Rural Broadband - National Broadband Plan

Very interesting document and good discussion here.

One thing that caught my eye in the Eircom submission was this in question 8:

Eircom wrote:

Another consideration is that State-Led Intervention should be prioritised in the most deprived areas, if possible, rather than in areas that have reasonably good broadband and which are most likely to benefit from further 30 Mbps commercial NGA footprint extension.

Now that would be a welcome reversal. I guess the operators would prefer to keep on with their own plans and not be bumping up against state funded coverage.

Means that those at the bottom of the barrel right now could be first to see real fibre goodness.

Worrisome for those on the fringes of good connectivity though. They would have to wait longer for their congestion type issues to be resolved.

magnet didn't bother submit anything?

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.RUR.TOTL.ZS?order=wbapi_data_value_2013+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=asc

http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/

2% of Belgium's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 34.64Mb)
11% of Holland's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 44.35Mb)
14% of Sweden's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 46.48Mb)
18% of the UK's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 29.11Mb)
19% of The USA's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 31.12Mb)
19% of Canada's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 24.03Mb)
20% of Norway's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 38.42Mb)
21% of Spain's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 26.92Mb)
21% of France's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 35.03Mb)
23% of Greece's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 9.44Mb)
25% of Germany's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 26.93Mb)
30% of Hungary's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 32.79Mb)
31% of Italy's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 9.22Mb)
32% of Estonia's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 37.01Mb)
33% of Latvia's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 39.71Mb)
34% of Austria's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 25.31Mb)
37% of Ireland's population live in rural areas. (Average speed: 24.64Mb)
38% of Portugal's population live in rural areas. (average speed: 28.37Mb)

The above stats are misleading because it doesn't include the percentage of people that live in apartments:



In 2009,

http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1021715.shtml

3% of Ireland's population lived flats.

The only way to ensure that you can get fibre and that eircom wont give you the runaround is for the govt to make them put in a scheme like BTs openreach. You pay a certain amount if you live within a few Km of a cabinet and they HAVE to hook you up.

There are far too many people who cant get fibre and are on terrible internet connections but yet their neighbours all have fibre. Eircom just give these people the briush off and there is nothing they can do about it.

Cabs support 200 / 400 customers, so they need a few to service a town. Some customers will be direct fed and get racks in the exchange, the rest get cabs.

murphaph wrote: »

Come off it. VDSL was only launched relatively recently. This rollout is not even a couple of years old. **** takes time. They are hooking up customers to VDSL that wouldn't be considered here in Germany. Soooo much negativity related to what is an incredibly positive thing, something Ireland can actually be proud of.

So someone whose neighbours all got fibre on day 1 of the rollout who is still getting 1mb speeds due to a fault on their line has to just suffer eircom saying tough luck for a few years. Lots of cases of this.

I suppose its easy for someone living in Germany to think this is acceptable in Ireland.

There should be an option that if you are willing to pay for the connection of the service then eircom cannot refuse you.
Then when all your neighbours have fibre and you dont you just say ok, ill pay the fee to get it sorted and all is well.
While the isps can still just tell you to **** off, its not really fair to people.

Like BT Openreach.

ffactj wrote: »

So someone whose neighbours all got fibre on day 1 of the rollout who is still getting 1mb speeds due to a fault on their line has to just suffer eircom saying tough luck for a few years. Lots of cases of this.

You don't want to hear this but Eircom are correct to ignore such line faults until the rollout is nearing or at completion. Why? Because if say the 10% (or whatever it is) of line faults on all cabinets were fixed before Eircom moved on to the next cabinet install, the rollout would take DECADES, not years. Line faults could be anything. Finding the fault can be very time consuming and once found may, depending on cable location, be time consuming and labour intensive to fix. It's no comfort to you I'm sure, but that's the reality. A technician can either fix your broadband inhibiting line fault or he can be deployed hooking up another 192 odd premises to VDSL. For the greater good, you lose out.

ffactj wrote: »

I suppose its easy for someone living in Germany to think this is acceptable in Ireland.

Give it a rest with that oul guff. Where I'm located has no bearing on the discussion. I know this though...If I had no fast broadband and I had to pick a country where I thought I would get it sooner, it would be Ireland over Germany. There is no plan being formulated here. The "white spots" (weiße Flecken) as they're called here get filled in by the market primarily and if the market sees no profit then the local council MAY subsidise a roll out...but this is not wide spread.

ffactj wrote: »

There should be an option that if you are willing to pay for the connection of the service then eircom cannot refuse you.
Then when all your neighbours have fibre and you dont you just say ok, ill pay the fee to get it sorted and all is well.
While the isps can still just tell you to **** off, its not really fair to people.

