UPC go to 200Mb/s; digital divide worse than ever.

clohamon · 14-10-2013 10:59am #1

Independent reports further upgrade on urban services.

Another package to get a significant boost under the announcement today will be the €59-per-month 150Mbs option, which will be increased to 200Mbs. The company is also increasing its minimum monthly data limits to 30 gigabytes to cater for people using 'Netflix' and other video services.
UPC's move comes after Eircom announced its intention to upgrade internet access to over 70Mbs for 1.2 million Irish homes and businesses.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/upc-upgrade-to-double-speed-of-broadband-29657254.html

It used to be that urban services were only 50 times better than rural, now they're 100 times better.

Nolars · 14-10-2013 11:48am

Eircom's speeds were outdated when they launched there network, upc must be having a good time.

clohamon · 14-10-2013 12:24pm

Nolars wrote: »

Eircom's speeds were outdated when they launched there network, upc must be having a good time.

Eircom originally planned to do FTTH rather than FTTC, and for all the right reasons, i.e. infinite headroom, lower maintenance, single-step upgrade, no premature FTTC asset write-offs etc.

The financial pressure and the speed at which UPC were consuming their urban market probably explains why they went for the quick, cheap fix, i.e. FTTC.

You're right, its looking like a bad decision, but it was probably the only decision they could make.

Slutmonkey57b · 14-10-2013 1:48pm

The extra 100mbits will make all the difference to customers experiencing freezes and stuttering due to their appalling peering problems with youtube etc.

Oh wait.

Nolars · 14-10-2013 2:55pm

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/34501-upc-ups-the-standard-with/

UPC%20speed%20increases.jpg

croo · 14-10-2013 7:06pm

If UPC keep this up the government will soon be bragging that the *average* download speed is now 30mb even as many of us are still on stuck on dialup!

watty · 14-10-2013 11:08pm

Exactly my point about Mobile. The Average is as meaningless as "up to" when there is a massive spread. Minimum Broadband is a better measure, or at least the minimum speed for 90% of users.
Without a distribution curve some services can't be assessed for quality. Indeed the max speed the poorer serviced 50% get can be MUCH lower than the quoted average speed if 15% get 200Mbps.

bealtine · 15-10-2013 12:31am

croo wrote: »

If UPC keep this up the government will soon be bragging that the *average* download speed is now 30mb even as many of us are still on stuck on dialup!

Well it's your own fault for living out in the country, you can't expect telcos to actually deliver you a service right?

Nolars · 15-10-2013 12:38am

bealtine wrote: »

Well it's your own fault for living out in the country, you can't expect telcos to actually deliver you a service right?

Next us country folk will be expecting Tesco's to open up in our villages. When will the madness end.

bealtine · 15-10-2013 1:23am

Nolars wrote: »

Next us country folk will be expecting Tesco's to open up in our villages. When will the madness end.

yeah next you'll want roads as well

bk · 17-10-2013 11:48am

clohamon wrote: »

Eircom originally planned to do FTTH rather than FTTC, and for all the right reasons, i.e. infinite headroom, lower maintenance, single-step upgrade, no premature FTTC asset write-offs etc.

The financial pressure and the speed at which UPC were consuming their urban market probably explains why they went for the quick, cheap fix, i.e. FTTC.

You're right, its looking like a bad decision, but it was probably the only decision they could make.

I'm not sure it was a bad decision.

I agree that I originally thought that going for FTTC over FTTH when they faced such strong competition from UPC was madness, but now having seen the speed and quality of Eircoms FTTC rollout, I'm actually pretty impressed.

The reality is for the 500 million Eircom are spending, they would have only been able to cover a quarter of the homes that they can with FTTC and even at that a FTTH rollout would have taken much, much longer.

The reality is that the FTTC rollout is bringing pretty decent level of BB (70mb and 100mb soon with vectoring) to the majority of homes in Ireland, including many not serviced by UPC, at a very fast pace.

To be honest, 50mb/s is more then fast enough for the majority of people for the foreseeable future *

I also wouldn't say that Eircoms FTTC isn't competitive with UPC. Eircom offer upload speeds of 20mb/s, while UPC's max speed is 10mb/s

In the age of youtube uploads, dropbox, etc. I'd actually take 70mb/20mb over 120mb/10mb. At speeds above 50mb/s you are usually been throttled by the download servers anyway.

Also I wouldn't say that the FTTC assets will be prematurely written off. From what I've heard the whole FTTC network has been designed with FTTH in mind.

The FTTC cabs fully support FTTH too and seemingly Eircom have run enough fibre drops to each cab to support FTTH from the cabs in future. All work that would need to be done if you went FTTH anyway, so no real lose there. The only lose you have is the engineer installs currently being done by for FTTC and potentially if they had went FTTH from the start, they might have been able to use cheaper FTTH only cabs.

