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ESB to create new fibre powered ISP

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  • Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators Posts: 4,991 Mod ✭✭✭✭Shane732


    bk wrote: »
    BT already make use of it and other companies could of course rent capacity on it too.

    National fibre really isn't a problem, there is an awful lot of fibre in Ireland already, it is fibre to the last mile (to the home) that is the issue.

    How much does fibre to the last mile cost?


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    As this will be suspended overhead and not always dug in or wrapped I'd say the €300m they intend to spend should do around 400k premises.

    They intend to do urban and semi urban areas only.


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,346 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    SB where did you hear the €300 million figure?

    This seems like a really sensible and solid plan by the ESB. UPC already dominate the 1/3 most densely populated (and thus valuable) part of the country, no point in trying to get into a difficult turf battle with them.

    Instead target the next 2/3rd's of the country, yes less densely populated, but hopefully by using their own pre-existing infrastructure, they can keep the deployment costs down and make it commercially work.

    I can see both BT, Sky and UPC jumping at the opportunity to use this network. It would allow them to quickly expand their network without high costs.

    Eircom will be seriously stuffed by this, their current VDSL2+ investment will look pretty poor compared to this new network. Eircom could well be pushed out into the last 1/3rd and thus least valuable part of the country. To be honest if this actually happens, I can't really see Eircom surviving.


  • Registered Users Posts: 53,755 ✭✭✭✭Headshot


    rural areas getting ****ed over again. sigh


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,346 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    Headshot wrote: »
    rural areas getting ****ed over again. sigh

    This is good news for rural areas.

    What did you expect, that rural areas would get high speed broadband before urban and semi-urban areas. Was never going to happen.

    The quicker the second 1/3 rd of the country gets done, the quicker rural areas may follow.

    The only reason rural areas in Northern Ireland got done, is because commercial operators had already done the urban and semi-urban areas and the government then gave them extra money to help finance them extending their networks into the rural areas.

    An extensive fibre network that covers 2/3rds of the country will be the back bone off which future improvements in rural areas can be made.

    Eircom could use this fibre to power exchanges and VDSL cabs in rural areas. Mobile companies using LTE and fixed wireless companies can use this fibre network to deliver high speed wireless to rural areas.

    Eventually in the long term rural areas could even get fibre to the home, by extending off this network. Even the ESB say they maybe interested in tapping the €175 million government grant for rural areas.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 53,755 ✭✭✭✭Headshot


    tbf most of the urban areas have good broadband compared to rural areas. Hell rural areas are lucky they can get any kind of broadband at all


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,874 ✭✭✭✭PogMoThoin


    Rural broadband could benefit hugely from this. Most of the fixed wireless providers are surviving on radio links for their core network, lots of them using unlicensed spectrum. Having access to fibre could vastly improve their situation and enable them to offer more.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    bk wrote: »
    SB where did you hear the €300 million figure?

    Sent you and Solair a PM. Can you confirm that my €300m figure is correct when you read that.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    Sourced FROM HERE with only Pop Density in Small Areas ( average of 6 SA to 1 ED nationwide) switched on.

    Question is, How Green will the ESB Go???
    .

    Also see this other funky Visualiser/Data Picker HERE :)

    You can pull BB and Comp and even Dialup Penetration stats off that first link too but BROADBAND AVAILABILITY determines computer penetration not the other way round. Bit of an allowance for age must be made too.

    In 2006 we had 1.4m HOUSEHOLDS in 1.7m HOUSES. Aggregates HERE and in 2011 we had around 1.7m HOUSEHOLDS in 2.0m HOUSES.

    So precisely which 20-25% of the State will they do guys!??

    221084.jpg


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,120 ✭✭✭wheresmybeaver


    Places like Midleton and Youghal would seem like obvious choices for this kind of broadband - they don't have UPC (correct me if I'm wrong) and Eircom are pretty much the only source of connectivity. There are about 4000 people directly in the town of Midleton and 6000 in the immediate surrounding area. Not sure about households.


