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Germany to fork out BEELLLIONS for farmers' broadband

Comments

  • #2
    croo
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 1,333 Mod ✭✭✭✭croo


    2.7b for a country the size of Germany! We should get whoever they're using to lay the fibre here... It should be a fraction and of that to provide the same here.


  • #3
    watty
    Registered Users Posts: 32,417 ✭✭✭✭watty


    Good luck on getting German fibre rollouts in Ireland!

    What if they are using the sewer system as ducts? We have over 400,000 septic tanks instead.

    Or you can use even water mains for fibre. How many rural people here are not on Mains water?

    Or you might have a scheme were people running fibre can cheaply use Autobahn ducts (NRA here) or easily and cheaply use any existing poles.

    None of that applies here.

    While I'm on a rant, is a Satellite Pay TV provider reselling broadband the only 1 year contract? Why are there no 6 month? Why are all the other BB suppliers doing 18 month minimum?

    Maybe we have no regulator here to sort all that stuff. Only a collector of licence fees.


  • #4
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,446 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    Magnet has one month contracts.

    Also in general, Irelands broadband is now largely similar to Germanys.

    For instance UPC in Germany (Unitymedia) tops out at just 120Mb/s, compared to the 240Mb/s we get here. (Kabel the other cable operator is better, but still slower, offering 200/12Mb/s).

    Deutsche Telekom is rolling out 100Mb/s vectorised VDSL2 similar to Eircom, but seem to be far behind Eircom on this rollout. They still haven't turned on vectoring in most cities and their rollout of VDSL is far less extensive outside cities then Eircoms is.

    Deutsche Telekom has some FTTH, but seems to have stopped their rollout in favour of rolling out VDSL2 and is now talking about a large scaled G.Fast rollout.

    The point is, lets not think Germany is all that and that we can't do far better then them.


  • #5
    croo
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 1,333 Mod ✭✭✭✭croo


    There has been speculation in this forum in years past about how much might it cost to bring fibre to the all, and the number was usually in the beeelions... and here was an article claiming that in Germany they can bring fibre to an area of roughly four times that of Ireland for a 2.7B. Now watty might have some points - especially the one related to the license fee collector, I think that is our underlying problem.

    > The point is, lets not think Germany is all that and that we can't do far better then them.
    I've lived there and here and in my experience we are not all that! Not if you were to take away our ability to be a tax haven with the EU itself anyway.

    I know there are some nice headline speeds advertised in some small areas of the country, but I also know that I live just 10km from midlands town and I have no options outside of using 3g, that barely works at times.


  • #6
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,446 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    croo wrote: »
    I've lived there and here and in my experience we are not all that! Not if you were to take away our ability to be a tax haven with the EU itself anyway.

    Oh, I'm not saying we are!

    We have many pros and cons just like any country. But if you have lived in Germany then you know it isn't the super efficient dream land that many people who have never lived there stereotypically imagine.

    You mention you can only get 3G from a town 10km from the midlands (that sounds pretty damn rural to me BTW). But a poster over on the broadband forum lives in a town just 12km from Berlin and can only get ADSL! Not all that different really.

    I would say Ireland's broadband network is now roughly as good as most other European countries, with the exception of the Nordics.

    Shockingly we have surpassed the UK, something I would never have imagined just 5 years ago! And I would say we are about the same or slightly ahead of Germany on average.

    That isn't to say that there isn't still a massive amount of work to do.

    But lets not do the typical Irish thing and think we are inferior to everyone else in Europe, a backwards farming country. Ireland has come on leaps and bounds over the last few years and we should be proud about that.

    We need to focus on what is going on here and not what the Germans or god help us the UK are doing.

    We need to focus on Eircoms continuing rollout of FTTC and Eircom and SIRO now starting to rollout FTTH. And most importantly we need to focus on the National Broadband Plan.


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  • #7
    bk
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,446 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    croo wrote: »
    There has been speculation in this forum in years past about how much might it cost to bring fibre to the all, and the number was usually in the beeelions... and here was an article claiming that in Germany they can bring fibre to an area of roughly four times that of Ireland for a 2.7B.

    As to this point.

    The average cost of FTTH is roughly €1,000 per premises, there are over 2 million premises in Ireland so you can do the maths.

    However the Germans aren't spending 2.7B to connect every home in Germany to FTTH.

    First of all this project just covers the underserved rural areas, so those two figures aren't directly comparable.

    Secondly the 2.7B is just the subsidy that the government is giving. The subsidy will cover only 10% to 50% of the cost, with the rest being covered commercially. So again the figures aren't comparable.

    Finally this German scheme doesn't specify technology, so it doesn't guarantee FTTH. I'm certain it will be FTTC and G.Fast, etc. in many areas. Maybe even wireless in some.

    So the figure of 2.5 Billion to connect FTTH to every home in Ireland is in no way comparable to this 2.7B figure. It would cost well more then 40B to connect every home in Germany to FTTH. Which is why Deutsche Telekom stopped it's FTTH rollout and is now heavily pushing FTTC instead just like Eircom.


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