But then you have to balance that with a much slower and more expensive rollout. I think Eircom have made the right decision.

* I know saying this sounds crazy, I remember 10 years ago being at Eircom and IOffL conferences and laughing at people saying that there was no demand or need for broadband. So I short of cringe when I hear myself saying this. But realistically I don't see any applications coming in the short to medium term that require speeds much faster then 50mb/s

50mb/s is plenty fast for a couple of HD video streams. The only technology that I can see coming that might need more bandwidth is 4k video, but I'm not convinced that 4k video will take off in the same way as HD did. The reality is that you need a 80"+ TV to take advantage of 4k video and that is a size far too large for the majority of Irish homes.

Sure some totally unimagined technology might come along that requires gigabit speed internet, maybe something sci-fi like being able to plug into and share someone elses experiences, but nothing that we currently know about coming up is going to need anything faster then 70mb/s

bealtine · 17-10-2013 12:49pm

bk wrote: »

I'm not sure it was a bad decision.

To be honest, 50mb/s is more then fast enough for the majority of people for the foreseeable future *

I also wouldn't say that Eircoms FTTC isn't competitive with UPC. Eircom offer upload speeds of 20mb/s, while UPC's max speed is 10mb/s

I concur with most of this as it is indeed what is happening on the ground but I'm not sure if I agree totally. Remember the great pronouncements of the past like no computer will ever need more than 512k memory (MS) or there will only ever be one computer (IBM)? So I'm wary of saying things like "fast enough" etc, sure it will bring the speeds up and be great for urban dwellers but do we abandon the rest?

Perhaps the FTTC rollout could be seen as a first step towards what should be the ultimate goal of FTTH?

bk · 17-10-2013 1:10pm

bealtine wrote: »

I concur with most of this as it is indeed what is happening on the ground but I'm not sure if I agree totally. Remember the great pronouncements of the past like no computer will ever need more than 512k memory (MS) or there will only ever be one computer (IBM)? So I'm wary of saying things like "fast enough" etc, sure it will bring the speeds up and be great for urban dwellers but do we abandon the rest?

I appreciate what you are saying and agree with you to a certain extent. However back 15 years ago, those of use working in the IT industry could see the upcoming revolution, things like online gaming, streaming music, streaming HD video, cloud services, video calling, etc. They were all in their early stages at the time and we could all see the need for high speed BB to deliver these services in the future. A future that has now come to pass.

The same isn't true for gigabit BB services. I just don't see any applications that will be coming in the next 10 years that require gigabit speeds.

I agree some unimaginable, sci-fi breakthrough might come, but I wouldn't go investing billions on infrastructure just in case something like that happens.

bealtine wrote: »

Perhaps the FTTC rollout could be seen as a first step towards what should be the ultimate goal of FTTH?

Of course and clearly Eircom has designed their FTTC rollout as such. Future proofing it for FTTH.

And I believe Eircom may start rolling out FTTH in future for a few reasons:

- Greatly reduced maintenance costs of fibre versus copper
- To compete in marketing terms on speeds with UPC and ESB fibre if it happens.

But I don't think they necessarily made the wrong decision with going FTTC first.

Eircom are investing 500m on this rollout, that can get you either:
- FTTC 1 million homes getting 100mb/s BB (when vectoring kicks in) very quickly (basically in pretty much one year).

or alternatively for the same money:
- FTTH 250,000 homes getting gigabit ethernet and probably taking 4 years to do.

I think the former is better for the majority of people. More people get a very good, usable speed sooner, rather then less people getting a fantastic speed that they don't really need.

Slutmonkey57b · 17-10-2013 1:59pm

I'd have to agree. I'm on <30mb upc and I struggle to see a use case where 200mb would give me any real advantage. The performance problems you encounter as a user are far more likely to be the result of

Artificial bottlenecks due to peering problems or disagreements.
Traffic shaping/contention.
Crap website design.
Slashdot effect.
Running performance analyser in Firefox shows you frightening amounts of time being wasted waiting for some Web server to complete an unnecessarily complicated transaction, usually due to external ad services.

clohamon · 17-10-2013 9:21pm

bk wrote: »

But I don't think they necessarily made the wrong decision with going FTTC first.

VDSL Speeds
I wish I had your confidence about the number of Eircom's customers who will actually get 70Mb/s or even 50Mb/s with FTTC (vectoring or not ), but I doubt we'll ever be told. i suspect the overall market outcome will be the sum of 800,000 individual household experiences in the Eircom/UPC areas, and not the result of comparative headline claims. Remember there's three times the number of houses between 500 and 1000M from the cabinet, as there are between 0 and 500M.

4K2K TVs
I also wish I had your confidence in predicting the future. When I was a lad, a 28" TV was top of the range. Ten years ago 50" TVs cost €5,000 now they're €1000. Any furniture advertisement these days makes the media "wall" the centrepiece of the room. If you think any size of TV is "too big", then you'd have to ask why people go to the cinema.

