Broadband debate dominates TIF event

dahamsta

Broadband debate dominates TIF event
Thursday, October 23 2003
by Matthew Clark

Broadband proved to be the hot topic at a conference on the future of the Irish telecoms sector, with Communications Minister Ahern throwing down the gauntlet.

At the Telecommunications and Internet Federation's (TIF) Annual Telecommunication Conference, entitled "Telecoms -- A New Beginning," a collection of speakers from Ireland's telecommunications industry gathered to discuss needs within the industry and its future. Most speakers agreed that Ireland had come a long way since the days rotary phones and has made big strides in last year, but also said there is much more work to do, particularly in the broadband Internet sector, where prices are perceived to be high and accessibility is considered inadequate.


Ireland's Communications Minister, Dermot Ahern, TD, grabbed the most attention when he addressed an early-morning crowd on the changes that have taken place in the industry over the past year. These changes have included the introduction of lower priced broadband and FRIACO, which Ahern had called for at the same event one year earlier.


"Together we must aggressively deal with all that stands in our way," Ahern said on Thursday in a renewed call for action in the sector.

[...]

De Rebel

From the same report
Later, in a panel discussion, TIF director Tommy McCabe asked the industry leaders whether it was appropriate for the State to be involved in the telecoms industry, suggesting that government-industry cooperation might be a more suitable approach.

So what is Tommy saying here........... There are two possibilities.......

That Industry should co-operate with Government to roll out broadband Look at the history. Eircom, the Incumbent, which in its IBEC subscription pays substantial sums towards the cost of Mr.McCabe's salary, has done EVERYTHING in its power to STOP the roll out of broadband. It has refused to invest, threatened legal action, taken 3 years to complete a pilot-test. Well obviously this is not what Mr. McCabe is proposing. Any more of that form of co-operation is hardly likely to advance the roll out of broadband.


That Government should co-operate with Industry to roll out broadband Much more likely. Government co-operating with industry. In IBEC speak, (and there are few more adept than Mr.McCabe) this is synonymous with either Give us your money in the form of grants or Take away all regulation/competition and give us a licence to print money

Tommy baby, give us a break from the cold war rhetoric. You and the powerful vested interests which you represent have FAILED MISERABLY to roll out broadband. Thanks to YOU and the people you represent Ireland is 51st in the world in the broadband stakes. please crawl back into your IBEC/TIF hole and let the world move on. You and your IBEC/TIF creations will never advance the cause of Broadband in Ireland.

Others might…. You are irrelevant …… Please move over

Dangger

Amen to that, brother!

iwb

I was at the conference and I thought that Denis O'Brien did all the running. He and the minister seemed to be somewhat it sync on what needs to be done.
Basically Denis has it mostly right. He says create a new provider in Ireland who will be able to provide the 5Mb promise to most homes in the country. He estimates €2BN to get this done. He doesn't seem interested in doing it himself though.
He commented that DSL is dead and that fibre is the way. I disagree with him on this one. DSL is misused kind of like broadband these days. In Ireland, it means 512/128 at heavy contention ratios to most people. In reality, it can mean a dedicated symmetrical 5Mbps. The key is how it is implemented.
The limitations to its use for these types of service are distance, quality of copper (as with all DSL implementations) and topology.
In any MAN town, one will be able to colocate a DSLAM in the open access colocation space. Then, depending on how the MSE is implemented, inexpensive backhaul/backbone might be made available.
With these in place, all that is necessary is for Comreg to force Eircom to provide a tarriff for this situation, which doesn't exist today. In addition, unbunding at the street cabinet would allow alternative operators to place DSLAMs closer to customers, backhauling over MAN fibre to the operators centre.
I know all the naysayers will say that Comreg won't get it sorted for years but you never know.
There is hope:)

Urban Weigl

I think his point is, if you are going to do something, do it properly the first time, as we will need to invest in fibre to the home at some stage anyway. Yes, xDSL will deliver 5mbps, however the future is clearly fibre, as it will never need to be upgraded. It can easily provide 5, 10 or 100mbps per subscriber now, but can be upgraded in the future to supply a gigabit or more bandwidth per subscriber. Something that perhaps you can not imagine being needed now, but may be needed in 10 years time.

Whereas xDSL will be obselete by that time, when people no longer want ~5mbps, but want 100mbps or more (there are limits to copper technology over distance), fibre is very "long term" in this regard.

The fact is, we will need to upgrade to fibre at some stage anyway. Why waste money on xDSL in the meantime? It is a valid point.

iwb

Jeez, I didn't think I would be disagreeing with someone on boards about how big a quantum leap to take!
Urban Wiegl, in principle what you are saying is 100% true. If we could do it any way we wanted, fibre to the premises is the only way to go. Unfortunately, €2Billion wouldn't even scratch the surface if that was the target. I am guessing that it would be more like 10 Billion. The electronics cost would be huge, but the cost of digging or hanging fibre to even a fairly high percentage of the population, not to mention the disruption would be massive.
I have heard figures of between €100 and €250 per meter as the cost to bury fibre in Ireland. €65 million only made a good start on a fibre infrastructure in nineteen towns which includes 'drops' to a few of the larger potential customers in these town.
Denis did however state that a large number of new homes are being built every year at the moment and I fully agree that some initiative should be taken to bury fibre ideally but at least empty duct to as many as possible. That way, there is an upgrade path.

Urban Weigl

I understand the cost would be huge, 10 billion as you say probably is not that far off. The government, together with the ESB, could do this by "clipping" fibre to existing ESB power lines, to minimize the need to dig up roads. Currently, virtually every home is served by the ESB's infrastructure.

Even so, I also understand that it would not be economical to provide every home with fibre today. It might cost 5 billion to connect 75% of homes, but three or four times as much to connect every single home (for example). As such, wireless would be the best solution for those homes where it is not economical.

The ESB would not sell broadband directly, but rather offer several different "carrier" products. For example, point to point links over their network, as well as point to multipoint links. This would enable an ISP to purchase, for instance, backhaul from Cable & Wireless in Dublin, hook this up to the ESB's fibre infrastructure, and connect any home that is connected to the ESB, paying a wholesale price to the ESB.

In terms of keeping costs low, the network would need to be based on an open standard, such as fibre ethernet. I am specifically mentioning ethernet here, as it can deliver from 1 to 10gbps now, and more in the future. It is also a very open standard, which means that you will never be locked into a single supplier. In some cases, there may be dozens or even hundreds of suppliers available.

My point again is that we will definitely not save any money by not rolling out fibre now, as it will need to be done anyway (I do not think anyone would argue that fibre is not the future). As such, any money spent in between is, in a way, effectively wasted by actually increasing our costs, since again we will invariably need to invest in fibre to the home at some point.