Would you switch to Chorus?

crawler

Folks,

With the news of Chorus having an examiner appointed etc it would be good to see how people would react if they did get their act together.

Sometimes we dont appreciate what we have until it's gone ( song somewhere?? )

If Chorus did offer a real triple play of Digital TV , voice and Broadband for a fixed fee would you cancel your Sky and eircom subscription and go to them for all services?

DaithiSurfer

I had chorus 3 years ago and i had to take a huge amount of days off work to let their 'engineers' in to fix it when the problem was always outside.
All this time they were promising phone line etc, so about a year and a half ago i got rid of them for sky.
IThe neighbours are still having hell with them.

Mossy Monk

been there done that

the days of blank television screens and lousy reception are gone in this house
i would never go near Chorus again

watty

Outside of an apartment block Cable is HISTORY.

DTT and Satellite are the future of Multichannel.

An Apartment block etc could even install multisatellite with Digibox and FTA set in each flat and in a year be saving on Chorus/NTL/Sky sub package.

Even a basic EUR 100 FTA box can support 4 satellites on a communal system.

Mike 1972

An Apartment block etc could even install multisatellite with Digibox and FTA set in each flat and in a year be saving on Chorus/NTL/Sky sub package.
Even a basic EUR 100 FTA box can support 4 satellites on a communal system

Trouble is most landlrords in Ireland cant be @r$€;d

ixtlan

Originally posted by LurkingIcon
Outside of an apartment block Cable is HISTORY.

DTT and Satellite are the future of Multichannel.

An Apartment block etc could even install multisatellite with Digibox and FTA set in each flat and in a year be saving on Chorus/NTL/Sky sub package.

Even a basic EUR 100 FTA box can support 4 satellites on a communal system.

I have to disagree. Until mobile calls are as cheap as landline calls and there is very cheap wireless broadband access there will be a need for cable.

I know you were specifically referring to TV but you have to look at the big picture. Cable companies can supply TV as a side-line to the voice/Internet access. Chorus would have done this already if they weren't such a disaster. Eircom might even get into this business in the long term.

If Chorus had at least a year of good customer reports, and a compelling package, I would consider switching back. Having said that I've just ordered Sky+ so I'll want to get my money's worth from that.

Ix.

Gillie

I am with chorus at present for the basic cable plus sky sports 1,2 & 3.
There a disaster tbh. I have also had to take time off work to facilitate their engineers!

The problem is NTL Digital & Chorus Digital don't serve Sligo at present.
I won't switch to Sky until UTV & C4 are available so i'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.

BrianD

I certainly agree the future for cable systems in Ireland is not very bright mainly due to lack of investment and our development strategy.

A cable operator that offers well priced digital TV, broadband and telephony down the one pipe and on one bill will have no problem competing with other delivery platforms. Unfortuantely, there are few places where these combined services can be offered by NTL or Chorus like NTL and Telewest do in the UK.

Our history of poorly executed urban sprawl and one-off housing has also hampered the development of cable. It is just not cost effective for a cable operator to service many new residences with either MMDS or satellite being the most sensible options.

watty

A shared cable gives VERY poor broadband performance compared with dedicated phone line to exchange (Typically 2M shared to whole street, versus up to 5M per person on phone line).

IF there was a decent cable infrastructure and IF it had every service it could have, it still could not compete with the local copper loop which is INDIVIDUAL for each subscriber to exchange.

Broadband on the exsiting phone wire can be up to 5km from the exchange. Cable companies will not run cable to isolated houses.


Cable as installed here is vunerable to vandalism.

Cable IS superior to phone line infrastructure for "broadcast" video services and much poorer or impossible for Video On Demand.

But Satellite with aproximately 2500 channel capacity per orbital slot, and about 30+ orbital slots receivable just on Ku Band makes cable capacity look stupid.

Satellite can accomodate HDTV, Your cable package would have 1/4 the number of channels.

But the biggest problems for Cable in Ireland is:

1) The operators only really able to deliver TV
2) The infrastructure inherited from older companies that did install on poor spec ad hoc basis.
3) Niether NTL or Chorus has the money to invest in either proper infrastructure or services.

UNlike UK, Cable here DID NOT originate as desire to provide phone services, Internet and Multichannel Pay TV (in Sky/UK cable sense).

THE ONLY REASON for cable in Ireland was a cheap and dirty access to BBC and ITV, later C4. That is why most people STILL get Chorus/ NTL. Not for Phone, Internet or 120 Pay TV channels that are mostly junk. A number now get cable for Sky Sports because of exclusive events Sky has bought. If these were on BBC/ITV as they used to be, not many would want Sky Sports.

People do NOT want a Euro30 multichannel Digital thingy when they started with a £7 UK TV package that worked every TV (With Digital everyone watches the same channel in the house or you need multiple decoders).


Chorus /NTL have lost sight of why the infrastructure they bought existed, yet are unable to properly deliver the hybrid range of Digital Services (TV, Internet, Phone) relaibly and cheaply to the bulk of the cable base.