No. of streams
And it's not just one or two bandwidth hogs per home. Its been said that the best way to summon of all your family these days, is to turn off the wi-fi router; everybody comes running to see what's happened. Current UPC advertising plays on exactly this point. Five video steams in one household is not at all unthinkable. If they could all be HD they would be.

The point about FTTC is essentially how much time it will buy eircom before they have to upgrade to FTTH. My guess is not very much, which means that they will have to write off much of the FTTC investment very early - a financial hit that they have not faced yet.

With FTTH the short term market effects would be far worse but at least there was the prospect of winning back customers once the job was done - if they could last that long. I suspect it will be very difficult to win customers from UPC with FTTC.

bk wrote: »

Eircom are investing 500m on this rollout,

That number has got some traction I agree, but what does it include? How much is outlay to infrastructure suppliers, and how much is common costs and marketing spend?

bk · 17-10-2013 10:04pm

clohamon wrote: »

VDSL Speeds
I wish I had your confidence about the number of Eircom's customers who will actually get 70Mb/s or even 50Mb/s with FTTC (vectoring or not ), but I doubt we'll ever be told. i suspect the overall market outcome will be the sum of 800,000 individual household experiences in the Eircom/UPC areas, and not the result of comparative headline claims. Remember there's three times the number of houses between 500 and 1000M from the cabinet, as there are between 0 and 500M.

Non of us really know, but I've been keeping a close eye on the results people have been reporting over on the broadband forum and so far I've been pretty impressed, most people seem to be getting in the 50 to 70mb range.

And that is before they start doing vectoring.

clohamon wrote: »

4K2K TVs
I also wish I had your confidence in predicting the future. When I was a lad, a 28" TV was top of the range. Ten years ago 50" TVs cost €5,000 now they're €1000. Any furniture advertisement these days makes the media "wall" the centrepiece of the room. If you think any size of TV is "too big", then you'd have to ask why people go to the cinema.

It isn't about cost, I believe it is more to do with the law of diminishing returns.

I see 4k video as being similar to Super CD and BluRay. DVD's and CD's were ridiculously popular as they were so much better picture and sound quality compared to what went before. But also they were popular because they had a number of advances over tape. Much smaller, no rewinding, didn't fade.

Super CD and to a lesser extent BluRay were much superior, but most people couldn't see much of a difference and they didn't have anything else to sell them over CD/DVD.

I see 4k TV's in much the same way. I believe many people bought HD TV's not just because of the better picture, but also because they were able to get rid of the big, ugly, heavy, room filling CRT TV's.

4k TV's won't have that advantage. It will have to sell purely on the improved picture quality, which will only be noticeable on very large TV's and I'm just not sure it will be enough.

The TV industry is currently desperate to get people to upgrade their HD TV's, with gimmicks like Smart TV's, 3D TV's and now 4K TV's. So far non of them have been successful.

clohamon wrote: »

No. of streams
And it's not just one or two bandwidth hogs per home. Its been said that the best way to summon of all your family these days, is to turn off the wi-fi router; everybody comes running to see what's happened. Current UPC advertising plays on exactly this point. Five video steams in one household is not at all unthinkable. If they could all be HD they would be.

True, but there is a lot of overhead in 50mb. A HD stream is 10mb/s, so you could have 4 HD streams going at the same time and still have 10mb/s left over.

No argument that UPC offers a far superior service. But I do feel that VDSL falls into the good enough category.

clohamon wrote: »

The point about FTTC is essentially how much time it will buy eircom before they have to upgrade to FTTH. My guess is not very much, which means that they will have to write off much of the FTTC investment very early - a financial hit that they have not faced yet.

And again I'll repeat, Eircom's FTTC rollout has been designed with FTTH in mind. Much of the investment in FTTC (the cabs and the fibre to those cabs) would need to have been made even if they went straight to FTTH.

SpaceTime · 17-10-2013 10:08pm

Eircom could quite easily do pair-bonding. This would mean running two lines from the cabinet to your house. Most houses have at least two pairs coming in already but one is never used.

Remember they only need a two pairs to the cabinet, not two full lines to the exchange.

That combined with vectoring gives you 200mbit type sites without FTTH capital expenditure.

Also they've installed enough fibre to the cabinet to form the basis of FTTH in the future.

Cable technology can be pushed to get even higher speeds though

A speed race is great for Ireland and consumers though.

Bring it on!!!!!!

clohamon · 18-10-2013 9:50am

bk wrote: »

And again I'll repeat, Eircom's FTTC rollout has been designed with FTTH in mind. Much of the investment in FTTC (the cabs and the fibre to those cabs) would need to have been made even if they went straight to FTTH.

What's actually re-useable inside the cabinet?

bk · 18-10-2013 12:16pm

clohamon wrote: »

What's actually re-useable inside the cabinet?

