NBP: Response to mapping queries.

clohamon · 06-08-2013 3:00pm #1

The Mapping of the National Broadband Plan is underway and the department issued its response to questions which it is claimed came from providers. No service from any provider will be excluded on technology grounds.

The answers were vague and repetitive, often deferring to the State Aid Guidelines document which itself is vague. In general the department has no preliminary view on the capability of any service, but wants providers to make the case for their services as being NGA or Basic broadband, as appropriate, and what areas they cover. The department requests that the services should be capable of being "guaranteed" and that they should be "reliable", but acknowledges that

"Different operators, using different wireless technologies, may have different views on what constitutes guaranteed and reliable high speed NGA services."

The department was silent on how any claim would be verified. All technical questions were unanswered.

A few nuggets emerged.

Speed will be defined as performance between a network node and a customer’s premises. (Q11)
The department considers GSM-Edge technology to be broadband. (Q15b)
The maps will have black grey and white areas - presumably corresponding to EU definitions. (Q18)
The department will consider proposals for satellite NGA (Q26)

Its not yet clear how any consumer perspective will be incorporated into this process.

watty · 06-08-2013 5:13pm

Madness. It's already totally pointless. As was the NBS mapping and more seriously the NBS contract award, which was NOT for what the tender requested and hasn't even been complied with. Of course the penalties for non-compliance were (a) Secret and (b) They pretend it's fine anyway.

Inherently No Mobile Wireless can economically* ever be Broadband, only Fixed wireless and only with certain constraints.
No Geostationary satellite can be Broadband and it's dubious that some kind of high capacity "Iridium style) Satellite Swarm can even equal 3G, though at least that would have better latency.

(* Mobile can only deliver Broadband if every street has multiple basestations, i.e. 100s of thousands of femtocells, about 100 times more masts than every mobile operator and band added together, you'd need a full national FTTC to feed it too!).

clohamon · 08-10-2014 4:37pm

The Department finally owned-up to why the mapping is taking so long. In answer to a query by John O’Mahoney TD (chair Fine Gael), Assistant Secretary of the Department, Catherine Licken, said they had been waiting for operators (specifically mentioning Eircom's June announcement) to extend their plans.

Everybody knew that of course, but just to recap what DCENR said when the mapping process was started....

The Department is setting out an eight week period from the launch date for participants to submit mapping information and data, where the deadline for receipt of submissions is 23rd August 2013.

.....and...

However, in the interest of ensuring that the mapping exercise is conducted in an orderly way, the Department is setting a deadline for submission of information in response to subsequest requests for clarification or further information as 27th September 2013 and all information is expected to be submitted to the Department by that date.

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Communications+Development/Next+Generation+Broadband/National+Broadband+Plan+-+Mapping.htm

The NBP is now running a year behind schedule.

In other mapping information, DCENR assert that:
The interactive map will be published within 8 weeks (from 08/10/2014)
It will be a simple binary overlay (in or out of the scheme)
It will not include information on provider/technology/speed-claimed
It will be granular to premises level.
It will include an interactive element to allow for consumer verification. That process will continue substantially into 2015

watty · 09-10-2014 8:47am

So it will never be done.

They are doing this wrong -- AGAIN --
Did they learn nothing from the GBS, NBS, RBS fiascos?

clohamon · 09-10-2014 10:00am

watty wrote: »

So it will never be done.

They are doing this wrong -- AGAIN --
Did they learn nothing from the GBS, NBS, RBS fiascos?

It might get done, but they're planning on submitting both the backhaul measure (ESB fibre to 1100 villages) and the access measure (no details) for State Aid approval in a single 'big bang' approach. Which means that the whole plan rests on working out the fine detail of the access measure. That includes quite complicated issues about state/provider/community co-funding and is far more likely to run into trouble and delay.

It's assumed that they're also waiting for ESB/Vodafone to get EU approval before adding it to the map.

All of which allows eircom to make announcements in the meantime about what it 'intends' to do. In doing so it poisons the business case for the government access measure because eVDSL will simply cherry-pick the centres of settlements without addressing the outliers. This strategy worked very well for BT in the UK, and the British rural program - BDUK - has been an abject failure as a result.

You've got to wonder where consumers are represented in all this. A firm commitment on timescale, given in August 2012, of completion "within the lifetime of the government', has been abandoned. The commitment on the mapping deadline has been ignored. There are more consultations on the way and - assuming State Aid approval - procurement won't start until the end of next year. Part of this can be explained by their early fascination with LTE, which lasted until the backhaul announcement in May. That particular cul-de-sac has wasted three years at least.

IMO it would be better to seek EU approval for the relatively simple backhaul measure straightaway. The access measure should be a separate plan.

It might be, that by rolling it all up together, they hope they can just give the whole job to the ESB (after observing the public procurement rules), but it's quite a risk and will take a lot longer to get started.

clohamon · 24-10-2014 3:55pm

Responses to the Call-for-Input are here (23MB)
http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/National+Broadband+Plan/Published+Stakeholder+Consultation+Oct+2014.htm

This from Eircom..

While eircom agrees with the classification of NGA Broadband networks from a technical capability perspective, we are of the view that a predominantly FTTH solution will offer the most cost effective NBIP solution, with limited roles for FTTN and for LTE Advanced. eircom has conducted significant analysis of rural areas on Ireland and concluded that Ireland is quite different in terms of population density compared to most other European countries. eircom recommends that FTTH is the most appropriate NGA Broadband network for the NBIP.

clohamon · 15-11-2014 3:28pm

http://clareherald.com/2014/11/13/minister-to-launch-broadband-consultation-in-clare-34535/

Minister Alex White, T.D., will formally launch a Public Consultation on the proposed villages and townlands across rural Ireland to be included in the Government’s investment Programme under the National Broadband Plan.

The Public Consultation launch takes place in Doolin on November 24th.

Queries at the ready!

clohamon · 06-07-2016 8:29am

The department are looking for information from the 'blue unserved', i.e. those in blue areas incorrectly mapped as having NGA.

*Update to the High Speed Broadband Map - July 5 2016*

The Department is currently updating the High Speed Broadband Map, to add up to 170,000 premises into the AMBER area. We ask you to bear with us, while we work to identify these premises. In the meantime, if you have queries in relation to your premises, please email us at broadband@dcenr.gov.ie quoting your eircode. If you have contacted telecoms operators and cannot get services, it would be helpful if you could advise the Department which operators you have contacted.

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/communications/en-ie/Broadband/Pages/National-Broadband-Plan-Map-.aspx

NBP: Response to mapping queries.

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