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  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,346 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    Sponge Bob wrote: »
    Sent you and Solair a PM. Can you confirm that my €300m figure is correct when you read that.

    Yup the €300m figure is correct. Never doubted it, just interested to see where it came from.

    They actually say at least €300m, could be more.

    They also interestingly say phase 1 will cover urban and semi-urban areas outside Dublin and that it will be a multi-year project. They also go onto say that there maybe future phases to cover Dublin and rural areas, but no guarantee.

    All very interesting.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    Ah. But there is an important fact.

    Cable and VDSL will cover around 40-50% of the population in time...that is assuming eircom COMPLETE their VDSL rollout unlike the ADSL rollout that eircom abandoned .....incomplete.

    Lets say they reach 50% between them at best. Neither UPC nor eircom give a ****e about the other 50% of the population.

    The new MOBILE licences require 70% population coverage.

    My guesstimate is that the ESB will do the RURAL FRINGES of large towns to get the 20% of the population in densely populated RURAL (ish) areas and NOT IN UPC/eircom VDSL TOWNS.

    This would be a doughnut around 10 miles out around Galway and 15-20 miles around Cork and as much as 40 miles outside Dublin.

    So I can see Midleton qualifying but not Youghal. eg Glanmire Midleton and all points in between them and Cork. It is instructive that Computer Penetration is very high within that Doughnut!

    PC Ownership Penetration by Household and by Small Area (not by ED) 2011. (SOURCE)

    221091.jpg


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 77 ✭✭IE2012


    how will the eircom FTTC rollout affect, LLU exchanges?


    will it make other LLU operators equipment in exchanges redundant, as the DSL component is being moved to the cab?


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    Yes it will make the LLU equipment redundant. That is a thorny issue may I add. Unbundling Fibre is another mess, eg the ESB proposes to use PONs in rural areas which are supersize fibre festoons up to 20km long where all the customers are chained one to the other and back to base on a ring. In towns and villages they will offer exclusive fibres to the premises. Easy to unbundle them.

    WEIRDLY :D This means that rural customers on fibre will be like cable customers in towns today and urban customers on fibre will be like rural adsl customers today. :D


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 77 ✭✭IE2012


    Sponge Bob wrote: »
    Yes it will make the LLU equipment redundant. That is a thorny issue may I add. Unbundling Fibre is another mess, eg the ESB proposes to use PONs in rural areas which are supersize fibre festoons up to 20km long where all the customers are chained one to the other and back to base on a ring. In towns and villages they will offer exclusive fibres to the premises. Easy to unbundle them.

    WEIRDLY :D This means that rural customers on fibre will be like cable customers in towns today and urban customers on fibre will be like rural adsl customers today. :D

    just thinking of how this will affect vodafone, as BT provide wholesale access to vodafone don't they?

    will the FTTC rollout, force vodafone to become an eircom bitstream reseller for the FTTC?


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,346 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    IE2012 wrote: »
    just thinking of how this will affect vodafone, as BT provide wholesale access to vodafone don't they?

    will the FTTC rollout, force vodafone to become an eircom bitstream reseller for the FTTC?

    Vodafone already are an Eircom bitstream user. Or rather BT are, who then sell it to Vodafone. Vodafone use BT LLU where available, while they use Eircom Bitstream -> BT -> Vodafone for the rest of the country.

    This will likely to continue in the future, with Vodafone/BT using BT's proposed LLU VDSL service where available. Then use Eircom bitstream and ESB fibre outside those areas.

    Actually I wonder if this ESB proposal will kill BT's trial of their own VDSL2+ service?


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    Hard to say. I'd say BT are looking at the same areas as eircom but BT have 96 port cabs and can make a business case for smaller areas than eircom...who only have 192 port cabs.