Well the cabinet itself, power and the fibre cables running to it.

The type of FTTH that Eircom is planning to use and has been trialling is GPON. See details here:

http://www.nextgenerationnetwork.ie/downloads/programme_overview/industry_overview.pdf

GPON requires kerbside local cabinets. These cabinets would contain optical splitters which take a single fibre cable from the exchange and split it to 32 fibre cables which then go to 32 individual homes.

Eircoms VDSL cabs support 192 phone lines, I believe Eircom has run a minimum of 6 fibres from the local exchange to each cabinet and each cabinet has space for 6 optical splitters, thus each cabinet is capable of replacing the 192 twisted pair lines with 192 fibre lines (6 optical splitters x 32 lines each).

So even if Eircom went straight to FTTH they would still have had to install the 5000 eFibre cabs and they still would have had to run 6 fibre cables to each of the cabs and all the civils related to that.

The only waste here when they do go FTTH are:
- Replace the DSLAMS with the optical splitters in the kerbside cabs
- Replace the NTU's with a ONT at the customers premises

Obviously they will also need to run fibre drops from the kerbside cabs to each home, but they would have had to do that under either scenario.

So there is a little bit of wastage, but far less then people are making out. The majority of the cost of rolling out either FTTC or FTTH is labour and civils. Replacing DSLAMS and NTU's is a relatively minor cost in the overall scheme of things for a project like this.

I estimate that the cost to replace the FTTC gear with FTTH gear would be about 50 million to 100 million (probably closer to 50). However the cost of doing the fibre drops from each cab to each home would be in the region of 1 billion or more!

It has been estimated that it would cost 1.5 billion to do FTTH to every home in Ireland. The 500 million invested in FTTC equates to about 450 to 400 million of this investment.

So you see, writing off 50 million for the FTTC gear when they go FTTH is relatively minor in the bigger scheme of things.

And the advantage is that they get to cover a large number of their customers, very quickly (much quicker then FTTH would allow) with reasonably fast BB, which helps stem the lose of customers and it also goes a long way towards FTTH, which they can then gradually rollout at a more consistent pace.

I believe going from 24 -> 70/100 -> 200+ quickly and cheaply is better then going from 24 -> 200+ over a much longer period of time and at an additional 1 billion cost!

SpaceTime · 18-10-2013 12:44pm

For what we handed to Anglo and the lads we could have had 10Gbit/s to every house even on the side of mountains and still had change for a mission to Mars!

Makes you think...

bealtine · 18-10-2013 12:47pm

I'd agree with this analysis, I'd go even further and say that a large amount of the civils involved are actually covered by this roll out :

the costs of the ODF in the exchange (and all that "stuff")
the costs of rolling fibre out closer to the consumer
(I'd guess this is one of the biggest component parts of any FTTH rollout)

The hard bit left to be done is the "last mile" and what type of drops are to be installed like GPON or whatever...

Will eircom be able to compete with UPC? Well that's hard to answer, I don't think so however UPC have shot themselves in the foot by continuously increasing their prices over the last few years. Once upon a time the choice was simple now things are a little more complex. There isn't much difference in pricing between VSL and UPC now a days.

Now all we need is for the roll out to be extended to all exchanges which hopefully will be done in the future a bit like the DSL rollout (which is still to be completed)

padraig.od · 18-10-2013 12:58pm

bealtine wrote: »

I'd agree with this analysis, I'd go even further and say that a large amount of the civils involved are actually covered by this roll out :

the costs of the ODF in the exchange (and all that "stuff")
the costs of rolling fibre out closer to the consumer
(I'd guess this is one of the biggest component parts of any FTTH rollout)

The hard bit left to be done is the "last mile" and what type of drops are to be installed like GPON or whatever...

Will eircom be able to compete with UPC? Well that's hard to answer, I don't think so however UPC have shot themselves in the foot by continuously increasing their prices over the last few years. Once upon a time the choice was simple now things are a little more complex. There isn't much difference in pricing between VSL and UPC now a days.

Now all we need is for the roll out to be extended to all exchanges which hopefully will be done in the future a bit like the DSL rollout (which is still to be completed)

What are the odds. They've planned up to phase 5? What are the odds on phase 6, 7 & 8 etc.

Looking at their rollout plan they are hitting some of the rural exchanges and I'd say further rollout will depend on how expensive/sucessful these are.

bk · 18-10-2013 1:13pm

Yup, I'd much prefer Eircom to focus on getting 50mb BB to every home in Ireland, then spend a billion getting FTTH 200mb+ to the same old urban dwellers, many if not most already have 200mb UPC available to them.

Thing is even if Eircom do spend a billion+ on FTTH, there is still no guarantee that it would be good enough to compete with UPC.

