Eircom's DSL Rollout 'Plan'

Mr_Man

Hi,

does anyone have an insight into how Eircom plans to roll out DSL to the reamining exchanges which are not yet enabled. I ask because when I contacted them about my exchange I was told it would be 2005 at the earliest before they would upgrade it.

On the other hand their 'new' register of interest would seem to imply they are adopting the BT approach which requires a certain level of user interest before they enable an exchange.

Any thoughts or insider knowledge ?

M.

spongebob

Around 70-80 are enabled now, May 2003. Eircom and Comreg do not publish a dated Map or even a List. You can get an inaccurate and incomplete list of the Exchanges from the Eircom website by grinding through all the 26 counties one by one.

This will rise to

110 By December 2003

and then

150 By September 2004

As For The Other 950 there are No Plans Whatsoever , thats 86% of all the exchanges in the State although many are small and remote.

The Plan MAY be revised but only in conjunction with the rollout for the Hutchison 3G contract and only if Eircom win a large slab of the Network Rollout. If the ESB wins the Hutchison 3G contract next month (as is likely) then the rollout will not go beyond the 150 out of 1100 that we have been promised. Eircom will get some crumbs from the table.

In the event that Eircom do get some or a lot of the Hutchison 3G Business then they will start to expand beyond the first 150 Exchanges in around 2 and a half years from now. The initial 3G coverage requirement is 53% of the population by 31 December 2005 (PDF page 15). The initial 150 Exchanges to be provisioned by End September 2004 will cover 53% OF the population anyway.

Therefore the expansion of DSL from the current phased 150 will not really kick in until early 2006 as the second target for 3G coverage, that of 80% population coverage, becomes pressing. That target must be met by 31 December 2007 and it is likely that the Eircom buildout (if required) will be rearloaded into the second half of 2007.

M

bizmark

ya but lets be fair most of thos 800+ exchanges are in the back of beyond where the most techy person in the area is still uses flint lock muskets:D

furlong

Bizmark

not quite the thing to be posting on the IOFL Forum whose stated aims are .....

"Universal flat rate (unmetered) access to the internet for all users.
Complete Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) by Eircom.
Universal access to broadband services for all users."

I am one of many technical people living and working in areas served by exchanges which are unlikely to be ADSL enabled in the near future and find your remarks rather offensive.

OHP

Have to agree with what Biz said even though he meant it as a joke. And there is no need to take offence by what he said even though the truth hurts. As far as DSL / ADSL / RADSL is concerned. Any place outside of a Major City / Town will never be considered compatible for it so just face it. And you don’t even have to be a Techy guy to realise that

OHP

MagicBusDriver

Muck, Do you know how many of the exchanges are over 500 lines. I should be possible to uopgrade all of those at a reasonable cost with a decent return for eircom.

furlong

hmmm I still don't find it funny maybe it is an age/maturity thing.

So you agree with Biz that the 800+ exchanges are in the back of beyond or that the most techy person in the area uses flintlock muskets or both?

The former is subjective and a some of these exchanges are not in the back of beyond they merely happen to be in smaller communities which are within an hours drive of Dublin. Is that the back of beyond?

I won't even grace the latter comment about flintlock muskets with an analysis.

I would have been more impressed if a comment had been made about the cost effectiveness of enabling the smaller exchanges, but Eircom are not going to release their cost models to allow any analysis to be done.

Bottom line is that Eircom will continue to milk as much of the cash cow as possible from their semi-monopolistic position.

Have you actually read the website?

furlong

MBD

no idea on the number with over 500 lines but it is probably not the best way to pick viable exchanges.

The method used in Britain of trigger levels being set for exchanges seems more useful.

I know of cases where people who believe in the wide availability of broadband (and of course wanted it themselves) have leafleted entire villages to attempt to meet trigger levels.

If I understand the British model correctly then once the trigger level is met BT will then take orders for the exchange but will only confirm them once a certain level has been met.

viking

Furlong,

Ring 6714444 (eircom HQ) and ask to speak to someone in the marketing dept regarding DSL. When you get through state your location and what exchange you are connected to, tell them you saw that it is now possible to register your interest in DSL on their website (http://www.eircom.ie/votebroadband.html) and that your enquiry "could lead directly to your exchange reaching the necessary trigger level to be upgraded for I-Stream". Ask them since this is the case you would like to formally request that they set a trigger level for your local exchange, wait for the awkward pause from the person at the end of the line (BTW get their name), remember that they are marketing people and will eventually respond with some marketing tripe, ignore this and insist that they set a trigger level for your exchange. Don't accept a random figure that they will give you (300-400 ppl) ask them to provide you with a definite figure for your particular exchange. Stick it out and let us know here how you get on...

viking

spongebob

Originally posted by MagicBusDriver
Muck, Do you know how many of the exchanges are over 500 lines. I should be possible to uopgrade all of those at a reasonable cost with a decent return for eircom.

In my earlier post I linked to a Press Releaase which is all we have from Eircom on their plans .

Eircoms plans are to enable 150 exchanges out of 1100 in Ireland.