    I suspect BT have better GIS than eircom too. :)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,230 ✭✭✭Solair


    From the perspective of any citizen or business in Ireland, I think this is actually a very positive move as it will mean that there might be some hope of bypassing the telecommunications bottleneck that eircom's access networks have become over the last decade or so.

    I hope the Government sees it as a major opportunity to get some serious fibre to premises rollout!

    I've researched this over the years and just have a good bit of general knowledge of the area but the history of telecommunications in Ireland has been far from a rosy one from a public policy point of view. It's actually been a history of the network crumbling, then a crisis causing state investment, followed by the network returning to a crumbling situation again.

    1920s - Ireland's telecommunications infrastructure splits off from the UK GPO and the Irish Post Office (GPO) / Department of Posts and Telegraphs (P&T) takes over. Things are run pretty much as was and the network, while not wonderful, was reasonable for that era.

    1930s - Some automation had been rolled out by then with dial service in Dublin, Cork etc. However, progress was very slow and a trade war with the UK (1932-1938) made it difficult for the Irish P&T to buy British equipment. That, and the general lack of investment / lack of funds sees the network stagnate and become quite poor.

    WWII - Reasonable excuse for slippage. Not much could be done there.

    1950s - 1980:
    P&T Ran the worst excuse for a telephone network in Western Europe / developed world.
    Minimal investment, ancient switches (other than a few Ericsson crossbars in selected urban areas), bad national connectivity (crackly, inaudible lines), bad / non existent international connectivity (still dependent on the UK GPO for most of it).
    There had been a complete failure to rollout anything even approaching adequate automatic voice services and there were disastrously bad / non-existent data services.
    By the early 1980s there were still Step-by-Step voice switches from the 1930s in service and operators plugging in cables into boards to connect calls. Something most countries had seen disappear in the 50's!

    Customers were being expected to wait 2 years to get a line installed.

    Many companies had to go without telephone service in many areas etc etc.

    This can be partially explained because P&T was a Government Department, not a semi-state company, it also had endless political interference, and lacked proper corporate structures. It couldn't really do any of the things that a normal company would need to do e.g. manage its own finances and its employees were actual civil servants. TDs regularly got involved with really petty stuff like asking about constituents individual telephone line installations in the Dail!

    Late 1970s - Early 1980s :

    A national crisis situation developed (not dissimilar to the broadband situation now in some respects) where the state had to put telecommunications right or it was going to lose business / investment. Big pressure came on from Irish companies, IDA, and foreign companies who found the infrastructure ridiculously bad etc. The situation was just embarrassing and we were languishing at the bottom of all the international league tables.

    1984: Restructure (Telecom Eireann was split from Post Office) and Government and European cash was lashed into new switching systems, microwave links, fibre etc.
    There was a partnership with Alcatel (probably backed by French export loans and serious knowledge transfer with the French PTT) & an existing partnership with Ericsson was enhanced resulting in both companies deploying leading-edge tech in Ireland's network like some of earliest rollouts of digital switches anywhere in Europe. Ericsson and Alcatel also ended up spinning out quite a lot of IT jobs at the time in Ireland as part of the deal i.e. Alcatel in Bandon (Cork) (now gone) and Ericsson's sites at Athlone & Dun Laoghaire turned into R&D/Training facilities.

    Mid-1980s - Starts to drastically improve into the 1990s ... Briefly leading edge. Results in a lot of companies locating customer contact, back office data processing for finance companies and other centres in Ireland.

    Deal with struck with Motorola to setup Eircell TACS network (more knowledge transfer & spin off jobs via Motorola in Cork)

    1990s - Internet age kicks off and EU opens up telecoms market, but Ireland, Greece and another few weirdly gets derogation on this. I'm not sure why as it made little sense in Ireland's case.

    Telecoms market eventually opens in Ireland just before privatisation.

    1999 - Privatised ... Briefly goes according to plan and ticks away as a PLC.

