New Broadband Areas

Nuphor

I've been out of the loop when it comes to broadband availability for quite some time now, as I've never had it available to me. About a week ago I had ISDN installed, and its renewed my interest in broadband. Currently, I'm connected to the Passage East exchange in Waterford, and as is my understanding from this post, broadband will be rolled out in my area sometime this year or next.

It's my understanding that ISDN and RADSL operate at much the same distance, so I have a good chance of being an acceptable distance from my exchange. I've also done some tests with a modem attached to one of the NT1 attached to my walls analogue ports and have determined that the lines noise is 41dB. I'm out of the loop as to what's an acceptable line tolerence, so I'm sure some of you guys know what Eircom currently demand.

That brings me to another question; do the set standards required for ADSL differ from telco to telco? Smart Telecom install their own DSLAMs, so do they have a different set of standards to those of Eircom and BT?

I'd just like to know if I have any chance in hell of ever getting ADSL out my really. Are any of the exchanges mention in the thread linked to above currently enabled?

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

OfflerCrocGod

Ok I have BT plus bb and my line values are
down up
SNR 6.5 dB 0.0 dB
ATEN 53 dB 31 dB

So if I can get it you probably can and if you can get BT/€ircon then you can easily get Smart (if they ever become available in your area)

Nuphor

I remain hopeful anyway, especially after reading this.

Mr_Man

You don't say how far from the exchange you are. While Eircom will support ISDN to over 7km, they will only support DSL to 4-4.5km. The Amber program uses this as one of the limiting factors.

M.

Nuphor

Mr_Man wrote:

You don't say how far from the exchange you are. While Eircom will support ISDN to over 7km, they will only support DSL to 4-4.5km. The Amber program uses this as one of the limiting factors.

M.

I'm not quite sure to be honest, but I think I'm around 3.75-4km from the exchange. With the advent of the "amber" scheme though I would have thought that eircom may finally do away with the distance limits altogether or at least increase them substantially such that each house is evaluated individually, much like the UK.

lucernarian

Eircom's position as per three weeks ago is that they have no plans to extend or scrap the line distance limits. I have been told this by various staff in Eircom. Annoyingly I have an ISDN capable line (6.5 kms long) but cannot be used for broadband eircom-style.

juliuspret

It would cost eircom too much to do a house-by-house test for BB.

Remember:
Eircom are a private company and their primary allegiance is to their investors with customers coming a very distant second!!!

Nuphor

juliuspret wrote:

It would cost eircom too much to do a house-by-house test for BB.

They don't have to test everyone, all they have to do is test customers which have actually placed an order, much like what they're doing now just without the dumb distance limit. Assigning arbitrary distances as a requirement to subscribers is pretty stupid, because the only real thing which matters in the case of xDSL is line attenuation, that is, how much of the signal remains when transmitted from point-to-point, which can vary depending on the context.

If their distance limit was increased to 5.5km, which is currently the limit of RADSL reach, these arbitrary figures would make much more sense.

I understand that Eircom have appalling copper throughout the country, but I still believe they're screwing themselves out of more revenue by not increasing the distance limit. After their announcement a while ago to send engineers out to homes who've ordered broadband who may or may not be able to avail of it, you'd think increasing the distance limit would happen too. All it would give them is more customers for little extra cost, as they've already committed to send out engineers to inspect homes who've ordered broadband. They wouldn't be sending out engineers to homes who had no interest at all.

The only reason I can see Eircom keeping the current limit in tact is because their base product is now 1mbps, not 512kbps, and as such the limit would have to be tightened.

I suppose they have any plans to introduce ADSL2 DSLAMs either. Jesus Christ, we can't win.