National Broadband Plan and that they will be undertaking work shortly in Limerick.

Sounds very promising. I assume this would give them access to the ESB poles which hopefully will speed things up.

theguzman

Jofspring wrote: »

Sounds very promising. I assume this would give them access to the ESB poles which hopefully will speed things up.

Working on active power lines would be a total different ball game to working on the EIR network, the TLI guys would have relevant training, necessary tickets and permits etc. ESB powerlines often cut cross country wheras EIR poles are usually along the roads. I have often seen these guys with Landrover Defenders and with Quadbike deployments also to reach remote poles.

I imagine a full fibre deployment on the ESB pole network would have been far more expensive (and slower) than stringing fibre on EIR's poles.

What will happen in 2025-2026 as the NBP is nearing completion? Will EIR actively remove and decommission the copper network which will now have been superseded by the fibre? Will NBP have a full time crew of service men or will it be farmed out to TLI, KN Networks etc? There will always be new houses under contruction in rural houses and storms will bring down te fibre just like the copper of today. Also for rural villages, towns and other non-NBP area's then EIR's ADSL2+ and vDSL deployments are antiquated already and when will see EIR move to disconnect the last copper connections in the urban non-NBP underserved areas without fibre.

E.g. My relative in a rural location recently got FTTH from EIR and they never had a fixed line broadband service before with only 3mb available in the local village exchange (they were too far out) and they had a local wisp supplying them 4mb garbage. Anyway the copper line is still active and used for PSTN for a landline telephone. The copper and Fibre are both fed in from the same pole. I was expecting that EIR would have removed the copper and provided them with a VOIP analogue POTS adapter to run the landline off the fibre. They have 500mb now.

The Cush

heavydawson wrote: »

Does the price quoted encompass all that was due to Eir ? i.e, does this mean the 1 billion referenced in rental costs throughout the NBP process will drop to ~330 million? If so, wow! Is there any flipside to this in terms of reduced returns to the government WRT VAT,etc. ?

I don't think so, the pole rental cost goes up annually with Comreg projecting a 25 year average charge of over €13 per pole over the life of the contract. Also you have the duct charges and I assume exchange and backhaul costs.

KOR101 wrote: »

This was my earlier prediction that the €20 was bound to be reduced, especially as it was an amount that was arrived at before the NBP was agreed. But, I was corrected by posters that the Dept had already negotiated a discount, and so weren't paying based on the €20 rate.

I remember eircom saying they would be charging the full regulated price for pole and duct access with no discount for the NBP and no one that I can remember contradicted this. Comreg's draft decision now changes this with an NBP RAP and another RAP for other users.

KOR101 wrote: »

Also, I forget the exact ROI permitted. Is it about 8.5% and should be about 5.5%? That's going have a really big impact on wholesale prices.

The WACC (weighted average cost of capital) as they refer to it drops to 4.03% for the NBP and 5.61% for other users as proposed from 8.18%.

KOR101

The Cush wrote: »

I remember eircom saying they would be charging the full regulated price for pole and duct access with no discount for the NBP and no one that I can remember contradicted this. Comreg's draft decision now changes this with an NBP RAP and another RAP for other users.

Yes Eir always argued that the price had only recently been set and that they were not budging.

It was in one of the Dail committee hearings. My memory does play tricks with me (and searching the forum postings has defeated me) but an official said the Department had negotiated an unspecified discount.

At any rate, there's a lot of good news recently. This in particular caught my eye this morning.

The "target", say officials, "is to try, from the second half of next year, to accelerate the rollout".

padraig.od

Ah lads i'll have to unsubscribe from this thread, it's just too exciting. Someone from NBI was around our way last week (South KK), said he was doing initial survey of premises

The Cush

KOR101 wrote: »

The chairman of the National Broadband Plan company says that the €3bn state-subsidised project may now be completed in five years rather than the seven years initially agreed under contract with the Government.

The remarks from David McCourt ........

"Hopefully we'll get it [the rollout] done in five years," Mr McCourt told a Reuters podcast.

That Reuters podcast - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ireland-business-breakingviews/breakingviews-the-exchange-telecoms-mogul-david-mccourt-idUSKBN25L1V5

The Cush

Regulator set to cut state-subsidised €900m fee to Eir for National Broadband Plan access to rural ducts and poles

Government appointee to the board of National Broadband Ireland is Bernie Gray

"the Department of Communications has confirmed that the person appointed by the government to the board of National Broadband Ireland is Coillte chairperson, Bernie Gray. Ms Gray, is a management consultant and executive coach, is an accountant who held a number of senior management posts in Eir and is a former chairperson of Eirgrid. She is also a member of the Accountability Board of the Civil Service and the Governing Authority of DCU."

The Cush

KOR101 wrote: »

Yes Eir always argued that the price had only recently been set and that they were not budging.

It was in one of the Dail committee hearings. My memory does play tricks with me (and searching the forum postings has defeated me) but an official said the Department had negotiated an unspecified discount..

https://twitter.com/IP4breakfast/status/1304153011065946112

listermint

The Cush wrote: »

https://twitter.com/IP4breakfast/status/1304153011065946112

So savings clawed back by the government.

theguzman

This is surely the first time that ComReg ever did any regulating of any specific use?

What are the chances of EIR trying to flog off the copper network to NBI or even back to the state? With NBI they will lose a huge sum of rural customers who they seemed to want to be rid of anyway, with Siro and Virgin's offering they are under huge pressure in urban areas also and EIR's only saving grace is it's own FTTH network and Eir Mobile and GoMo mobile offerings.

The Cush

theguzman wrote: »

What are the chances of EIR trying to flog off the copper network to NBI or even back to the state?

They couldn't give it away at this stage, it'll probably be gone within 5-6 years in any case.

oscarBravo

The Cush wrote: »

https://twitter.com/IP4breakfast/status/1304153011065946112

Bidders were told ComReg would never change the regulated pricing for CEI? Sounds unlikely.

BarryM

Reply by Ryan to a PQ this week concerning bb in rural areas.....

Usual waffle,9x% 'passed' in 20xx, and so on....

Orebro

BarryM wrote: »

Reply by Ryan to a PQ this week concerning bb in rural areas.....

Usual waffle,9x% 'passed' in 20xx, and so on....

It galls him that this is happening at all, he resents the fact that some of us live in rural areas, they’d ship the lot of us into the closest city if they had the chance.

baz9375

https://www.anglocelt.ie/2020/09/14/build-for-national-broadband-network-begins-in-cavan/

Work seems to be moving quickly - have seen them on two roads in the last two weeks and ducting looks to be installed on both now.

ACitizenErased

Anyone know if the Carrigaline build has started in Cork? I'm on the December-Feb list so hoping to see some work around here (upper Rochestown/Hilltown/Ballyorban) soon.

mp3guy

ACitizenErased wrote: »

Anyone know if the Carrigaline build has started in Cork? I'm on the December-Feb list so hoping to see some work around here (upper Rochestown/Hilltown/Ballyorban) soon.

I saw at least three NBI branded vans driving around Carrigaline this morning.

kaizersoze

Ballinasloe NBI areas were surveyed extensively in May/June.
This week we've had huddles of engineers with iPads/tablets touring & stopping regularly at major Eir chambers and junctions.

ShaunC

kaizersoze wrote: »

Ballinasloe NBI areas were surveyed extensively in May/June.
This week we've had huddles of engineers with iPads/tablets touring & stopping regularly at major Eir chambers and junctions.

They were probably looking for free Wi-Fi