Chorus is even "plonking" MMDS aerials in Limerick City and North Dublin and has turned off some smaller cable systems. The Digital MMDS ONLY delivers TV. The "Powernet" and "Phone" wireless systems Chuors sells use a separate aerials and infrastructure. They won't even install Powernet citing lack of "LOS", when signal is perfect as they don't have the kit nor money to buy it.

I regard it as miraculious that the Chorus Wireless phone actually got installed. (It begs the question as to why if it is cheaper than Eircom for "line rental" and "calls" they "other" wireless phone system (GSM) which uses cheaper equipment is more expensive!)

watty

Originally posted by Gilly2003
I am with chorus at present for the basic cable plus sky sports 1,2 & 3.
There a disaster tbh. I have also had to take time off work to facilitate their engineers!

The problem is NTL Digital & Chorus Digital don't serve Sligo at present.
I won't switch to Sky until UTV & C4 are available so i'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Goto Ennislkillen/Strabane and take out a UK Sky Family pack or Sports pack... Even when you cancel a year later the C4, ITV and Five probabily still work!

wexfordman

I regard it as miraculious that the Chorus Wireless phone actually got installed. (It begs the question as to why if it is cheaper than Eircom for "line rental" and "calls" they "other" wireless phone system (GSM) which uses cheaper equipment is more expensive!)

Lurking,,


I'm not defending one system over the other, but I think your comparison is a little unfair. The chorus telephone system is a fixed wireless system, not a mobile system as GSM is, and the two systems are very far apart if you want to compare directly.

What is the rental for a Chorus "Fixed Wireless phone", and what is the basis where you say GSM equipment is "cheaper"

Wexfordman

wexfordman

Lurking,

Sorry, about this, but

A shared cable gives VERY poor broadband performance compared with dedicated phone line to exchange (Typically 2M shared to whole street, versus up to 5M per person on phone line).

This is news to me, what existing adsl services offer you a 5M dedicated pipe ?
As far as I know, while you can get Meg speeds with ADSL, firstly the typical speed offered is 256k or 512k, but all of these are contended (I beleive 48:1 or there abouts), which means that you share your "pipe" with up to 48 other users.

IF there was a decent cable infrastructure and IF it had every service it could have, it still could not compete with the local copper loop which is INDIVIDUAL for each subscriber to exchange.

Can you explain this one a bit further. I have yet to see the day when my local telecoms co can offer me high speed internet, telephony and digital tv services over my little twisted pair, and say they can do this better than on cable ?
The copper that is in the ground today, was put on decaades ago, and designed to carry only a narrow band of freq's (300Hz to 3.4khz IFRC), this is in comparison to cable tv systems which although outdated have a much higher bandwidth to carry.

Also, the copper is often not INDIVIDUAL for each subscriber, as pargain systems are used regularly, to double up lines per pair.

Basically, i disagree on this one, cos the coax from your cable co, will ALWAYS be capable of carrying higher bandwidth than twisted pair.

Cable as installed here is vunerable to vandalism.

No more than any existing network, wired or wireless, phone, power or tv

Cable IS superior to phone line infrastructure for "broadcast" video services and much poorer or impossible for Video On Demand.

Again, how is twisted pair superior ?

But Satellite with aproximately 2500 channel capacity per orbital slot, and about 30+ orbital slots receivable just on Ku Band makes cable capacity look stupid.

Who wants 2500 channels. I have sky digital at the moment, and content is crap, with the exception of a few channels.

People do NOT want a Euro30 multichannel Digital thingy when they started with a £7 UK TV package that worked every TV (With Digital everyone watches the same channel in the house or you need multiple decoders).

I think SKY just released their figures for Irls today, and they were up to about 350,000 ROI customers now. So 350,000 people disagree with you on this one. Bear in mind that the only advantage SKY offers over Chorus or cable at the moment, is Chorus is ****e, and SKY is available everywhere. SKY cannot, and will vever be able to offer servicecs that and Cable company worth half its salt would be able to, either via cable or wireless.

They won't even install Powernet citing lack of "LOS", when signal is perfect as they don't have the kit nor money to buy it.

No argument there, they are a bunch of idiots for not taking the plunge on this in the first place. Me wonders how much of a bind was put on Chorus who were effectively competing agains €ircon, with the same man at the helm of both companies (Sir Tony O Rielly)

(thought I should end on a point where we both agree:D )

Wefordman

watty

The home client station for Chorus wireless phone is VERY expensive hardware. Even the aerial unit is about 1/2 the price of a cheap buy outright GSM handset.

Since the Chorus system is Microwave, for "similar" coverage the difference in numbe of transmitters is not much, and like cell phone they have to add more transmitters as an existing one "fills up". The Microwave Chorus base station to serve the clients is in theory also more expensive than a GSM cell transmitter.

