SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

Nollog · 21-05-2015 11:39am

I've been meaning to moan at them on twitter telling them to get a web designer who doesn't make visitors sit though a slow-feeling movie every time someone visits their site, one who can use cookies would be a plus.

But I know they'd just reply with something like "we'll be announcing our new web design soon!"

It feels as though everything they're doing is moving incredibly slowly.

fergus1001 · 21-05-2015 1:18pm

/\/ollog wrote:

It feels as though everything they're doing is moving incredibly slowly.

I'll give you my cattle prod might liven them up a bit

ItHurtsWhenIP · 21-05-2015 3:20pm

@Mod - would it be an idea to add Siro into the thread title?

lucernarian · 21-05-2015 3:57pm

MMFITWGDV wrote: »

That box may or may not be Fibre related.

See the attached two pics from my village. I know the top strand on the poles is the core Fibre run to the exchange. In the first picture you can see two of those boxes. The one circled in red is the fibre one and the other (circled green) is for the copper. In the second picture there is only the fibre one (it's on the adjacent pole to the one in the first picture).

According to my friendly linesman, there was probably a break in the line between those two poles at some stage, from a fallen tree. These boxes must be like a junction box or something. I'll probably meet him next week, so will ask.

I can post more photos if there's still any doubt? The cable was ran without any sharp bends and what I photoed completely different to a typical junction box that eircom use (like http://www.sparkyh.com/eircomdamage/Storm%20Damage.jpg) Anyway that photo is unfortunately unclear for what you've circled green. I won't assume it's not copper but I've never seen one of those ribbed junction boxes ever used for overhead telephone cables. Could you get another photo of it?

I'm in no doubt about what I saw in Dundalk, it's definitely a fibre optic cable and it continues from one pole at one end of the railway bridge (where the 5 metal wires for 3-phase power go underground or go down a side street or something), overhead, to another existing ESB pole in the direction of Carrickmacross on the other side of the bridge. After ten years of being on these boards, I know when there's been an extra cable erected and if it's fibre or for carrying mains electricity! There are rare occasions when ESB poles carry some kind of multipair cable similar to what's on the eircom network (like Bolton St. in Drogheda) but that's been there for decades now and the cable I saw in Dundalk is of a different type and much closer to the mains wires.

ItHurtsWhenIP · 21-05-2015 4:38pm

lucernarian wrote: »

I can post more photos if there's still any doubt? The cable was ran without any sharp bends and what I photoed completely different to a typical junction box that eircom use (like http://www.sparkyh.com/eircomdamage/Storm%20Damage.jpg) Anyway that photo is unfortunately unclear for what you've circled green. I won't assume it's not copper but I've never seen one of those ribbed junction boxes ever used for overhead telephone cables. Could you get another photo of it?

I have to say that what I circled in Green in the first photo is a pretty unique looking box. I haven't seen it's like any where else, but I will be keeping my eye out. It is definitely connected to the copper cable. I don't know if it's relevant but that pole is the last one before the cables go underground to the exchange.

Attached photo of a pole about 400m from the previous one. There are lots of these junction box things on lots of poles around here and it looks like the one in your photo.

Nollog · 21-05-2015 5:08pm

I'll take a picture on my way home of what I meant, will be around 8. start a countdown.

The Cush · 21-05-2015 5:30pm

lucernarian wrote: »

I won't assume it's not copper but I've never seen one of those ribbed junction boxes ever used for overhead telephone cables. Could you get another photo of it?

KN Network vans around my local area this week, tidying up overhead cabling, replacing junction boxes etc. following last year's storm. They installed one of those ribbed junction boxes at a road junction where the 2 cables from the local exchange splits to 4 cables to 2 roads.

Previous setup - https://www.google.ie/maps/@52.648571,-8.38564,3a,15y,351.1h,102.7t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1swV45aLCoAPOQkhcrw7xMGw!2e0?hl=en

rustalan · 21-05-2015 7:54pm

lucernarian wrote: »

I just remembered this photo I took near Dundalk railway station, running along the R178 nearly 3 weeks. There's a thinner black cable running underneath the 3-phase power lines, with new galvanised mounts on the poles. In the photo, there's some kind of black, sealed joining box mounted a little bit down the pole, at the same level as the gutter of the house beside it. It's of the same kind I've seen used for fibre optic cables in manholes.

