is there broadband in Ireland yet?

bealtine

I was thinking about the now infamous
"One million lines from Wicklow to Westport"

A couple of points came to mind:

These mythical towns must be in the US or somewhere
because they sure aren't in Ireland.

There are 1.7 million lines in Ireland
and of these 1 million are allegedly broadband enabled.
If we now take the known (very conservative) estimate
that of those 1 million 30% fail of them fail the line test.
This gives us a total of 300,000 lines that cannot get
broadband.

So 1.700,000 - 1,000,000 = 700,000

Now add in the 300,000 that also fail:

So 700,000 + 300,000 = 1,000,000

We now see that 1 million lines in Ireland cannot get broadband.

Uh uh...obviously they left out something on the poster:
"That can't get broadband"

Way to go eircom...

eircom! keeping us in the 1980's

gandalf

Jaysus its amazing where a conversation in the pub leads

aidan_walsh

Links to numbers please?

Urban Weigl

You should find the numbers in Silicon Republic.

bealtine

doodle_sketch wrote:

Links to numbers please?

The "numbers" are self evident...e.g are as published.

But why not read this:
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?uid=cdlong&sid=dA9k46cd&storyid=single3765

bk

Stop the press, it seems that the figures maybe even worse then we first thought.

It seems Eircom don't count ISDN lines in their number of telephone lines.

According to the Comreg Quartely report published 7 September 2004 [1] on page 4 of the report (page 7 of the PDF), it states that there are 1.6 million PSTN lines **AND** 423,000 ISDN lines for a total of 2,023,000 access paths.

This matches the Eircom quarterly report published on the 30 June 2004 [2] (page 3), it states that total access channels is 2,019,000 access paths.

So even if we go by the extremely questionable figure of 20% line failure rate from Eircom, we get:

1,000,000 * 20% = 200,000
2,000,000 - 1,000,000 = 1,000,000
1,000,000 + 200,000 = 1,200,000

Therefore 60% of phonelines in Ireland can't get BB.

Whatever way you try to spin it, it seems that 50 - 60% of phonelines in Ireland can not get bb.

[1] http://www.odtr.ie/whats_new/default.asp?ctype=5&nid=101735
[2] http://investorrelations.eircom.net/pdf/Q1FinancialInformation.pdf

Moriarty

I'd be careful in claiming that all isdn lines are confirmed as not being able to get dsl (which is what you're saying). Odds are the majority of them will pass.

bealtine

Moriarty wrote:

I'd be careful in claiming that all isdn lines are confirmed as not being able to get dsl (which is what you're saying). Odds are the majority of them will pass.

Agreed.

However all ISDN lines will not pass the DSL tests as they stand w/o first being downgraded to pots. So in effect they cannot get bb:)

eircom don't even have "managed conversions" where your line is downgraded, tested and if it fails ISDN is switched back on. In the UK
this is all done for free or for a minimal fee.

seamus

bealtine wrote:

Agreed.

However all ISDN lines will not pass the DSL tests as they stand w/o first being downgraded to pots. So in effect they cannot get bb:)

eircom don't even have "managed conversions" where your line is downgraded, tested and if it fails ISDN is switched back on. In the UK
this is all done for free or for a minimal fee.

Even when you've downgraded to POTS, there's no guarantee, as I found (although I just got a POTS line activated where there used to be ISDN, but the procedure was the same, long story).

dahamsta

Speaking of ISDN, a friend of the family hasn't been able to avail of the UTV offer because they currently use ISDN, I'm wondering if anyone knows if this applies to all of the bitstream suppliers? (The IOL site requires a number and a/c number, and I don't have those to hand, Eircom requires a login.)

I realise /why/ this is so - the line needs to be downgraded to POTS - but it does seem a little unfair that there isn't an alternative for ISDN users. I'm also curious as to whether Eircom Net has the same issue, as otherwise it could possibly considered collusion between wholesale and retail.

adam

DonegalMan

When I was looking for Broadband for my business in Letterkenny about 18 months ago, we had 3 ISDN lines. Eircom were able to check them for me - AFAIR, I coudn't do it on the website, got a message saying to ring them as it was ISDN. The UTV website just said the lines failed and didn't mention ISDN.

Anyway, I was somewhat amazed when only one of the six numbers passed (i.e. one of the numbers on an ISDN line passed, the second one failed!) and it was on the oldest ISDN line we had - the most recent line had only been installed some weeks previously and it failed. I didn't make any fuss about this as I was just too glad to be able to get it at all and the line with the single pass suited me to downgrade.

They explained that it would involve a downgrade of the line but they knew it would work ok.

Martin

DonegalMan

Just ran a quick check on a number one of the ISDN lines we retained; coming up a Pass on both Eircom and UTV.