The FTTH service that Eircom trialled was only 150mb/s (which is a contention ratio of 2:1), which has already been surpassed by UPC's new 200mb/s service. UPC's current modems are capable of at least 400mb/s!

The coax cable UPC use is theoretically capable of 5Gb/s shared, note Eircoms GPON is capable of 2.5Gb/s shared *

UPC has proven itself to be very aggressive competing with anything Sky and Eircom do, so I'd expect UPC would match anything Eircom would do. And don't forget, UPC has their own fibre to the curb network, from which they could deploy FTTH for about the same investment cost as Eircom if they wished to do so.

So even if Eircom spent a billion+ doing FTTH, there is no guarantee it would help them win back customers from UPC.

* 5Gb/s is the max theoretical bandwidth of the cable they use, it would require them switching off their analogue and digital TV services and going all IPTV and it would also require new modems and "exchange" side gear, but it is possible.

Eircoms 2.5Gb/s GPON is shared amongst 32 users. UPC 5Gb/s cable is also shared, but harder to say amongst how many users as it depends on how tight their cable rings are.

bk · 18-10-2013 1:14pm

padraig.od wrote: »

Looking at their rollout plan they are hitting some of the rural exchanges and I'd say further rollout will depend on how expensive/sucessful these are.

That plus probably some matching subsidies from government.

bk · 18-10-2013 1:31pm

Actually it turns out I was mistaken about the cost to do FTTH to every home in Ireland.

The estimated cost is actually 2.5 billion, not 1.5 billion:

http://siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/17057-tifx2010

I had read it as 1.5 billion in an Eircom presentation, but I guess that is just to do urban areas (60% of population), much of which is already covered by UPC. The 2.5 billion is probably needed to do every home in Ireland.

So that should be kept in mind when comparing the FTTC investment versus FTTH.

Gonzo · 18-10-2013 1:31pm

my worry is how many more years do we have to wait before Eircom finally start doing somethng for those who live beyond the urban boundaries of large/small towns. Even where I live, is not totally rural but still not classified as inside a town and no fibre cabinets are earmarked for anywhere near me. Im sure theres 1000s of other people in same situation.

Eircom's original plans wold have been better if it was FTTH for most urban areas (where possible) and leave the FTTC for the semi-rural and rural areas, that would have been a great solution satisfying everyone, even if it is a very expensive solution. Looking at Eircom's rollout so far, theres still only a fraction of the total number of exchanges fibre enabled and in those exchanges only a certain percentage of people can avail of it.

I know Eircom will eventually get around to giving most of us fibre, but it could be several years before most of us in the less built up parts of the country will see anything.

clohamon · 18-10-2013 1:42pm

bk wrote: »

Actually it turns out I was mistaken about the cost to do FTTH to every home in Ireland.

The estimated cost is actually 2.5 billion, not 1.5 billion:

http://siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/17057-tifx2010

I had read it as 1.5 billion in an Eircom presentation, but I guess that is just to do urban areas (60% of population), much of which is already covered by UPC. The 2.5 billion is probably needed to do every home in Ireland.

So that should be kept in mind when comparing the FTTC investment versus FTTH.

There's very little detail in that IBEC(TIF) document. Analysys Mason were extrapolating figures from their study of the UK carried out in 2008.

clohamon · 18-10-2013 1:45pm

bk wrote: »

- Replace the DSLAMS with the optical splitters in the kerbside cabs

Do the optical splitters need power?

bk · 18-10-2013 1:54pm

clohamon wrote: »

There's very little detail in that IBEC(TIF) document. Analysys Mason were extrapolating figures from their study of the UK carried out in 2008.

True, but the figures from this report are in line with my own figures that I estimated a few years ago. I estimated at least 2 billion for every home in Ireland.

Mason where estimating a cost of about €1,600 per home * 1.6 million homes gives you a figure of 2.5b+ €1,600 per home is a reasonable estimate in line with what other European telcos have found for their fibre rollouts. In fact it may even be on the low side.

clohamon wrote: »

Do the optical splitters need power?

No, but the cabs do as they are actively managed and have monitored alarm systems, etc.

BTW just came across another interesting report comparing the cost of FTTH to FTTC for both phone and cable companies:

http://www.analysysmason.com/Consulting/Client-Presentations/Regulatory-and-policy-development-in-NGA/Understanding-the-costs-of-NGA-networks-Ian-Struele/

bk · 18-10-2013 1:58pm

Gonzo wrote: »

Eircom's original plans wold have been better if it was FTTH for most urban areas (where possible) and leave the FTTC for the semi-rural and rural areas, that would have been a great solution satisfying everyone, even if it is a very expensive solution. Looking at Eircom's rollout so far, theres still only a fraction of the total number of exchanges fibre enabled and in those exchanges only a certain percentage of people can avail of it.

But if they did that, it would probably take them 5 years longer before they actually started on the rural areas.