    2000s - Vulture capitalists buy it out and take it fully private - Almost no investment and asset stripping ... Innovation stops almost entirely and the company rapidly becomes technological laggard again, this time with vast debt burden run up by leveraged take-over deals.

    2010s - Failure to invest and innovate begins to see serious loss of market share as their main competitors (UPC in particular) are now 10+ years ahead of them, debts become unsustainable & the company goes into receivership.

    Is this really the kind of organisation that we'd want to be dependent upon for our core telecommunication networks ?!?

    To me they look like they've been a disaster for decades. I'm pretty sure the Government's probably looking at every way of bypassing them entirely!

    We're back at a similar crossroads to the mess in late 1970s when P&T was a drag on the economy. Only this time it's a private company.

    This ESB project might FINALLY lead to a proper neutral fibre access network that could see real broadband products being rolled out that actually put us back at the cutting edge again!


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    You are right :( eircom have been a disaster for 80 years now...bar a few years in the late 1980s early 1990s.

    I forgot to mention earlier that ESB MAY HAVE applied for a 4G licence .....we don't know anything about that particular licencing process which is dragging on interminably up in the Comreg bunker.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 762 ✭✭✭SeaSide


    Is this not really about ducting? ESB into houses for the last number of years has been by duct not direct buried or overhead line (in the cities / suburbs). Reasonable easy and cheapish to pull a fibre into a house through an existing duct. Fibre plus equipment should be less than 500 at a guess and at current 30/month that should be recovered pretty easily.

    Now what am i missing?


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  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    Not missing anything save to say that not all this duct has space in it. A three phase 10 or 20kv will stuff 3 ducts absolutely full. If there is space in a duct a 'subduct' can be stuffed alongside and the fibre blown down (some subduct looks like a reverse condom with lubricant inside) but is rigid enough that you can insert into an existing 50mm duct or Hydrodaire into a house.

    Very good article here with loads of pics.

    http://wiki.ftthcouncil.eu/index.php/FTTH_Handbook/Deployment_Techniques


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,230 ✭✭✭Solair


    It's either good luck or clever forward planning, but ESB has actually had pretty seriously tough specifications for ducting for quite a long time.

    Most Irish modern developments are definitely connected up using ducts. That's not the case in a lot of countries where direct burial cables were preferred as they were seen as a cheaper option.

    It means that ESB does actually have direct access to a hell of a lot of premises via a duct that carries nothing more than a fairly simple 230V cable in most cases.

    Not sure what the story with older installations is though.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3 Stag11


    Sponge Bob wrote: »
    bk wrote: »
    SB where did you hear the €300 million figure?

    Sent you and Solair a PM. Can you confirm that my €300m figure is correct when you read that.

    Sponge Bob, would also be interested in seeing how the €300m figure was arrived at? Cheers


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    It is from the ESB themselves.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3 Stag11


    Sponge Bob wrote: »
    It is from the ESB themselves.

    Thanks, can you post a link to where they've stated it?


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    Not linkable as such. BK and Solair were invited to confirm it is genuine and BK did.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3 Stag11


    Stag11 wrote: »
    Sponge Bob wrote: »
    It is from the ESB themselves.

    Thanks, can you post a link to where they've stated it?

    Will take your word for it so. Good man yourself.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,230 ✭✭✭Solair


    Sponge Bob wrote: »
    Not linkable as such. BK and Solair were invited to confirm it is genuine and BK did.

    That's what it says.


  • Registered Users Posts: 48,129 ✭✭✭✭km79


    So I might eventually have an alternative to 3 s appalling NBS MOBILE broadband ???


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,230 ✭✭✭Solair


    Eh, possibly.

    It's unlikely to be of much help to people who really live way out in the country, but it could be a huge deal for anyone in a small town, village, housing estate etc.

    It could potentially have use for FWA providers too if they can get more fibre to mast sites built on top of that infrastructure.


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