There's another cable like this which was also recently erected on some of Hill Street in Dundalk.

I was just looking at the corner of St Malachys Villas (same corner in your picture) on Google maps street view and the lower cable is in the pictures from 2011. The black box at the gutter level isn't there though. Granted the cable in the new picture looks tidier but it's hard to tell from street view.

lucernarian · 21-05-2015 9:05pm

rustalan wrote: »

I was just looking at the corner of St Malachys Villas (same corner in your picture) on Google maps street view and the lower cable is in the pictures from 2011. The black box at the gutter level isn't there though. Granted the cable in the new picture looks tidier but it's hard to tell from street view.

As I was saying, it's a new cable!! If anybody still doesn't believe me, look at this image at the railway bridge. The cable stops and terminates in a typical junction box as used across the eircom network for 30-pair cables and so on. https://goo.gl/maps/Nj5ac

What's there now is a cable that continues to the next ESB pole on the opposite side of the bridge, with no junction box of that kind being used on the pole.

The Cush wrote:

KN Network vans around my local area this week, tidying up overhead cabling, replacing junction boxes etc. following last year's storm. They installed one of those ribbed junction boxes at a road junction where the 2 cables from the local exchange splits to 4 cables to 2 roads.

Thanks for that. Looks like they are a recent type of equipment, I haven't seen any recent line work in the parts of the northeast I frequent. There even looks to be a yellow warning triangle on the clasp at the bottom of that joiner, the likes of which you might find on fibre optic equipment. I wonder what the warning is. The ribbed box outside Dundalk railway station is a little bit smaller than that one in your photo.

Nollog · 21-05-2015 9:25pm

/\/ollog wrote: »

I'll take a picture on my way home of what I meant, will be around 8. start a countdown.

http://i.imgur.com/BmUqvna.jpg

The box i circled.

Impetus · 21-05-2015 9:29pm

MMFITWGDV wrote: »

Eircom wholesale are spamming the hell out of their twitter followers this morning. Trying to take the edge off ESB/VFs launch methinks.

https://twitter.com/eircomwholesale

Eircom is cherry picking - only going to provide fibre to the premises in rural areas. It is cheap to install and maintain fibre in rural areas - especially when you have the ESB powerline grid to twist fibre around.

All eircom offers is fake fibre in urban areas (ie VDSL+) which typically gives the customer 50Mbits/sec down using their best offering, limited due to the use of copper pair for the last few hundred metres. As a result eircom is paying to run two platforms. VDSL and FTTP. Duplication of overhead, and before long their VDSL service will have to be replaced with FTTP - so add wasted investment to that.

I am dumping my eircom landline, which I stupidly paid the monthly subscription to in the expectation of fibre from this company - while using another provider who does not rely on eircom copper in the meantime. Add to that the 16.2c + VAT call "set-up charge" for every call, and eircom becomes irrelevant and horrible.

If AT&T and Comcast are the most hated companies in the US, eircom is probably the most hated company in Ireland. Assuming people had the intelligence to wake up and taste the coffee (as in being screwed royally by a copper based telecoms monopoly.)

lucernarian · 21-05-2015 9:31pm

/\/ollog wrote: »

http://i.imgur.com/BmUqvna.jpg

The box i circled.

I don't exactly know if it's an isolator or if it's used to join cables but they are for 3-phase power cables (4 wires including neutral).

Hackery · 21-05-2015 10:35pm

Impetus wrote: »

Eircom is cherry picking - only going to provide fibre to the premises in rural areas.

Best statement ever on this forum

mass_debater · 21-05-2015 11:15pm

Impetus wrote: »

Eircom is cherry picking - only going to provide fibre to the premises in rural areas. It is cheap to install and maintain fibre in rural areas - especially when you have the ESB powerline grid to twist fibre around.

All eircom offers is fake fibre in urban areas (ie VDSL+) which typically gives the customer 50Mbits/sec down using their best offering, limited due to the use of copper pair for the last few hundred metres. As a result eircom is paying to run two platforms. VDSL and FTTP. Duplication of overhead, and before long their VDSL service will have to be replaced with FTTP - so add wasted investment to that.