FTTH takes much longer to do as it is very labour intensive. If Eircom started with FTTH in urban areas, it would take them much, much longer to finish these urban areas before they started doing FTTC in rural areas.

Plus if they did spend the 1.5 billion on the urban areas, it would be much more likely that they would just run out of money or go broke before they even started on the rural areas.

Eircom going FTTC in urban areas first is actually makes it more likely that rural areas will get FTTC too and faster.

bk · 18-10-2013 2:06pm

Interesting article here on ultra HD TV's (4k and 8k) and their impact on broadband networks:

http://www.analysysmason.com/About-Us/News/Newsletter/FTTH-connected-TV-Apr2013/

Interestingly the article shows that FTTC networks should be able to handle 4k TV's (80" or greater) specially when bonding is used. The need for FTTH only kicks in when you go to 8k TV's (100" or greater).

As I pointed out the article also says:

Take-up of more-advanced UHD TV may be limited by non-technological constraints. There is a limit to the angular resolution that the human eye can process, beyond which there is no perceptible advantage to greater TV resolution. In order to make the increased detail visible, a larger screen is needed. The 4K sets currently available all have screen sizes of more than 80 inches; 8K TVs may be even bigger. Eventually the required screen size may become so great as to become an obstacle to take-up, whether because of the physical size of rooms, or the cost of super-sized TVs.

bk · 18-10-2013 2:11pm

Also another interesting point, Eircoms FTTC network will allow them to follow BT's example and do FTTH on Demand.

Basically in the UK, if you are connected to a BT FTTC cab, you can opt to have FTTH installed.

However the FTTH install costs £500 + a distance fee. So you end up paying the true cost of FTTH up front.

I'd expect few customers would go for it, but business might jump at it.

clohamon · 18-10-2013 2:12pm

bk wrote: »

But if they did that, it would probably take them 5 years longer before they actually started on the rural areas.

FTTH takes much longer to do as it is very labour intensive. If Eircom started with FTTH in urban areas, it would take them much, much longer to finish these urban areas before they started doing FTTC in rural areas.

Plus if they did spend the 1.5 billion on the urban areas, it would be much more likely that they would just run out of money or go broke before they even started on the rural areas.

This is predicated on the assumption that Eircom's continued survival is a good thing. The infrastructure wont disappear even if Eircom do.

bk wrote: »

Eircom going FTTC in urban areas first is actually makes it more likely that rural areas will get FTTC too and faster.

Are you sure FTTC is a good solution for rural areas?

For a 21st century national and universal communications infrastructure, 5 years and €2.5Bn is not a lot of time or money.

bk · 18-10-2013 2:19pm

clohamon wrote: »

For a 21st century national and universal communications infrastructure, 5 years and €2.5Bn is not a lot of time or money.

I think it is the only realistic solution.

With both our government and Eircom almost broke, I think realistically no one is going to spend 2.5 billion for FTTH. Sorry I'm a realist and while I'd love to see us do FTTH, I just can't see it happening.

Actually my biggest fear is that the government will actually go with LTE as the BB solution for rural areas!

FTTC would be far preferable to crappy LTE.

I look forward to see what the ESB do. I don't expect them to go anywhere near rural areas, but if they bring FTTH to even the 400,000 urban people not served by UPC, it would still be a good thing, it would shake up the market and perhaps spur UPC and Eircom into action and act as a template for future FTTH across the whole of Ireland.

bk · 18-10-2013 3:35pm

Interesting quote:

However, Telekom was clear to emphasize that they are not abandoning FTTH and in fact believe that 50 percent of the CAPEX used for the FTTC + Vectoring will be applicable to FTTH networks in the future with FTTH being the long-term target for the wireline network.

http://broadbandtrends.com/blog1/2013/07/29/is-vdsl2-vectoring-destroying-the-ftth-business-case/

watty · 18-10-2013 9:31pm

ESB manage Electricity to all Rural areas now. Not much difference to deliver fibre, even on same poles.

bealtine · 18-10-2013 11:14pm

bk wrote: »

I think it is the only realistic solution.

With both our government and Eircom almost broke, I think realistically no one is going to spend 2.5 billion for FTTH. Sorry I'm a realist and while I'd love to see us do FTTH, I just can't see it happening.

Actually my biggest fear is that the government will actually go with LTE as the BB solution for rural areas!

Many of those estimates, as far as I can see, are based around lots of digging and underground ducting, fibre can easily be "clipped" to poles, this is how a lot of the runs in the West are done now.

So I'd estimate that the cost of a fibre deployment would be significantly less that 2.5 billion now.

LTE would be the nightmare solution...

bk · 18-10-2013 11:51pm

bealtine wrote: »

So I'd estimate that the cost of a fibre deployment would be significantly less that 2.5 billion now.

I very much hope you are correct.

