National Broadband Ireland : implementation and progress

The new upgrade map doesn't seem to take into account any of their current fibre coverage. In their defence to get the link to the new map you have to have gotten a failure on the old map. It is unnecessarily confusing though and one map, that includes everything, would be better.

The figures are from the NBI site, though it is a bit awkward to notice them. On the Political Reps page there is a County dropdown. For each County the premises passed figure is listed. The site is pulling the data from this javascript file:

The map is weird, I was trying to check out a place in Tramore...

I zoomed in to Tramore but the green blobs, that seem to show where fibre upgrades are supposed to happen, vanished and I was kind of lost as to what to do next. I zoomed in further but there were no "green blobs" to guide me.

Eventually I figured out that clicking on a specific place got something to happen.

Nice effort but not a very intuitive interface really

Cobh back to July/ August , Christmas looking good 😊

The absence of timeframe is important. It's in Eircom's interest to sow confusion and buy themselves more time. Simply announcing stuff does not carry an obligation to actually do it. NBI must wait until 2026 or later before starting the clean up after Eircom’s littering.

Claimed regulatory restrictions did not prevent them from giving indicative timeframes for the 300K concession. Albeit they weren't very accurate, at least it was possible to tell whether you were at the back or front of the queue.

The mismatches between the Department’s and Eircom’s view of reality suggests they're not cooperating with the Department to avoid duplication or omission.

1. VDSL failures (intervention area) according to the Department that are already covered by FTTP according to Eircom.

eg N91 W2V5

2. Exclusion areas (NBP blue) according to the Department that will not be upgraded by Eircom’s IFN or 200K according to Eircom’s maps and seemingly will remain on VDSL when all is finished.

eg N91 V6X6

N91 V6X6 is passed by both Openeir and Siro networks currently. Don't rely on maps. Always check with various providers.

According to Openeir by the end of 2026, if NBI deliver on their deadlines, pretty much every premises in the country will have at least one FTTH network available to them. I know there is a distrust of "eircom" here but I'd be more inclined to believe Openeir's build promises than NBI's.

Yeah I have very little faith in either NBI or OpenEir when it comes to timelines.

I did a bit more digging and it actually looks like OpenEir have marked ALL their Fibre To the Cabinets as part of the upgrade regardless of speed. I checked a house just outside of the cabinet range who cant get FTTH yet and they are not included in their upgrade plan.

Open eir broadband checker: Gives you the general "up to 100Mb speeds" and then gives you a link to "check if you are part of of FTTH upgrade plans"

Fibre upgrade checker by openeir: Great news you are included....We plan to complete our rollout by end of 2026.

So everything is pointing to OpenEir doing their own thing, upgrading all these homes regardless of NBI and the inervention area. If thats the case, surely there is going to be a huge overlap and duplication of work. I can imagine the amount of homes on FTTC that get below 30Mb is pretty huge. What a waste of time and money from both parties if thats the case.

I'm in the Gort DA. We have DPs on poles and I have pre-ordered with Digiweb.

However, there is no date on the NBI site these days. It used to be April-June 22.

I decided to try my nearest BCP today which is 15km away on bad roads. When I got there (it's a nursing home), i could see BCP free on WIFI but it wasn't in range. They must have it in a cupboard! Has anyone suceeded in connectings to one of these BCP?

I did see a few vans today at Kiltartan but they are often there. The NBI guy told me a couple of weeks ago that we'd have it in a week or two. I hope they haven't hit problems with the network testing

The other differentiating factor I guess is hardware - different ISPs supply different routers, and each will have different specs and features. I'd imagine all are largely fine for plug and play, but if you want/need to start changing settings etc, some providers are more amenable to that than others.

Many people on here have mentioned signing up to Digiweb knowing they are paying a bit more to get what they see as superior service - fair enough. Personally, I was just looking for the best price and went with Sky. They were 2nd cheapest standalone, but as I was able to bundle and reduce my TV spend, they were effectively the cheapest.

Service is important obviously, but I found ordering was easy, install went smoothly and since then I think I have had 2 "outages" since the day we had it installed (nearly a year ago now). Neither lasted more than a minute or so. It's been basically bulletproof and I've never needed to contact them for support. I get the bill every month and it comes out by DD. Not much service required!

Contention really doesn't seem to be an issue with FTTH. Obviously the infrastructure is shared but the capacity of the lines seems more than sufficient to account for this. It's impossible to know for sure what contention ratios are like, or what will happen in the future, but I do semi-regular speed tests just out of curiosity (maybe one every fortnight) and it's always at least 500Mbps DL and 50Mbps UL, which is the package I'm on. The network will have had lots of new users sign up since I did but it's not affected the service I am receiving in the slightest. I would be surprised if it ever did become an issue.

NBI call out the minimum connectivity requirements for RSPs in their openly published offer documents on the service provider section of their site:

So that's what NBI expect the RSPs to guarantee, and if they don't....

Just pre-ordered with Sky, 30 a month for 12 months for 500GB, no install charge. 12 month contract. Install set for early August, specific date and time booked. They said it could be sooner.

Managed to save money on my TV package as well, and I was going to cancel and move to Freesat but its just convenience now that Broadband is with them

I’m in Limerick city, have siro 1G for a few years now, I’d say he’s spoofing about the charge, more eager to get me to sign up

Network guys outside my house today 34 house estate, east cork, thrilled to see them. He said give it two /three weeks. I'm currently with sky getting 7mbs , in contract until mid November.