ESB fibre optic cable

Psychotic

Anyone know will the ESB be suppling the cable services it is currently rolling out around the country or will it be a different supplier, and when certain areas in Ireland will have this service. Particularly Letterkenny, Co Donegal.

I was also wondering if Time Warner will be using this fibre-optic cable as the American cable company has shown interest in suppling services in England.

Lets hope it doesnt turn out to be more of this dark fibre that Eirom and Esat are putting to waste right now!

Boston

afaik its another backbone, apparently there's no money in ordinary residential broadband

irishguy

the ESB will be supplying it,it will be availible to limerick,cork,galway,dublin,clare and all counties it passes on the way.by the end of 2002 or early 2003 but i dont think it will reach you till eary to middle 2003.i dont know about time warner but i would supect not
have a look at http://www.esb.ie/main/news_events/press_release26.jsp

irishguy

they will be offering a 512k home service i read it some where also the will be offering telcom services

irishguy

they have allready compleeted 400km out of 1300km so by my calculations it should all be finished by feb/march 2003.and its a 5 GiGabit connection!!!! they cant keep that for themselves.
«Bo§ton» also if it is going to be a backbone which i presume you mean mainly for data-warehouses,server farms,big companies ect why would they place it all over the country? even connecting places of little industrial importance with little need for high speed net connections. i think they are going to do something like they did with the rural electrification except it will be fibe instead of power lines.If they do what they say they will i will commend them it could bring Ireland up to the levels of the Uk and other Eu countries very fast within 3 to 4 years

Boston

hmm sounds interesting, I hadn't realized they planed a residential service, but last I looked details weren't that forth coming. sounds good if they can do it. the new wind farm will bring more competition to the electric market here, even more then there is in the telecoms industry because they will have their own supply with easy access to Dublin, i think we will see things from esb in the future, but today its eircom and esat and thats the bottom line

irishguy

well i think we will see great things from the ESB within a year and a half i think they could save the governments e-hub plan also they are not scared by large capital investments and long capital pay back times you can see this by there investment of £2.1 billion in electrical supply also they arent going to go bankrupt like esat and chorus and mabey Eircon if they keep going the way they are.also they can wait for a few years for payback because they are a semi state body and they have huge incomes from electricity where as esat,chorus and Eircon need the services they provide to be profitable quickly also chorus has huge debts and can barly keep its head above water and esat has mounting debts 2

Boston

well you have to keep in mind, unlike the telecoms industry the electric one is still growing hugely here, with bearly enough to cover current demand

irishguy

yes i know that we are using more and more each years so much so that the ESB are incouraging competition i.e eirtricity and promoting enegery conservation.and there is no sign of i decline in the near future where as in the telecoms sector it only experianced less that 5% growth which is declining each year as most people have a telephone line.so the ESB can afford to invest huge sums of money and not expect to get substintal profits for 5 to 10 years where as this would shut down esat,chorus and eircon and the likes so this is why i think the ESB will provide what they say

PiE

That seriously is great news. I hadn't expected broadband to be available outside of the major cities for years, but if all this goes to plan many areas will have it by 2003.

It also might act as an incentive for Eircom, Esat etc to pull the finger out.

aidan_dunne

Check this posting here. Something mentioned about it in the Leinster Express article I posted.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38739

yellum

The ESB are a very progressive group and have some intelligent people running it.

They obviously can see the future where they will need to diversify to keep up their profits. They are already doing a good bit of work overseas and will do this more and more.

I hope they pull this off and get the masses broadband. I'll leave more lights on at work if they do. :P

spongebob

Thank ***k that the ESB are still a public service with a public service ethos. Hopefully that will mean something in terms of the service offering within a year or so.

SkepticOne

It's a shame they are not doing a residential service, but hopefully, this will make it cheaper to connect telephone exchanges to the backbone for DSL.

Boston

their not public they are semi state.

a semi state body is one were the the goverment apoints neo's and directors but were the actual employies are noe civil servants.

Psychotic

Thanks for the replys,

I really do hope this service ends up a small business\residential and not "ANOTHER" backbone or pointless dark fibre.

The small business\residential are, i hope, the areas the ESB will be targeting as they are the most neglected areas as far as internet connections go.

These (speculative ) target groups are having to pay rediculous prices for desperately slow narrowband connections under ancient pay-as-you-go internet services.