That is why I see ESB doing fibre to even urban areas being so important. It will give them real world costs and experience which may eventually apply to rolling it out to rural areas.

Watty the ESB do supply electricity to rural areas, but at a greater cost to the consumer then urban areas. Perhaps a similar system is needed to bring high speed bb to rural areas, allow a higher rate to be charged for rural areas, thus making it more feasible?

SpaceTime · 19-10-2013 1:40am

Bear in mind that it took ESB from 1930 to 1973 to build out the rural networks. Running fibre down every ESB wire would probably take at least a decade to complete.

bealtine · 19-10-2013 8:40am

SpaceTime wrote: »

Bear in mind that it took ESB from 1930 to 1973 to build out the rural networks. Running fibre down every ESB wire would probably take at least a decade to complete.

Well yes....however I don't think the Rural Electrification Scheme started in earnest until the 50's, electrification stalled as there was a break for "the emergency" and kind of ended when the last offshore islands were connected which was about 10 years ago. The last mainland community connected was the Black Valley iirc. Nowadays the scheme is about upgrading the ancient lines and "fixing up" the brownouts and dropouts.

My great granny was on the first power station in Ireland which was in Fleet St and supplied DC

But essentially you are correct any fibre deployment would take a log time even with the cute fibre wrapping machines:)

The story of Rural Electrification does echo today's necessary fibre deployment, the ideological arguments of the time are being played out again. This time round the Hayek economic view is in the ascendancy...

http://www.ouririshheritage.org/page_id__73_path__0p4p.aspx

Who/what is Hayek?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWZXAypjt1o

ColmH81 · 19-10-2013 8:45am

croo wrote: »

If UPC keep this up the government will soon be bragging that the *average* download speed is now 30mb even as many of us are still on stuck on dialup!

Yeah.. This is all great if you're not rural... UPC stops 100m down the road and won't come any further up... And eircom are the same.. Absolutely suck donkey d#ck...

clohamon · 19-10-2013 9:44am

bk wrote: »

I think it is the only realistic solution.

With both our government and Eircom almost broke, I think realistically no one is going to spend 2.5 billion for FTTH. Sorry I'm a realist and while I'd love to see us do FTTH, I just can't see it happening.

That's not realism its fatalism. Anyone can make a business case. You don't need governments at all if you are happy with a business case.

A wide aspect cost benefit analysis of universal FTTH would be overwhelmingly positive. The prime beneficiary would be government itself. The cost savings in delivering government services would be enormous.

It has been fourteen years since TE was privatised. We could have fibred up the entire country twice over in that time.

The lasting effect of liberalising the market is that the telcos have got the government to think like they do. And the public in turn are being asked to swallow the same stuff by the government.

bk wrote: »

Actually my biggest fear is that the government will actually go with LTE as the BB solution for rural areas!

FTTC would be far preferable to crappy LTE.

What are you going to do about it!

smee again · 19-10-2013 10:51am

SpaceTime wrote: »

Bear in mind that it took ESB from 1930 to 1973 to build out the rural networks. Running fibre down every ESB wire would probably take at least a decade to complete.

The quicker we start then, eh?

Nonoperational · 19-10-2013 10:56am

To be honest, getting reliable 10Mbit+ to everybody is far more important and significant that 100Mbit+... I have 12Mbit and 99% of the time it's perfect for what I need.

bk · 19-10-2013 10:58am

clohamon wrote: »

The cost savings in delivering government services would be enormous.

I'm sorry, but this bit is bs. Exactly what government services require FTTH?

The reality is almost all government services that are online (pay TV license, revenue website, citizens information, etc.) can easily be delivered over 10mb/s BB.

The question is, if you live in a rural area and you currently get no BB or just 1 to 2 mb/s, would you rather wait 1 to 2 years to get 50mb/s+ or wait more then 10 years to get 500mb/s+

Because the reality of FTTH in rural areas is that even if the money was available to do it (very doubtful) it would still take more then 10 years to actually do it due to how difficult it is to lay last mile cable.

bk · 19-10-2013 11:18am

I think a good initial aim would be to have Eircom put a VDSL2 cab at the center of every village in rural Ireland. That would mean:

- Everyone living in the village would get 50mb+
- Everyone living within 1km of the village would get 18mb
- Everyone living within 2km of the village would get 10mb
- Everyone living within 3km of the village would get 7mb *
- The village would now have fibre optic cable running to it, where previously non existed.
- This fibre cable could be used to bring 100mb+ BB to the local school, community center and businesses in the village.
- This fibre cable could also be used to feed LTE and fixed wireless antennas in the village, which could therefore feed high speed BB to the surrounding area at distances much greater then 3km.

Getting fibre to every village in Ireland is half the battle of getting high speed BB to rural Ireland. Over time, you could then start doing FTTH from these VDSL2 cabs. Perhaps communities could even start digging trenches themselves and laying fibre cables from the village out to the surrounding homes.