Like BT Openreach.

Agreed, but as bk says, don't expect it to be anything but hideously expensive.

murphaph wrote: »

You don't want to hear this but Eircom are correct to ignore such line faults until the rollout is nearing or at completion. Why? Because if say the 10% (or whatever it is) of line faults on all cabinets were fixed before Eircom moved on to the next cabinet install, the rollout would take DECADES, not years. Line faults could be anything. Finding the fault can be very time consuming and once found may, depending on cable location, be time consuming and labour intensive to fix. It's no comfort to you I'm sure, but that's the reality. A technician can either fix your broadband inhibiting line fault or he can be deployed hooking up another 192 odd premises to VDSL. For the greater good, you lose out.


Give it a rest with that oul guff. Where I'm located has no bearing on the discussion. I know this though...If I had no fast broadband and I had to pick a country where I thought I would get it sooner, it would be Ireland over Germany. There is no plan being formulated here. The "white spots" (weiße Flecken) as they're called here get filled in by the market primarily and if the market sees no profit then the local council MAY subsidise a roll out...but this is not wide spread.


Agreed, but as bk says, don't expect it to be anything but hideously expensive.

You mean like their DSL rollout. How many years is that going on, and look at all the people who cant get DSL.

Every post in every thread from you is "In Germany .... "
Where you are located is mentioned in every single post that you do. Its you who is always on about your location.

There should be a third party who can cech your line for faults. That way the person who need the line looked at can engage someone to look at it at their own cost and get it fixed. Eircom can go and concentrate on anything else they want. At the moment it is eircom blocking all of these people from getting a service. These people cannot get past eircoms bearocracy.

ffactj wrote: »

It should be there though.
My sister is 300 meters from the cabinet and would gladly pay for the connection.
Eircom wont let her though. All of the rest of the houses in her estate apart from her and her next door neighbour have fibre. There is obviously a problem with their particular lines but she has been at eircom for years to sort it out. She even got another line from vodafone but they just connected from the same one basically.

This doesn't sound like a line fault at all to me.

We're buying a site for a house right now. Number 15+ on the road can order VDSL. We're at number 12 and can't, because our 50 pair cable (or whatever it is) runs the other way to a cabinet on the corner with no VDSL (that's if it doesn't run straight back to the exchange-we don't know that much). Your sister probably has the very same issue. Ordering a new line and it having the same characteristics supports that view (ie, not a line fault, just a different route, possibly exchange fed even).

There's no quick or easy fix for these scenarios. The telephone system wasn't laid out with xDSL in mind. These issues arise the world over.

ffactj wrote: »

We have verified with eircom (after a lot of being messed about) that she is on the same cabinet as other houses who have fibre.
Also verified with them that its a line fault, but then they go back to the "we are only required to provide voice service" line.

So, as i suggested, a third party that you can pay to solve the problem without having to go through Eircoms automatons who will not cooperate is whats required.

If it is on a VDSL enabled cabinet, order a new line. It may not pass initially but it will pass once the prequal is done. If a linesman comes to install, explain the situation and he or she could say if there will be any problems or what the problems could be. If there is likely to be problems just cancel the install.

Is this a good plan or am I leaving out something important? Also in the case of the vodafone install attempt, in what way were they using the same line? Were they going to install a splitter (aka a pairgain) or did they say that it was another cable from the same bunch? If its another cable, it might not have a fault even if the existing one has. One other thing. Is there DSL on the line and how well/fast does it work?

Mayo Yid wrote: »

This ordering a new line thing is nonsense, you will most likely end up with the same path as there are limited pairs available. Vodafone sales use this as a sales tactic, assure the customer they'll get a new line, it rarely works

If another line is ordered while keeping the existing line line in place, how is it even possible for a line to have the "same path"? Unless it is pairgained, a new line has to be a physically different pair to an existing one also it should be easy to cancel said install within cooling-off period.

If there are no existing pairs available, the linesman is supposed to inform the customer were the customer ordering broadband at the same time.

And most likely its part of the same drop wire.

http://www.wlp.ie/rural-broadband-connected-communities/89-rural-broadband-pilot-scheme/796-pilot-scheme-rural-broadband

Have a look at this. Is this going to be a success...does it offer new hope for rural broadband?