Do Irish telcos realise how much they are keeping Ireland back? Are they really that stupid? Do the average internet user realise that Ireland is years behind Europe and North America? What will it take? 10 IOFFL Blackouts? A Eircom boycott (unlikely, but we can dream)
Even ADSL sucks in Ireland (Oh lets not go there!)
and our satillite service is no better.

So I pose the question, is the ESB's fibre-optic cable Irelands best hope for a proper broadband connection?

Come on ESB return the sanity to Irish internet and fulfill the broadband dream of the majority in this country.

o_donnel_abu

This ESB stuff sounds promising - I think we should seek to meet them 'officially' to try to find out their plans.

Anyone have any contacts within ESB or suggestions on who we should contact ?

You can email me privately if you want.

Martin

NeilF

Have the ESB said anything for or against using their power cables for delivering broadband, as an alternative to Eircom's local loop?

CNN article on the technology: Internet access via power lines reborn in Europe

If they are building a fiber infrastructure for themselves they could create a nice little business offering broadband to their electricity customers.

If the committee are going to meet with the ESB it might be a point to raise.

Boston

ill ask around o_donnel_abu.

Btw i think it will be a backbone long before a residential project, because it makes sense, the first stage would of course be the connection of the larger cities. then they can sell bandwidth, which inturn would help fund the residential phase. its the type of thing ESB would do but not the likes of esat or errorcom

logic1

My old housemate is one of three Supervisors who are overseeing the installation of the fibre optic cables for the whole of Ireland. I've forgotten the method he said they're using but apparently Ireland is being wired up in a T shape at first then more remote areas are being linked off this afterwards. ESB have been doing work on this for quite some time and alot of Eire is already wired up.

.logic.

Manic

There seems to be a LOT of new cable being layed all over the country along telephone poles etc. How many people have seen this in their area ? Better still why ? Seen as the cable is already there and not lit ?

o_donnel_abu

Originally posted by Psychotic
Anyone know will the ESB be suppling the cable services it ...Particularly Letterkenny, Co Donegal.

Forgot to say...roll on!

If Letterkenny gets it, maybe there's a chance for Castlefinn

Martin

Stonemason

I found out tonight that ESB has been busy on lines arround here one about a mile away has aparently been done acording to a neighbour he saw them using some weird little machine (it sounds like a petrol lawnmower) that rotates along the line spooling out and rapping the new cable arround the existing powerline.What id like to know is how are they going to connect people to there network ?will they run their little machine right up to your door and have they their own exchanges will the machine be able to travel along the smaller wires that run to our houses or can it only work on the big main lines ?.Any answers anyone ?.


Stone

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Stonemason
What id like to know is how are they going to connect people to there network ?will they run their little machine right up to your door and have they their own exchanges will the machine be able to travel along the smaller wires that run to our houses or can it only work on the big main lines ?.Any answers anyone ?.

So far I havn't read anything about the ESB intending to connect up ordinary homes. If they did want to do this, they could modulate the broadband signal over the power line into the house with a box near the meter splitting out the signal. There was talk of this some time ago.

So far, from what I've read, the ESB thing is another backbone - probably the most extensive being planned. I think it is likely that other companies such as wireless ISPs would be responsible for bringing the signal into homes if that is what is going to happen. The ESB network would make it a lot cheaper for them to do that. It would also enable knowledge intensive firms to set up outside the urban areas.

spongebob

Yo

The "broadband signal over the power line into the house" was attempted by Norweb and Nortel in a joint trial in Manchester a few years back. It was a tad like cable in that the local bandwidth was shared by all users. The problem they hit was that the shared data started to 'Broadcast' from street lights. The trial was terminated and not restarted.

This was something to do with the high intensity discharge capacitors in the street lights.

I assume somebody knows how to firewall the street lights by now but that they haven't done it yet.

M

dahamsta

Actually, a lot more companies and countries have trialled this, and the trials are still active in some places. It's a new technology, and new technologies will of course always have their bugs and problems. It's looking very promising at this stage though. Worth a browse through some of these pages.

adam

po0k

It's currently being actively used in Essen in Germany to about 400 homes. Germany is the only counrty that regulates Power line emissions and there is no interference. Besides, in England it was amatuer radio people complaining about the street lights being antennaes. The Service itself worked afaik.

Those scandinavian icepops are doing some queer things with it too. Might bear fruit soon.