I am dumping my eircom landline, which I stupidly paid the monthly subscription to in the expectation of fibre from this company - while using another provider who does not rely on eircom copper in the meantime. Add to that the 16.2c + VAT call "set-up charge" for every call, and eircom becomes irrelevant and horrible.

If AT&T and Comcast are the most hated companies in the US, eircom is probably the most hated company in Ireland. Assuming people had the intelligence to wake up and taste the coffee (as in being screwed royally by a copper based telecoms monopoly.)

Not true, VDSL is a stepping stone towards FTTH, each VDSL cab has 24 fibres (20 spares) that can be used to supply 32 premises each with FTTH. In future they will decommission their copper cab, but the fibre one is future planned.
Also the speeds are up to 100mbit

ED E · 21-05-2015 11:18pm

mass_debater wrote: »

Not true, VDSL is a stepping stone towards FTTH, each VDSL cab has 24 fibres (20 spares) that can be used to supply 32 premises each with FTTH. In future they will decommission their copper cab, but the fibre one is future planned.
Also the speeds are up to 100mbit

Don't engae him, he's a troll at best, a plague at worst.

Mc Love · 22-05-2015 10:26am

QQ: Is 1GB the limit in terms of speed over fibre or can it go faster?

MajesticDonkey · 22-05-2015 10:49am

Mc Love wrote: »

QQ: Is 1GB the limit in terms of speed over fibre or can it go faster?

There's no real theoretical limit to the bandwidth you can achieve over fibre. What limits it is the technology that feeds the light through the fibre. I'm not sure what this currently is.

The Cush · 22-05-2015 10:52am

Mc Love wrote: »

QQ: Is 1GB the limit in terms of speed over fibre or can it go faster?

Recent post

bk wrote: »

GPON is 2.488 Gb/s of downstream bandwidth, and 1.244 Gb/s upstream shared with the 32 homes *

10GPON is 10 G/s downstream and 2.5 G/s upstream shared with 32 homes. *

* Note that strictly speaking it can be shared with a higher number of homes, 64 or 128.

We aren't certain what Eircom are using. The recent video on the Eircom wholesale site seems to suggest GPON at 32 homes. But no guarantee they don't do 64 homes at some places.

Eircom has also mentioned they can upgrade it to 10GPON and 40GPON in future. 10GPON is already standardised, while 40GPON is in the works.

So we aren't certain are they currently rolling out 10GPON or just GPON with future potential for 10GPON upgrades.

Obviously P2P isn't shared, so you wouldn't have any congestion between the exchange and the premises. However you would still have congestion from the exchange backhaul. P2P certainly has greater flexibility, but I wouldn't expect it to make much real world difference.

Nollog · 22-05-2015 12:53pm

http://www.huawei.com/en/about-huawei/publications/communicate/hw-081018.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10G-EPON#Backward_compatibility

Shouldn't be a big ask for 10gon in a couple years or whatever.

The Cush · 23-05-2015 10:25pm

lucernarian wrote: »

There even looks to be a yellow warning triangle on the clasp at the bottom of that joiner, the likes of which you might find on fibre optic equipment. I wonder what the warning is.

This is the best shot I could get, I think the script on the warning label reads LASER

Nonoperational · 23-05-2015 11:49pm

OneEightSeven wrote: »

This kind of attitude is very stupid and counter-productive. Are you even aware that Ireland has lost out on foreign investment due to our slow speeds in the past? Foreign companies will look at netindex.com and see Ireland lagging behind countries who have a more positive attitude than you and will invest in them instead of us. Ireland's economy heavily relies on foreign investment, hence the reason why our corporation is something like 12.5%. If we limit the speeds to 30Mb, our national average will be about 40/50Mb, which isn't very impressive now, nevermind in a few years time when we're being outclassed by most of Europe. Rolling out 1Gb internet to every urban area and industrial estate in Ireland would do wonders for the economy and people will only have to wait a few minutes to download ultra-HD movies. It's a win-win situation, so this "30Mb is enough" attitude can fúck right off.