Perhaps if Eircom won't do it on their own, the government can part fund it, but with the requirement that the local communities have access to the fibre to build out their own FTTH network or fixed wireless network.

* 7mb might not sound very exciting, but many really rural villages in Ireland have either no ADSL at all or just crappy 1 - 2mb. 7mb would be a big win for them. It would be good enough to make all the internet easily usable, music streaming, skype, SD video streaming, etc. They really only lose out on HD video streaming.

clohamon · 19-10-2013 11:27am

bk wrote: »

I'm sorry, but this bit is bs. Exactly what government services require FTTH?

FTTH in rural areas is primarily about reach not speed.

bk wrote: »

The reality is almost all government services that are online (pay TV license, revenue website, citizens information, etc.) can easily be delivered over 10mb/s BB.

The usefulness of the network increases exponentially as you reach 100% coverage and adoption. That's the point at which you can start to dismantle the other more expensive channels of delivery. Every interaction across the entire range of government that involves members of the public meeting public servants and exchanging bits of paper, talking, and making payments, is replaceable. Thats just the start, but it can only happen if you can guarantee that everyone is connected on an equal footing.

bk wrote: »

The question is, if you live in a rural area and you currently get no BB or just 1 to 2 mb/s, would you rather wait 1 to 2 years to get 50mb/s+ or wait more then 10 years to get 500mb/s+

If that's a promise, then unequivocally yes.

bk · 19-10-2013 11:32am

clohamon wrote: »

The usefulness of the network increases exponentially as you reach 100% coverage and adoption. That's the point at which you can start to dismantle the other more expensive channels of delivery. Every interaction across the entire range of government that involves members of the public meeting public servants and exchanging bits of paper, talking, and making payments, is replaceable. Thats just the start, but it can only happen if you can guarantee that everyone is connected on an equal footing.

I'm hearing a lot of blah blah jargon here, but no actual examples of any government services that require FTTH?

clohamon wrote: »

If that's a promise, then unequivocally yes.

Then that is just nuts!!

Even in the cities, there is almost no applications that actually require 50mb+ speeds.

People in rural areas need high speed BB today, not super high speed BB in 10 years time.

bealtine · 19-10-2013 12:21pm

bk wrote: »

I'm sorry, but this bit is bs. Exactly what government services require FTTH?

The reality is almost all government services that are online (pay TV license, revenue website, citizens information, etc.) can easily be delivered over 10mb/s BB.

Perhaps/perhaps not, at this time many Dept of Agriculture/EU services are online, like the cattle tracking thing (I forget all the details) but a lot of farmers are by definition rural so can't avail of the services. Granted any form of broadband would probably do these farmers at this time but the EU has big plans (unrealistic perhaps but plans all the same) for greater monitoring of livestock this will need more bandwidth in the future, will VDSL cover it...hard to know especially in the "rural fringe" where speeds will be pretty basic.

In my opinion we should be planning for FTTH now...

clohamon · 19-10-2013 12:35pm

bk wrote: »

Then that is just nuts!!

You made an offer, I took you up on it. Who's nuts?

bk wrote: »

Even in the cities, there is almost no applications that actually require 50mb+ speeds.

Again, rural FTTH is primarily about reach not outright speed.

I think the difference between us is you're advising a series of incremental steps where digital divide is a given and a constant, based on an limited view of the medium term. I'm proposing to deal with the problem conclusively based on the potential of the long term.

SpaceTime · 19-10-2013 2:47pm

bk wrote: »

I think a good initial aim would be to have Eircom put a VDSL2 cab at the center of every village in rural Ireland. That would mean:

- Everyone living in the village would get 50mb+
- Everyone living within 1km of the village would get 18mb
- Everyone living within 2km of the village would get 10mb
- Everyone living within 3km of the village would get 7mb *
- The village would now have fibre optic cable running to it, where previously non existed.
- This fibre cable could be used to bring 100mb+ BB to the local school, community center and businesses in the village.
- This fibre cable could also be used to feed LTE and fixed wireless antennas in the village, which could therefore feed high speed BB to the surrounding area at distances much greater then 3km.

Getting fibre to every village in Ireland is half the battle of getting high speed BB to rural Ireland. Over time, you could then start doing FTTH from these VDSL2 cabs. Perhaps communities could even start digging trenches themselves and laying fibre cables from the village out to the surrounding homes.
...

The thing is that many, many small towns and villages already have fibre connected eircom exchanges (small remote concentrators). The fibre is probably using very old protocols designed for phone and ISDN era stuff. Moving them to all-IP would solve that.

There are also a few towns not on efibre that have MAN networks installed that were never used. An example would be Manorhamilton in north Leitrim.

There is a lot of infrastructure already in place and totally under utilised.

UPC go to 200Mb/s; digital divide worse than ever.

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