Eircom eFibre VDSL/FTTC rollout – plans to reach 1.6m premises by mid 2016

The problem, as I see it anyway, is that eircom might struggle to get any kind of investors at all.

#1 : The debt will absolutely have to be written down before anyone would touch it with a barge pole.

#2 : Their landline, consumer-oriented infrastructure has been allowed to become obsolete and is in need of major redevelopment. They have spent a lot of time talking about fibre-to-the-cabinet or fibre-to-the-home rollouts and achieved very little.

Even forgetting fibre, their NGN rollout isn't complete nationwide and there are still a significant number of exchanges (particularly outside urban areas) that don't even support ADSL2+ (up to 24 mbit/s) which is amazing in 2012!

Even on their most bog-standard services i.e. voice, they are probably in need of replacing equipment at this stage. Much like a lot of other telcos, their digital exchanges largely date from the 1980s. To make maters more urgent, Telecom Eireann was one of the first in the world to do a major roll-out of digital exchanges, so eircom's equipment is probably older than most other equivalent operators who largely went digital in the 90s.
So, I would suspect that even without moving to fibre to home, some of that aging gear is probably going to need to be replaced anyway.

#3 They are way behind their main compeditor in urban Ireland i.e. UPC which seems to be taking vast numbers of broadband & voice customers in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, etc.

Also, based on disposable income, Dublin and Cork in particular are the most attractive areas to invest in because of their household spending power.

Basically, eircom's being left with a monopoly in areas that other companies wouldn't really be bothered with anyway as the costs are high, the lines are long, the population density is low and the spending power is also lower and even in rural areas, they're increasingly being out run by wireless service providers using fixed point microwave networks to an antenna on the roof.

#4 Ireland's economic situation's going to really play a huge role in getting an investor for eircom. The economy is still a mess and there is no clear path out of our mess at the moment.
So, if you are going to invest in an infrastructure company, I don't think
Ireland would be high on many agendas.
The GNP is contracting, spending is contracting, the Government's perusing slash-and-burn austerity tactics which are resulting in ever-decreasing spending from consumers and also from the public and private sectors.

The local banks are also basically bust and nationalised and that will hamper any ability to get capital from local investors and may mess up cash-flow due to inability to get flexible financing.

Also, given the state of eircom's finances and the national finances, you would wonder if they would be in a very strong position to get good deals on financing for new equipment. I would seriously doubt that they are.

#5 Competition :
UPC is a powerful player in this market and it is extremely well resourced (technically and financially) and part of a very large multinational. In the mobile sector, eircom's up against Vodafone, Telefonica (O2) and Hutchison (3) all of which are some of the worlds largest telecoms companies.
In fixed line infrastructure it is up against BT Ireland, again a huge telco.

I'm not trying to paint an entirely gloomy picture, but I am not seeing very many rainbows shining over eircom right now.

A friend told me he got a call from Eircom asking him if he wanted to sign up to Fibre. He is in Swords - Could they be finished upgrading Swords exchange already?

I'm impressed at the speed at which the installation of fibre in Douglas in Cork is going.

Eircom have absolutely blitzed the area in the last few days and they have made huge progress. The street cabinets, mostly at housing estate entrances, have all had fibre pulled to them and new cabinets were being delivered and installed this morning.

Based on what I am seeing, it looks to me like this kind of rollout could be done very quickly in most Irish urban / suburban areas. Douglas would compare to any suburb of Dublin or elsewhere really.

They already have the duct infrastructure in place and it seems just a matter of pulling / pushing the fibres through.

Hopefully, this rollout continues!