The "line rental" is 13 Eur, and our bills are 50% less than when we used Eircom Copper, Also analog modem "real speed" (many don't report this), is 49K ERROR FREE, on Eircom it was 22K with about 15% errors. GSM on my Nokia Communicator I get 14.4 (one slot) or some networks can give dual channel at 28.8K (this is ordinary GSM, GPRS doen't work on it and actually can be more expensive!)

If you get Broadband on the copper pair it can be up to 1M now, NO CONTENTION i.e. 1:1

Very few copper local loops are shared. This is always disabled for ISDN (a 144K bit modem on existing wire) or ADSL /SDSL (a 1M bit modem ). VDSL is now available in some countries and allows up to 20M bit AND ISDN on the existing copper pair.

Cable is a shared medium, like Satellite so suits multicast/broadcast best. The local loop is not shared.

Comparing Ethernet on coax or Hub you get a shared 10Mbit (or shared 100Mbit) half duplex, effectively (on Coax or 10baseT hub) a maximum of 3Mbit SHARED (contention protocol overhead) to all users, so with 30 users, you get 100Kbps each.

Ethernet now usually uses twisted pair to a SWITCH not a hub. If the server is at 1G or faster or lots of peer to per, the limit is NOT the "local loop", but the SWITCH (like Telecom Central Office / Exchange). So each user can have an INDIVIDUAL 10Mbps full duplex even with 30 users, or 100M bit full duplex!

Similarly a Wireless LAN at 11Mbps is not 1/10th the speed of 100M ethernet on a Switch, it is "SHARED MEDIUM" like Cable TV cable, so real through put for 30 users is about 40kbps (higher protocol overhead).

A "Star" topology allways "beats" a "bus" topology network for peer to peer, information on demand and non- broadcast applications, EVEN if the the connections are MUCH lower bandwidth.

A "Bus" or "shared" Topology can never deliver its total bandwidth to every user, unless the material is "broadcast" (i.e. Cable TV Satellite TV, TV , Radio, Internet Push service like Casablanca). The shared topology service (Wireless LAN, Satellite, Cable TV ) always performs badly as interactive (non-broadcast) users are added. In fact beyond a certain point (about 1/3rd "bandwidth" for Ethernet) adding users does not proprotionately reduce shared bandwidth, but catastrophically reduces it as the protocol spends more time denying or acknowledge connection pack requests than transferring the user data.

In Communications Engineering (which I have a distinction in) you study these things and the statistical analysis and also use Stochastic Theory and probability to calculate expected level of service versus user numbers, bandwidth and user usage.


Yes Sky is doing well, proving my point, those that "really" want Multichannel will go for the better quality and bigger range of Satellite. Someone who does not want "multichannel" in this sense is likely to be happier with a £7 analog cable package than a EUR 30 "digital" cable package.

I was NOT at all suggesting that most people on NTL or Cable don't want "real" multichannel.


The fastest computer network generally on coax is probabily about 10Mb/s. The Cable TV infrastructure is similar grade cabling to orignal "fat" Ethernet that used Vampire Taps (The skinney ethernet like the cable TV cable in your house came later).

Office Networks and Phones now all use twisted pair copper. Up to 1000Mbit is cheap and off the shelf. No modern Computer networks use "bus" cables like Cable TV.


The cable TV network could offer multichannel, 5Mbit with 20:1 contention ADSL and phone. Overall on the whole cable network this will not happen. It can't get better than that. That is the limit.

Phone company broadband offers up to 1Mbit with ZERO CONTENTION on your existing copper pair up to 5 km from exchange. VDSL will be available ON EXISTING copper pair without contention at a higher price.

I expect the ordinary ADSL on phone wire to drop from EUR50 to EUR10 with competiton and the new infrastructure.

There are Millions getting invested TODAY in telecom based Broadband (up to 1G circuits for buisness and 2M for home) all across Ireland. There is expected to be more, by many companies.

In contrast Chorus will not invest anything in Cable and NTL very little. NTL "digital" plans today are very much reduced in scope/features compared with original proposals OTDR agreed. Comreg has agreed the reduced proposals or it was a case of taking the Licence of NTL.

Cable can't compete with Satellite for Broadcast
It isn't getting the investment to even be what it could be
Cable can't compete with ordinary phone twisted pairs (bus versus star topology) for Broadband, Video on demand or even phone.

I'm writing this using Esat Broadband on ordinary Eircom installed copper twisted pair phone line now rented of Esat! I can plug a phone in too if I wanted.

watty

Perhaps the poll question will be:

"Is it even possible to switch to Chorus?"

Their wireless phone licence expires end of March and is not being renewed (for whatever reason).

LFCFan

All I can say on the matter is, if I hear that poxy Chorus ad on the radio one more time I'm gonna boycott the bloody station. That woman drives me insane. 'and it get's better....sign up now and get another installion for FREE, yes Free.' Aggghhhhh! I hate her!!!!!!