National Broadband Ireland : implementation and progress

I dont have a lot of experience with this kind of stuff, but why are NBI wasting time with "surveying" when its the aim to be able to connect everyone?

What is this surveying meant to achieve?

@Bass Reeves I was not referring to you.

EIR doesn't cut hedges because they don't give a fk that's why. It's been a cash cow for decades not a cutting edge network nationwide. The notion they don't do it because it isn't feasible goes against the fundamentals of what a cash cow is.

Let's not make excuses for how that business has been operated for decades. There's a particular white Knighting of the company which flies against history.

It's not feasible.

In Ireland we have 5.5k kilometres of National roads. We have 13k kilometers of secondary roads and 80k kilometers of local roads. Along about 80% of them Eir will have network. Outside of major routes and the last few KM in and out of towns and villages the network will be pole based

The LA hardly cut the hedges on the national and regional routes and they do no local roads.

Even though you might only have 30-50% of the actual road, you would have to travel the complete routes.

Companies carrying out this work would have to have large public liability, have health and safety processes in place and the equipment to do it. As well as that a lot of the damage to cable etc is by branches of mature trees. You are probably looking at a 30-50 million euro bill/year.

Check what it cost LA to cut hedges last year. It probably multi million euro bill in ever LA area and they only do national and regional routes.

Again people do not understand the logistics. The ESB go accross country. They do not run along hedges they go accross them.. The ESB wires are 1.5-5 meters higher than the phone lines, They have nowhere near the volume of hedges to cut.

As well when they do the hedging would be lighter. The ESB do not need to request a land owners premission to enter there land or to dispose of the material cut.

Again it would be interesting to see there hedge management cost it would only be a fraction of what it would cost Eir.

The reason Eir network went into such disrepair was the company was sold out of state hands. In that time it changed hands 5-6 times in less than twenty years.

Mind you even before it was sold our of state ownership it was reducing investment in the network. In the last 5-7 years it has increased investment in improving its network.

No they do not

Lads, I'm getting notifications that there are new posts in the thread I'm following called...

"National Broadband Ireland : implementation and progress"

...and I'm getting crap about the height of esb and eir cables.

Can you please create a new thread to discuss how high esb and eir cables are and leave this thread to the subject in the title, please?

No you are getting posts about why EIR isn't the white night that one poster consistently assumes they are in relation to the NBI plan. It's pretty in context to the plan. We are being told a revisionist story of how this plan with all be so much smoother and quicker if EIR were in charge of it despite the facts that they attempted to destroy the plan at the beginning of it and continue to under cut it by taking out any low hanging fruit. So. Whether you have notifications or not it's related to NBI tbh.

And esb network goes House to house just like EIRs does and along back bones across the nation. They're lines are always maintained to a far higher standard than EIRs because the company is a cash cow. They've underfunded their network maintenance for decades because its more profitable that way simple.

We shouldn't have to point out continually that EIR have tried to undermine the national broadband plan and those that were covered so far under the plan and got fantastic speeds delivered to their homes got all of that despite EIR not because of them.

Yes I do believe they should be brought to the table to speed up a national rollout. But no I don't believe they should or could be the main player because I simply don't trust the company.

The ESB network runs accross land, it runs through fields. Therefore it only crossed hedges at one point. The ESB wire as I said earlier are 2-5m higher. Because they are using a heavy wire they can have greater distance between poles. The service is also provided at the build stage of the house and no upgrade is ever really needed

Eir network runs at the side of a road. It's not just a matter of cutting hedges. Next time you go for a walk in a rural area look at the pole's. In an average ESB span it takes 3 telecoms poles to cover the same distance. It dose not help having to go around corners and turns.

There are multiple issues with hedge cutting. It has to be completed from September- February inclusive. There is a danger as you cut that the action of the fhail on a strong branch could pull cables into the fhail. It would be very hard to cut around poles. Again the action on branches could damage cables or equipment on the poles.

If there are trees or large bushes near cables or poles they could not be cut by a hedge cutter. Angle grinders, Con saws, chainsaw and hand held hedge cutters are all specialised restricted cutting equipment. If operated at height you need to operate chain saw or hedge cutter on a cherry picker. H&S wise they cannot be operated off a ladder. Therefore any pole with DP's on them would have to be hand cut off a cherry picker. And even mid span where trees had grown out over and under cable.

As I said it make much more sense from a cost perspective to repair cable that try to manage hedges. To carry out a hedge maintenance program you would need to reduce every hedge in the countryside to 6-8' high. The environmental aspect alone would be horrific. That is the only way you could manage a hedge cutting program for under telecoms cables in Ireland. That might give you a 3 year rotation. But you would be butchering 1/3 of the roadside hedges and trees every year.

I do not believe Eir is any white knight. Like any other private company it objective is to maximise it's returns to its investors.

However politicians coming along and now blaming eir for the delayed rollout is ludicrous. This is not about revisionism it about the reality of the project the ground. When a politician blames a preventive action never taken by the company before as a cause of delay of the rollout. NBI have got access to the poles it's up to them to build the network not Eir.

When the NBI contract was being tendered I pointed out the flawed assumption that the Dept of Communication would have a first class network handed over in 30 years time as part of the contract. I pointed out this was not the case. I also pointed out the issue with cable and hedges.

When this project was planned, there was no taught put into the logistics of the plan. When you end up with only one bidder on a tender and that bidder was not a Telco it should have been obivious

Has to be some kind of mistake, that totally goes against their connection date of 14 days that I read somewhere, what is the point giving you a date 6 months down the line! Absolutely ridiculous.

Pre-order, not ready to order, so it wasn't going to be 14 days. That said it's also a lot longer than the 90+14 days that it would suggest. Perhaps it's just Sky, but 6 months out is worrying for a pre-order...

EIR PR out in force again.

When can we expect them to connect up the nation? Amazingly enough they and they only jumped out of the bidding process for reasons only known to their French owner. But we all know why. They could just chip around the edges of a broadband plan taking out the easy profits and do nothing to engage with it. Clap clap clap...