Eircom has no plans for the rwmaining 950

Eircoms Current trigger level is 2000 Lines Per Exchange. This is way off your 500 figure MBD , while I could see them coming down to 1000-1500 in the timescale 2006-2007 I cannot see them dropping as low as 500 .

If Eircom get the imminent Hutchison 3G contract then there will be some acceleration of the DSL rollout because they must run and light fibre on a larger scale than they currently plan. If the ESB get the bulk of the Hutchison contract you can forget about it.

Do remember that Hutchison can fulfil all their licencing requirements (being 80% pop coverage) up to end 2007 by providing a service as follows.

1. Major Towns. (Top 10 )
2. Main roads between major towns (National Primary Routes)
3. South of Dublin Galway Road and East Coast north of Dublin.

This would mean that Everywhere North of Galway to Athlone, NW of Mullingar and Navan and West of Ardee would be excluded , along with Kerry and the West Coast. Large zonal gaps would exist south and east of that line and I dont just mean the Wickila mountains either.

Here is an indication of what 87% Population Coverage leaves out....by way of illustration. Hutchison 3G have a licence obligation of 53% population coverage by End 2005. Thats just the top 10 towns.

M

bizmark

oh man come on it was ment as a joke

i hope you get flat rate or/and adsl

but the simple fact remains that out side of cork/galway/limrick/waterford/dublin and their surrouding towns you just wont be getting adsl anyway theirs not anuff people to be borthered with ........im sorry if that hurts but its true the citys make up most of the population and eircon just wont layout the money for a limited market such as ....i dont know sligo

the flintlock musket think might have been a bit hard im sorry about that one .....................but it was still funny:D

Son of Blam

Originally posted by Muck

Here is an indication of what 87% Population Coverage leaves out....by way of illustrationM

That Meteor map shows coverage of 80% of Ireland in the geographical (ie, square miles) sense.

80% of the population of Ireland isn't spread out over 80% of the area of Ireland.

spongebob

Originally posted by Son of Blam

80% of the population of Ireland isn't spread out over 80% of the area of Ireland.

Who said anything of the sort apart from yourself.

All operators are set rollout targets according to Population coverage. I linked an example of how one operator currently maintains they have achieved 87% population coverage.

Donegal and much of the west coast are excluded.

Hutchison 3G have the 3G A licence which requires 80% Population coverage by end 2007 and not 87% Population coverage as indicated in the linked Map. Thats why I always qualified the word Coverage by prefixing it with Population . 80% Population coverage can be achieved as per my post.

Less than 20% of the population live in Donegal/Mayo/Sligo/Leitrim/Cavan/Monaghan/Longford/Roscommon combined . Thats 8 counties out of 26 , you add it up.

Broadband rollout will be subsidised in rural areas/smaller towns by 3G rollout. That will mainly occur during 2006-2007 . If Eircom do not get the contract from Hutchison 3G there will be no Broadband in towns of less than 6-8k population Ever....as far as Eircom is concerned.

For those who live in the 10 Large towns where 3G coverage will be required by end 2005 (in order to meet the 53% Population coverage target there is an additional piece of news. The 3G operators will have a lot more cells than they currently do. Many will be 'outstations' or Remote Cabinets of existing exchanges. Therefore if you are in Dublin and are 4km from the exchange.....on the margins for RADSL.....you may find that Eircom will put a Cab in to service a 3G cell and will thereby reduce the line length from the exchange to your house so that you do qualify. Much of this activity, plugging coverage holes in Dublin, will occur over the next 12-18 months.

Cork/Limerick/Galway/Waterford etc will not benefit from the extra Remote Cabinets until 2005.

Mr_Man

Following on from the comment about trigger levels, and the comparison to the UK. I was up north recently and in the local Enniskillen paper was an article about BB rollout. There BT were looking for 350 expressions of interests in order to begin the upgrade of the Enniskillen exchange....

M.

furlong

Viking

thanks for the number and the info I will try it when I have a day to spare:) Are you aware of anyone who has done this with any level of success?

Bizmark

lets forget it about the comment, however I think your latest list of towns is a little limited, for example Carlow Town (pop. approx. 16,000 I think) has just been enabled. The 2000 line figure for an exchange to be considered is also quite acheiveable by a number of smaller towns for example where I am has a population of around 2,500. Now obviously each person doesn't have their own line but when you count in businesses with multiple lines and a number of new housing developments then in six months or so their may well be 2000 active lines.

Interesting aside here is that Sky may actually drive exchanges over the 2000 by their insistence on having the digibox connected to a land line! I know several people who would just use mobiles apart from this requirement. Sky doing us a favour am I imagining things!

I think the point here is that Eircom do not believe it is to their benefit to roll out ADSL and as such will drag their heels unless they are kicked screaming into the future.

MR Man

I guess a trigger level of 350 just shows what is acheiveable, if Eircom set a trigger level of 350 here then I would definitely leaflet local businesses and people to try and acheive it. In fact I woud offer to save them a few quid by telling them to buy self install and then go around installing them myself!

Are there any details (apart from those posted already) on what triggers eircom are using? On the Eircom site maybe?