Despite the fact that your post is complete and utter absolute nonsense, your attitude is as juvenile as your understanding of the situation. God knows how Apple decided to invest in a cloud data centre here recently. I wasn't talking about urban areas, most of these are well served by fibre already. Anyway, I couldn't be bothered...

Nollog · 25-05-2015 3:56pm

Nonoperational wrote: »

Despite the fact that your post is complete and utter absolute nonsense, your attitude is as juvenile as your understanding of the situation. God knows how Apple decided to invest in a cloud data centre here recently. I wasn't talking about urban areas, most of these are well served by fibre already. Anyway, I couldn't be bothered...

I disagree

lucernarian · 26-05-2015 10:19am

Nonoperational wrote: »

Despite the fact that your post is complete and utter absolute nonsense, your attitude is as juvenile as your understanding of the situation. God knows how Apple decided to invest in a cloud data centre here recently. I wasn't talking about urban areas, most of these are well served by fibre already. Anyway, I couldn't be bothered...

"Your attitude is as juvenile as your understanding.... Anyway, I couldn't be bothered...."

Not a good way to make a point is it?

Liamario · 26-05-2015 10:27am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLumK87nGxE

bk · 26-05-2015 1:54pm

MOD: can everyone please calm down and let's try and keep things on topic, thanks

dbit · 26-05-2015 1:55pm

A lot of old Irish water leaking into this room. teee heee.

cunnijo · 26-05-2015 2:13pm

BK Well said.

As to the topic itself. It seems SIRO are really beginning to promote the first 10 rollout towns on their Twitter feed. It will be interesting to see what level of responses will come from it.

If this is the case what are the chances of another batch of towns being announced for rollout by year end?

pm. · 26-05-2015 2:36pm

Is Mullingar on phase 1 ? are eircom (KN) doing something similar I have seen a lot of them around

bk · 26-05-2015 2:54pm

ctlsleh wrote: »

There is no business case for an operator to build out Fiber to an already Fiber-connected home. The economics just don't work unless the existing operator is doing an unholy miserable job of supporting its customers and all customers in a locality will churn to the new one. Therefore it's a land grab and a race between Esb/VF and Eircom to get Fiber deployed and homes connected asap, as whoever wins that race will own the market......IE the operator who connects you first will be the winner, the guy that comes late will find the market is taken

I have to disagree with this point, I see no reason why two physical networks can't co-exist in parallel in high density urban areas [1]

After all this is exactly what we have in UPC areas, two physical networks, UPC and Eircom, existing in parallel, with roughly 50/50 share of customers and both companies being very profitable doing so [2]

While UPC isn't strictly FTTH, it cost them almost exactly the same to rollout their hybrid fiver coax (HFC) network as it would have a FTTH network and UPC have done very well from it, now being a very profitable company.

I can't see any reason why both a Siro FTTH network and Eircom FTTH a network can't co-exist in the non UPC urban town and villages using a similar model to UPC. Obviously eircom won't like the extra competition, but tough, they will just have to up their game.

Of course all of this is to the benefit of the customer. Competition at both the physical wholesale network level and at the consumer level, will lead to the best scenario for long term competitiveness.

Obviously rural/low density areas wouldn't make economic sense to have two networks. That is where the NBP needs to deliver a fair, transparent and completely open FTTH network.

[1] the terminology urban/rural isn't really accurate. High density/low density is a better terminology. For instance there are many towns and villages in "rural" Ireland that have a urban population with a density high enough to support two commercial networks.

[2] Eircoms financial problems are largely due to the company being raped by successive owners who basically used it as their own personal piggy bank and saddled it with terrible debt. Eircoms operations themselves continue to be very profitable despite strong competition from UPC. It is just servicing the stupid debts that makes things difficult for them.

mass_debater · 26-05-2015 3:35pm

pm. wrote: »

Is Mullingar on phase 1 ? are eircom (KN) doing something similar I have seen a lot of them around

Sierra are doing the work, I've seen them advertising for linesmen on LinkedIn saying it's for the Esb/Voda contract. Kn are working for Eircom

SIRO - ESB/Vodafone Fibre To The Home

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