National Broadband Ireland : implementation and progress

In the Newport DA as you know, a contractor for eircom replaced a couple of their existing poles quite recently, beside my brother's house, prep work for the rollout I assume.

New NBI poles will be required on the same road but were not done be these contractors. During the survey stage NBI were seeking landowners permission to install new poles. There is an existing duct with copper landline serving these few houses but it appears NBI are going to use poles instead.

Also in the village of Cappamore they have run new blown-fibre duct, tagged NBI, in the last week or so.

Saw some hedge cutting underway around the five-cross-roads, Murroe in the last week. Casey's iirc. Not sure if it's related to the rollout. Not your run of the mill single tractor job but a crew of people and equipment.

Are they tagged eir or NBI?

The one's replaced near to my brother's have eir cut into them

Part of the NBI survey of the area. As part of the preparation work for the NBP rollout eircom's infrastructure, ducts and poles, that will be used to carry NBI's fibre is being repaired as necessary. So eircom replace their own poles and clear their own ducts.

"The EMR (Eir Make Ready) programme is vital to our fibre deployment programme. Eir is involved in pole replacement, duct remediation and the clearance of blockages to enable the NBI fibre build."

Where there is no existing eircom infrastructure NBI will install their own poles or ducts.

You can continue with Imagine without entering a new contract, just go month to month. I didn't have any issues like this getting fibre, Just pre-ordered and they came out and installed it

Don't mix up surveying that NBI do with the surveying the fibre installation team need to do. NBI only go down the road, everything after that from the poles to your house may need to be surveyed for extra poles or ducting etc. They need to get the fibre from the black box on the poles on the road to your house, so all depends on how far that is.

I got the pre order email from NBI in late November 2023. I ordered asap around 1st December, had 1st visit by KNCricet mid Jan, they then arranged for a survey on site to install a pole. Pole was then installed end of February and KN came back middle of March to run the fibre to the house and install the fibre, line was active about 3 days later. Total time from order to active, 3 and a half months.

Using existing poles and ducting was a no brainer, no point replicating what is already there.

Eircom replace poles and repair ducts at their own expense, NBI in return pay an annual fee to access pole and duct infrastructure. The so called Eir Make Ready programme.

Where no eircom infrastructure exists NBI install their own.

NBI install their own fibre cable, overrunning existing eircom fibre in most areas so they don't have to pay eircom to use their cabling.

NBI and the taxpayer are in effect transferring tax payer monies to Eircom to fix & maintain poles. I look at my road, I'm fairly sure out of 10 houses, all occupied that we're the only one with a landline connection now. It costs about €700 annually to keep it and we'd drop it only it's useful for the odd bit of business. Telecom Eireann used to maintain the poles, there was a local maintenance chap covering an area. Eircom? Never seen them doing any maintenance since they took over. Odd time the line gets cut by hedge cutting they come out after a few days. I expect that's part of the reason why we're well down the NBI list, the rotting poles will all have to be replaced and the taxpayer will pay Eircom to do this, a job they couldn't be arsed to do as a private company.

Meanwhile a well maintained ESB pole network well away from any hedge cutting issues exists most places, including here… questions.

I see what you mean. However if I instance the local landline pole network here, I very much doubt if Eircom would ever upgrade them based on landline income. They'd just let them rot, patch up the odd one and eventually say to the odd customer - sorry, it's not worth our while to sustain a landline service here.

However with the NBI/ Taxpayer money, they likely will eventually come and replace the poles, tidy up as there is money in it for them. I suspect they have have areas categorised as suitable for immediate roll out and other areas like ours which have been neglected and allowed run down. This is turn will affect how soon NBI get here.

The odd thing is that out of the 10 houses I mentioned above in the space of a kilometre, I reckon 9 would take up and make use of fixed broadband. That's 9 customers for x amount of effort. Whereas NBI are going many miles down the west in places to service a small handful of potential customers.

You seem to be missing the point that Eir also need the poles to run their own fibre. In my area most of the properties are serviced by open Eir fibre. They left small a number of properties at the end of the fibre run that will be serviced by NBI.

I don't think so, they've run their cable to village about 3 kms away. But can't be arsed going any further than that, likely too much cost in their view.

So this is where NBI is supposed to intervene, come in here and pick up the slack, i.e. the taxpayer will pay towards Eircom/ Eir costs ultimately to replace the poles. A network of poles that is increasingly not being used for landlines and which would likely be allowed to rot. It's a mad system.

Can you explain the situation of those in urban areas? What's the limiting factors there?

Many urban areas are still using copper wire which is a limiting factor. Open Eir is currently upgrading urban areas to fibre. I believe the copper wire network is due to be shutdown by 2030 but the EU are pushing for an earlier date.

That's pretty reasonable compared to what we achieve here currently. I run a business and have to resort to portable drives by post when I need to down or upload larger files. Would have been in the first 1% of customers around here taking up broadband solutions over the years. Known to salesmen of Telecom and Eircom etc. Promise this, that and the other but could never deliver. So you can see why I roll my eyes when I hear of some remote valley or isolated house in a bog getting fixed line broadband. It is what it is though and it'll either eventually come, or they'll run out of money or some new tech will replace. We can manage.

Have had Vodafone NBI for a while now and am thinking or switching to eir. I assume eir will use the existing NBI fibre cable coming into the house? Will the ONT change? Currently have a Nokia one…thanks!